Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At first there’s pain, and little else. 

Pressed against the frozen, slippery rocks and struggling to drag in shallow breaths, he can only remember—Maelle. 

He wants to lift his hand. To move. To reach out to her.

When he can’t, a cool hand finds his instead. 

Maelle, he thinks. Hopes.

"It’s okay," says a stranger’s voice, barely above a murmur, "you will be all right."

Between the blood seeping into the edges of his vision, he has a faint glimpse of the white hair, still so foreign to him, and instinctively understands what’s coming next. What he doesn’t understand is why the hand that should be delivering the last blow could be gentle or soothing. 

But when it lingers over his chest, it’s both of those things.

The pain dissipates, and the world, for once fancying itself merciful, grows dim.

You have walked her dreams.


Even among the stains of darkness that rule the Continent, she’s been frequently wreathed in the brightest of flowers, in the brightest of joys that can still be found here, and the adoration for her silly, lovely brother has always been clear and shining on her open face, never once zealously guarded from the world that would’ve easily stolen it away from her at any given moment. Life has flattened you, ironed out such creases of foolishness, and you’ve long since learned never to make that mistake again.

Now she’s spilling her pristine tears over the cold, unforgiving ground that wouldn’t return her brother to her no matter how she’d pleaded, begged, and screamed against it.

You’ve lost your brother. She’s now lost hers. She may, you think, finally learn.  

It has an odd, pleasing symmetry.

Verso—talented and beautiful and could do no wrong in Maman’s eyes, in your eyes, save for that one mistake where he’s given his life instead of yours—also moves with the long familiarity of the smothering darkness he’s made his home. Your presence, yours and his, both are necessarily sideways and slant, never in the light, in the blooming colours. And when you reveal yourself from the shadows, he easily finds you there.

"It had to be done, Alicia."

You stand mute in the grey, neither disagreeing nor denying. But he can read your disapproval from the quality of your silence alone.

"She wouldn’t—" Verso pauses. It takes him an almost insurmountable effort, you can see on his face, not to turn back for another glimpse of his sister-who-isn’t-his, on the cliff alone and still grieving alone. But he pushes on to make himself say the rest: "She loves him dearly, and if he still exists here, she would never agree to help us."

Us. How easily he includes you. But in this battle your brother is pitching against your father, your mother, you remain well outside of it. So help him, he means, in the path of his choosing.

You don’t tell him what you have done. Standing amidst the howling winds of Stone Wave Cliffs, you decided, perhaps impulsively, on something of your own. Just a brush of colour that you still might be able to claim on this vast Canvas as yours. Hardly worth a ripple.

Just a tiny brushstroke.

But still yours, and yours alone.

Thoughts are sluggish as Gustave incrementally comes back to himself. With his head still heavy against the soft pillows, he shifts in the bed and thinks, absently, Sophie let me oversleep, until he remembers the crushed rose petals drifting away from his grasps. 

Until he remembers the white-haired man. 

Maelle. 

The still-searing pain in his chest, along with his missing arm, informs him that none of these have been born out of his private nightmares. 

He pushes up from the bed and finds himself in an elegant bedroom that shouldn’t feel familiar but does. The why of it becomes clearer when the room’s open door admits him to the rest of the Manor where he and Lune once found Maelle. Or a near-perfect copy of it, from what he could recall, as he walks—and then eventually runs—along the empty corridors.

Its front door doesn’t lead out to an open field of the strangest underwater greenery with a cheery Gestral greeting you with excitement. Instead, the entire manor is encapsulated in a thick, seemingly impenetrable shell of glimmering chroma, moving like slow molasses in brilliant swirls of colours. 

He stares at it for a moment, then turns on his heels and returns inside. His methodical searches of the rest of the Manor lead to more locked doors, and banging on said doors and screaming for Maelle, Lune and Sciel only return the echoes of his own voice. The entire place is empty.

Or nearly empty, Gustave realizes when he returns to the front door, as the heavy clinks of a cane on the marble floor sound from behind him. 

When he turns, the white-haired man stands only a few steps away.

Up close and under the glittery light of the chroma shell slipping through the windows, the man looks even less real than he has been on that darkened shore, where he’s murdered so many of his friends with a single flick of his hand.

"Why am I here?" 

Somehow, Gustave’s voice does not shake, even when he poses such a question to the man who has also very nearly killed him. He hasn’t entirely discarded the possibility that the man has actually succeeded, and this is a purgatory of a sort, or at the very least his very own nightmare to go along with his sister’s.

When the man finally deigns to speak, his answer is just as imperious and disdainful as he's been in their previous encounters. "My daughter is of the mind that you may be of more use. Alive, rather than dead." A seemingly inconceivable notion that he’s merely indulging on a whim. "So you’ll remain our guest here until such time comes."

A guest. A deliberate and scornful insult. A prisoner, he means. Until such time comes, when he may prove to be useful. For what purpose? To what end? He’s certain none of these questions are to be answered, because it’s clear that all Gustave is—all any of them is—just a pebble the man may kick aside for his convenience.

"You’re free to roam in the Manor, enter whichever door that may permit your presence." Which is none, Gustave has already checked, save for the room he’s woken up in.

"And my sister? My friends?" Gustave asks, not expecting an answer.

But, to his surprise, he gets one. "They’re permitted to proceed on their path," the man allows, as if to offer a magnanimous concession of the unimaginable magnitude. "For now."

They’re alive, then. Alive and free, and on their way toward the Monolith. His heart leaps at the news. Except—except of course now they must believe him dead. Lost to them forever.

Maelle, he thinks, his throat tight. "And if I were to refuse this—offer of my stay here?"

Gustave meets the man’s gaze, dark and full of displeasure, and fails to understand any of it.

Just as before, he doesn’t see it coming.

A flick of a hand, and the man backhands him hard enough to send him flying through the doorway and crashing against the wall of the chroma behind him. When Gustave wipes the blood away from his mouth and tries to pull himself together, a blade of light is at his throat. With any sudden move, it will dig into the thin skin under his jaw and draw blood. It’d be as easy as snuffing out a small waxy candle. 

And then, she’s there.

Standing between him and the white-haired man is a pale presence of a girl with the long, striking white hair. 

Her presence, even hauntingly small, seems to refrain the man from further violence. "Fine," says the man, after a long, silent moment. The single word is gruff and full of reproach, but the begrudging affection behind it is still unmistakable. "We shall do it your way this time."

He withdraws his blade and whirls away, leaving only the echoes of his cane behind him.

Gustave leans heavily against the lacquered wall. Tries to breathe again. He has to. Because Maelle. Lune. Sciel. They’re still out there. And he isn’t dead. Not just yet.

Eyes closed, he sounds out a name from his memory: "Alicia." And feels, rather than sees, the lingering presence freeze beside him. 

The white-haired woman from his sister’s dreams. From Maelle’s darkest nightmares.

He opens his eyes. His legs are still folded under him, but the memory of his sister lends him just enough strength to push himself up. "That’s you, isn’t it."

She’s a smaller and paler than the dark looming figure that he’d once imagined from the mere descriptions, and uncertainty is written largely over the girl’s face, even when it’s mostly covered in a white mask.

"It’s nice to meet you, Alicia." He tries to smile, because it’s difficult to be indifferent to this palpable loneliness evident in the girl’s mere presence, even when he's standing on trembling legs and only barely breathing. "Thank you, for saving my life."

For he remembers the cool hand on his chest, over the cliff created by the strangest Nevron made of lights. And he means his words, just as much as he’s been ready to die for those who’d come after, for Maelle, on that cliff. 

When he offers her his hand, she stares at it, as if she doesn’t quite know what it is for. When she does move, it’s only her hand that reaches out, slow and in absence of all sounds. Her fingers, at the last moment, retreat from his and curl up against themselves. 

And when she dissipates, it’s like she’s never been there in the first place, leaving nothing, not even a single echo, behind her.

Your fingers are tingling. 

The chill you feel all the way through your fingertips is painfully exquisite. You want to savour it, for it distinguishes itself from the familiarity of the scorching fire that boils your skin at unguarded moments. Against this sudden, unexpected cold, you almost crave warmth.

Once, when you were still whole, inside a glass menagerie you and your siblings visited, you held a small bird between your palms. It had a fast beating heart and two broken wings that still fluttered as it tried to fly away.

You remember it now as you watch him from the shadows.

Left to himself, he’s crumbled onto the ground. A marionette, with strings cut. You belatedly remember how fragile they are, how little that has mattered, until now. It is easy enough to imagine those kind eyes crumpling in pain, in predestined agony and suffering, because you’ve already seen them.

"I promised," he tells himself, wound tight and voice cracking. "I promised."

You did, you think. But you won’t be able to keep your promise.

Those who know not, that they are not. 

But their will, their desperation, never seems any less tangible. 

Watching his sinking shoulders, you wonder from which pigments he might’ve been formed. From which of the softest colours, of the gentlest shades that the Paintress has mixed one morning he would have been formed. Because, if you had expected anything from her brother at all, you would’ve only expected a faded version of Verso. Or Papa. Or an unceremonious and unscrupulous mixture of both.

But her brother is neither. 

Your fingers still tremble, just a little.

Gustave runs a hand down his face and lets it fall beside him.

Maelle.

—You promised.

I’m so sorry, Maelle.

Maelle. Lune. Sciel. They’re still out there. And he isn’t dead. Not just yet. It means he has to get up. And move. Even now. Especially now.

He can hear Lune’s voice—Move, Gustave. And fight.

He’s never been as strong as her. As Maelle. As Sciel. 

But he tries.

When he tries to push himself up again, his hand catches a rock edged between him and the wall of chroma. He holds it in his palms and imagines the way it might skid against the calm ocean surface. A petrified chroma. Far from Polished to be of any direct use, and on it is a fine reticulation of the sands from the ground. Something as innocuous as a pebble on the ground could still leave a mark on something that’s meant to be so pure.

He lifts it between two fingertips and holds it up against the light. And watches how it reflects in the light, and how the chromatic colours change against its prism. It captures the essence of an idea—only half-formed in him, still nebulous, but teetering on the edge of existence. And into being.

A pebble on the ground may yet still leave a mark. 

And he will find a way out. He will return to Maelle. To Lune. To Sciel. To Esquie. Because he must.

Chapter Text

You don’t plan to step into the light, to be seen.

You only mean to watch his progress, just as you have for days, while he examines another room you had left unlocked the night before. He’s been studying every bit of the Manor he’s able to reach, covering every room and every corner and scribbling down his discoveries on a small notebook and returning to his room where he’s built a tidy little corner with an assortment of books, scraps and tools he’s collected from his exploration. You don’t mean to enter the Frame again and intervene, not after the last time.

That is, until he walks straight into a tea table while leafing through a book one-handed, distracted and preoccupied, and loses his balance and trips right over it. He extends his other arm to break his fall—or tries to, momentarily forgetting that his prosthetic arm is no longer there to support his weight.

But you are. In one unthinking, careless moment, you find yourself out of the shadows and in the light and catching him by his elbow, so he could find his footing again. 

"Oh." Surprise, relief, and then gladness, in that order, pass through his face, one that never seems to fail in revealing every emotion. "It’s you."

The moment may still have been salvaged had you left him then and there and slipped back into the shades where you belong. But then her brother tells you, "Thank you, Alicia. I—well, Maelle tells me often enough I must have two left feet, and every time I seem to go around proving it," with a small smile, tired and rumpled and kind, and you no longer wish to escape. You no longer can.

In the light, you can see up close the odd-looking gadgets he’s also been building with the tools he’s gathered. Perhaps conceiving a way out, or devising some plan of his own. You aren’t concerned that any of his attempts could lead to unexpected success, because such a thing is not possible. You are, you tell yourself, only merely curious.

"I hope you don’t mind me making use of these," he says when he catches your gaze. "And since your father hasn’t appeared yet to pry any of them away from my grip, I thought these must be fair game. Or, he must assume I wouldn’t be able to achieve anything useful." He runs a hand through his hair, rueful and wry. "Which, I admit, would be a fair assumption."

"I won’t tell him otherwise if you won’t."

Your own voice, raspy and scratched thin from pain and long disuse, is startling even to your own ears, but it brings a smile to his face again. "All right. It’s a deal." 

You require no more education on what loss means and what it does. And yet you see the way a mere smile can brighten the space it surrounds, and you find yourself understanding her tears more than you might’ve wished.

"Have you seen this before?" he asks, picking up a small rock of chroma from the tea table. "Right, of course you have—you do live here, after all. It’s just that back home we used to talk about chroma achieving this level of purity. A purely theoretical possibility, minds you. Yet here, your manor is surrounded by a wall of these. Practically flawless." He holds it up against the light, and there’s quiet marvel in his voice and wonder in his eyes. "Lune, my friend at Expedition 33, would have a field day—months, really—just with this." 

With his words alone, the air around him turns hushed and expectant. Some stone that would’ve never earned even a passing glance from you becomes a thing of infectious curiosity, and you find yourself leaning in to stare at it far longer than you’ve ever thought you would, far more than you should. 

He catches himself and ducks his head, rubbing the back of his neck. "I’m boring you, aren’t I?"

You only shake your head, reticent and mute, because he couldn’t be more wrong and you no longer trust yourself enough. As it stands, even your hand reaches out of its own volition, tentative and slow, to touch the covers of the books he’s gathered. There seems to be no rhyme or reason on the choices he’s made, and there’s a little bit of everything: engineering, mathematics, history, even poetry. But on these, at least, you can claim some understanding on the compulsion. Words have long and often held fascination for you. At least until they’ve become another thing that hurt you. 

And through you, your family.

You pull your hand away.

He picks up the book you’ve last touched. "You know, you have so many books that we thought have been lost forever? Even our Expedition Academy’s library doesn’t hold nearly as many. And this volume on civil engineering," he says, running his fingers over its cover, "Alan has been looking for this all over. He was so convinced we might come across it in the Continent if we looked hard enough, and I used to—"

His words trail off. Emotions decant, one by one, until even his rueful smile vanishes from his face. 

Your attempt not to feel its loss is a failure.

The bruise Papa has left on his face is still lurid on the pale skin, and he isn’t quite looking at you when he asks, quiet, "Would you tell me if I asked why? Why I merited saving while none of the others did?"

His life matters only because your brother views his continued existence as a threat. That, in turn, is the singular value his continued existence brings to your father. 

Since Verso wants him dead, Papa no longer does.

At times you wondered whether your father’s absolute devotion to your mother’s cause has been Painted in, never to be undone ever again. And then you wondered why you’ve ever bothered to question it—when the answer is so plain. 

When none of them could ever be more than what they have been Painted. 

Your silence is long and sufficient enough to tell her brother that an answer won’t be forthcoming. He turns rueful again. "Could you at least tell me whether my sister, my friends—whether they’re still all right?"

Why would he trust your words, or anything that you might have to offer, and believe them at face value, while you and your father are holding him here against his will?

He seems to read your question in the air. "There is no reason for you to lie and spare my feelings, is there? I have no choice but to accept whatever that’s given." You don’t think he believes the words even as he says them, no matter how factually uttered. "Your father, once again, is not wrong in that regard, either."

"Everyone you love," you tell him, surprising him—and surprising yourself even still, "is still well."

He lets out a breath and sinks onto the chair behind him. His palm is pressed over his eyes and his voice is painfully tight when he says, "Thank you."

You could have told him this instead: that his sister and his friends and your brother fought against many enemies on their way to cross a perilous, forgotten battlefield in order to bury him in a beautiful meadow where many courageous members of the previous expeditions have also been buried. That they spent the precious few hours that they do not have over his grave, because her tears wouldn’t stop.

But his smile returns to his face, and you wants it to remain for just a little longer, so you don’t.

What would she do, you wonder—how far would she go, for a chance to get it back?

His continued existence is a threat because she loves him.

That night, you unlock another door for her brother.

The paintings are a surprise.

Every corridor is adorned with paintings of different shapes and sizes. Some of them capture the Continent, pre-Fracture. He’s even found two of Lumière as it must’ve been once, well before he was born, but still recognizable all the same. Others capture the Continent as it stands today, like the imposing Monolith, so vivid and alive that he would almost believe the frames to be the windows from which he might still glean the outside world.

Everyday Gustave walks the corridors and the empty rooms, their floors edged and gleaming with frosted chroma, studies every painting he comes across, and looks for unlocked doors. A door that wouldn’t open a day before would suddenly unlock before him, and when he enters it, no one pays him any attention. Alicia’s father, if he’s still here at all, isn’t to be seen. If Alicia is around, she holds her silence.

Compared to the arts that adorn its inside and the chroma swirling outside, the Manor itself seems sterile, even while its every corner basks in its extravagant glamour. It’s a world within a world, drained and devoid of all things living—Alicia, most of all, seems to have been painted only in black and white, existing only in the various shades of grey—and the chroma shell seems an amber, trapping and preserving this tableau. Even among the wonders and horrors he’s seen during the expedition and recorded for his apprentices, it’s extraordinary.

So far, he hasn’t found a single crack in the shell, no entrance or exits that he might squeeze out of, and the Manor’s occupants never seem to leave any trace of their presences behind, of their comings and goings. Ghosts in their own house, they might as well exist on another plane. And if the only way out is to convince them to let him go, he wouldn’t even know where to start, when he still doesn’t yet know the why of it all.

Gustave stops himself. So many pieces that he can’t quite yet fit into the frame, and he can’t force them. The expedition’s resident scientists, Lune and Tristan, have taught him better. There’s nothing to support any of the potential hypotheses—nothing to negate them, either, but for now, he needs to focus on what he can see. What he can still grasp and hold onto. Everything will fall into place. It has to. Because—

Everyone you love is still well.

He takes a measured breath and continues on.

In the newest room that has been unlocked, he finds a grand piano at its centre, striking in its splendour and meticulously kept, even by the standards of this manor. For no particular reason, he can’t make himself approach it.

He feels her presence before he sees it.

Alicia stands at the far corner of the grand room, and her eyes are only on the piano, as if she can’t make herself look away, or go near it.

It’s her muted fear that propels him forward and draws him to the piano, in a slow, even pace. He asks her, as gently as he could, "Do you play?"

Her silence feels immutable tonight, so he’s surprised when she does answer: "It is my brother’s."  

Its significance is unmissable, even if he isn’t yet able to understand why. "My friend Lune is a true musician," he says, his voice kept deliberately light and carefree. Her presence, as always, makes him want to fill the desolate space around her with words, no matter how small and frivolous, hoping against hope that they could somehow impart some warmth that she doesn’t ever seem to feel. "The guitar is her choice. But she tried to teach me the piano once. I think she still regrets that one time when she taught me and Sciel how to play Chopsticks—"

An ear-piercing shriek staggers him on his feet, and he barely pulls out his hand before the lid slams over the keyboard with a hard bang.

Standing on the other side of the piano is a woman shrouded in shifting chroma, her face a shattered mask reminiscent of the Curator’s.

Around her, space and time feel compressed, suspending even the echoes of the shriek still ringing in his ears. She doesn't appear to notice him—or anything else around her, for that matter. The figure’s sole focus remains on the piano, the center of her world. And her hand hovers over it, its caress slow and revering.

Then the music starts.

None of the keys of the piano are being pressed and none of the strings move, and yet the music still comes, resonating from every surface of the manor, and he feels its each note, its shattering reverberation, all the way down to his bones. 

For a long moment, there’s only ever the music.

Until Alicia’s voice, barely a rasp, breaks the stillness.  

"Maman."

Abruptly, the music cuts out. 

The shattered figure dissipates just as the music fades, the faint cacophony of its echoes unmaking her warp and weft, and leaving only the empty space behind.

Alicia’s hand, reaching for the woman, remains in the empty mid-air.

Gustave wraps his good arm around his chest, though it does little to ward him from the cold he now feels. 

"The Paintress," he says to himself, without a conscious thought. A piece falls into place on its own. "This is her place."

Alicia turns to him then, wordless. Her face remains hidden behind the white mask, but he can still tell how stricken it is. 

"Alicia, wait—" 

She vanishes, leaving him alone with the piano and the echoing impressions of its melodies—and what he has heard.

The Paintress.

Maman, said Alicia.

Back in his room, Gustave reaches under the bed and takes out a carefully wrapped package inside a pillow case. A small Luminar Converter, rather makeshift and rudimentary yet, with its cobbled bits and pieces barely holding together. There are still missing parts he hasn’t been able to secure, and even if he could make it work, it wouldn’t be sufficient for what he has in mind: directing the flow of chroma as freely the Curator does at will, with sufficient free supplies of flawless chroma at hand. 

Gustave tries to recapture the feel of chromatic flow he’d felt around the Curator. Closes his eyes to remember the chroma around the shattered figure standing next to the piano.

The Paintress.

Alicia hasn’t corrected him.

Maman, said Alicia.

A world within a world, drained and devoid of all things living, the chroma shell an amber, trapping and preserving the tableau.

A piece falls into place. And another.

He clasps his hand over the Luminar Converter and tries to breathe. 

Chapter Text

Your brother, who has died for you. Your brother, who would not live for you. Your brother, who wishes to die again.

"I knew you’d open the door for her—"

Your brother comes home.

"Really, Verso, this was your plan?"

Your father is there when your brother arrives only a few steps behind her, for whom Maman does not hesitate to open the Manor’s gate wide open.

"You haven’t told them the truth. Have you, son?"

There’s vengeance in her eyes and little recognition. So, yes, your father is right, and the question you’ve held in your heart is answered: Verso hasn’t told her the truth.

You’ve never been blind to your brother's faults. You've never been blind to the love he has for Maman. What he’d sacrifice for her.

Maman would never let him forget.

"Alicia, MOVE—"

You’ve never been blind to your brother's faults. To the love he has for his sister. What he’s sacrificed for her. Maman would never let you forget. 

All of you are all you’ve ever been Painted.

So when your brother calls her Alicia now, you know—

You know. No one chooses you again. Not even Verso.

Her brother is asleep exactly as you’d left him, frozen in the Frame and kept in sufficient distance away from the knowledge that his sister had been, not too long ago, so closely within his reach.

Hunched over a small table with his arm as a pillow, he sleeps like the dead. A still painting, only in abeyance. You flinch to think it, and you almost, but not quite, succeed in extinguishing the desire to put two fingers on the pulse of his neck, to make sure he still draws breath.

A quick, unconscious movement of your wrist, and the colours return to the Frame.

You don’t need to be seen, but you find yourself remaining at the doorway, arms anxiously tight across the chest. It doesn’t take long for him to wake up, to lean back in the chair with a low groan and run a hand down his face. And to see you.

You expect to find alarm in his eyes. Dismay. Fear. You expect heated questions on the Paintress and urgent demands for answers. Who. What. Why. Your fingers curl, and you dig fingernails into your palms.

For a moment, he’s quiet. Then when he speaks, there’s a touch of hesitation in his voice. "I know it’s not my place to ask, but—are you all right?" 

Your chest expands, letting a breath escape. She may have your brother, but you have hers, however unwilling on his side. Fair is only fair. The symmetry alone should’ve been sufficient. It should have. 

But even now—even now her brother is painted in the gentlest, in the softest of the shades that you have known, and your fists clench tighter, nails sharp and wanting to draw blood.

"Wait. Just, um, look."

Sensing you’re about to slip away, he rummages through his neatly organized pile of tools in a hurry and manages, only with a minor stumble, to pick out a tiny object among a few pieces of shiny chroma he seems to have whittled down with his tools. "I don’t have the right equipment, and my arm—and I’m not a healer. But I have friends who are, and I learned a few things."

There’s a small Pictos in his hand. 

"I just wondered whether something like these could help you, for healing. That is, only if you wanted to try it. Maybe you already have, and maybe it isn’t exactly what you needed—or wanted. I’m sorry if that’s the case, if it’s wildly out of line. It’s just—" When words start to trip over each other, he stops talking altogether and smiles down a little at himself, amused and resigned at his own foibles. "Right. Just—here."

He reaches out to take your hand and drops the Pictos on your palm. 

You hold it. Carefully grasp it, to affirm its existence.

"I—well, despite what my sisters seem to think, I don’t actually believe we can solve all problems just from engineering enough solutions." The memories of his sisters turn his voice fond and unbearably soft. "I just think—maybe we could at least try."

You look up from your hand to meet his kind eyes. He looks rumpled and unkempt and hurt. He looks like a bright moment you may have known once, when you were not who you are, before it turned to ashes. 

You don’t thank him. You can’t.

Slipping back into the shadows, your fingers clasp carefully over a small, fragile fragment that feels like a small, fast beating heart held between your palms.

Even when he's been fighting against them, the Nevrons have never once failed to amaze Gustave.

He stares at a delicate sculpture of a Lancelier, and resists, with some efforts, the burning impulse to touch, to feel it in his hand. He could still hear the remnants of the Paintress’ shriek resonating in his ears, though, so he thinks better of examining the sculptures too closely and observes from a little distance instead. Some of the Nevrons are terrifyingly life-like, like the ones he’s already confronted that he immediately recognizes, and the rest, he’s certain, should be easily found in the wild outside, and they would feel exactly as they do here under the soft chromatic lighting of the Manor. Art clearly imitates life.

Gustave takes a step back and tries to ignore the faint tremor of his hand over his notebook. The last test to convert the Luminar Converter to handle a large amount of chromatic flow has been an utter failure and left him feeling wrung out and bruised by the continued attempts. 

Sciel, he thinks, might have had better luck. The way she already handles the exponential amplification of chromatic power could blend better with this type of channeling. Lune, with her natural elemental affinity, might have a better chance with directing the unwieldy, overwhelming flow. Lucien, with his unflinching forward momentum. Alan, with his exceptional control. With time, maybe, Gustave could also engineer another solution himself, but time isn’t something he has, and he’s never been able to channel much chroma to begin with. The most he’s ever attempted was on that stone cliff, bleak and desperate and dying, where he’d fought against Alicia’s father.

For a single, short-lived moment, Gustave thought he may have stopped the man, that he may have managed to buy just a little bit of time for Maelle to escape, even if it cost his life.

Until, of course, the white-haired man had stood up again, shedding death like an ill-fitting coat he could simply leave behind. The man doesn’t have the chromatic shrouds that surround the Paintress, and yet he seemed to defy mortality, then. 

It is my brother’s.

Maman.

The family of the Paintress. Perhaps this is the power that only she could, and would, bestow only on her family. But this place—for it to be her home, there are too many missing pieces still. Compared to the harrowing yet staggeringly rich beauty of the Continent and to her arts on display, this place—this place is only a mausoleum, suffocating under the weight of its history that he doesn’t yet understand.

And Alicia. He hasn’t seen her for days; the walls have been silent, absent of the soft whispers of the air that he feels whenever she’s near. Alicia, a daughter of the Paintress, and the Paintress, a being of inconceivable power, someone who could unmake them all at will, and yet there’s so much hurt splayed open on Alicia's closed, masked face. The kind of sorrow that he recognizes on many children of Lumière.

Maelle.

Maelle at age nine was wounded, sharp-edged, and precocious beyond her years. As soon as Gustave and Emma reached their mid-twenties, they were expected to take on a child, to provide some semblance of safety and stability where they could to any child badly in need of a family, and yet he hadn’t been convinced that he could. Never been certain that what he’d be able to give them would be what they needed, never been sure that care and love he’d be able to give could ever be sufficient for anyone. Until—

"You should be more careful," a tiny admonishing voice told him, and a hand pulled him back just before he walked right into a door.

He remembers turning around and finding a young girl, with a long swinging ponytail and a rapier tucked at her side like it was part of her. It was one of the students from the classes he started teaching a week before. He remembered her as the one who always stood apart from the rest.

"I—right," Gustave said, having no real defence or working excuse since he did almost walk right into a door and he hadn’t exactly been watching out for it. "You’re right. I should be more careful of where I’m going. And," Gustave looked around the school campus, "I also seem to be—lost."

"You were here last week, too," the girl pointed out. "With Mademoiselle Emma. Teaching us about how the Dome works. Are you just bad with directions, then?"

Sharp as a tack and bright like a shard of a star.

"That does seem to be the case, doesn’t it?" he admitted gravely, trying hard not to grin and failing rather miserably. "Would you be able to help me out?"

She considered him with a single look, and her wide eyes that seemed to miss so little saw him right through. 

"All right, then." Having decided he might be worthy of her time, she offered him her tiny hand, and his heart cracked wide open with helpless swell of affection. "Follow me. I can show you the way."

Maelle.

His heart still hurts from the memory.

It’s familiar, somehow, Maelle said as she reached out, fearless as always, for the largest Nevron they had encountered yet, her eyes as wide as they had been when he’d first met her.

There’s a thread of apprehension in this train of thought. A thread of unease that he isn’t sure whether he wants to pull, when there isn’t enough to go on, when there's so little he knows, only so little he could effect in his current state, while she's—

Gustave closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, he steadies his hand, flips another page of his notebook, and continues on.

Chapter Text

"They remain on their path toward the Monolith."

Your father remarks, offhanded, while he watches you paint under the hazy chromatic light of the Reach. He sounds untroubled. His hand on your shoulder is careful and gentle, his grip strong and precise.

Except for the faint trembles you can feel from his touch, nothing at all is amiss.

"They may have taken down an Axon, but they will not succeed."

The conviction in his voice is unshaken and unbroken, even in the face of the mounting evidence that should’ve informed both of you otherwise: how his previous attempts to force her out of the Canvas have already failed, while Renoir, below the Monolith, has yet to be truly purged. 

All the while the power of the Paintress continues to wane.

You paint, adding more shades of black on white.

"You were right, Alicia. Verso"—his voice dips with a slight catch at your brother’s name, at the pain that never seems go mentioned—"believes her brother’s presence will prevent her from helping Renoir erase the Canvas, and if he proves to be right, we can use it against her."

So yes, Papa would dangle him, her brother with the kind eyes and the soft ways, as a pretty bait. And it would work, just as you’ve told your father over at Stone Wave Cliffs.

Because what wouldn’t you give, to get your Verso back as you had once, just as Maman already has?

What wouldn’t she give, to get hers back?

"You’re fond of him," Papa says, as if it’s a slight misfortune. Regrettable and unavoidable. "But it’s time."

Another stroke. Another black. Because even with dashes of white, it only ever turns grey. It only ever diminishes.

You paint, while your father believes. You paint, while your brother plays the piano for her and she sings for him. While he falls in love with all of them, all of his expeditioners, as he always has time and again. While the letter remains unopened and unread. 

No matter how much you strain, all of you are all you’ve ever been Painted.

The little Pictos remains in your pocket, close to your heart.

In a child’s bedroom filled with toys and affection, frozen in some indefinite point in time, Gustave finds a doll of Esquie.

For this, he risks the wrath from the otherworldly powers and reaches out to hold it in his hand. The Paintress doesn’t make her appearance this time, so he can touch it and find out how soft and worn it is under his fingertips. A button is cracked in one corner and a few stitches have come apart, but he can tell it’s been loved and cared for—as it should have been. It embodies everything wondrous about his friend. Sweetly playful and larger than life, buoyant in more ways than one.

The sculptures of the Nevrons, all terrifyingly kaleidoscopic and uniformly fascinating. The paintings of Gestrals, all of them rendered with every essence of their delight and joy. Art imitates life, clearly. Or life—

Or life.

He feels his knees weaken. In itself, it’s a simple logic. If one were to believe the Paintress has the power to unmake them all, it’s also possible to believe she has the power to make them. The power of destruction and the power of creation—they might not always be mutually inclusive, but one can’t necessarily assume them exclusive, either. 

So, both could be just as possible. This simple logic, one that even Lune would find unassailable, only requires them to invert their long-held belief. 

So, they could have also been created. By her. 

Then, which of them? Esquie. Francois. Nevrons. Gestrals. Where does it start. Where does it end. Does it end. Does Lumière—

Thoughts scatter, stuttering and dying before they’re able to fully form.

His struggle to hold onto them, to grasp a sliver of them and make sense of a single spiralling thought, stops altogether when he makes his way down the staircase of the library.

"All this," says the voice that still sends shivers down his spine, "belongs to them."

The white-haired man, Alicia’s father, stands on the mezzanine of the grand library. He's swirling a glass of amber liquid in one hand, eyes on the fireplace next to him, as if he has always belonged there.

For this moment alone, the man almost looks human.  

Gustave wills his heart to slow and steels himself. After a moment, he makes himself walk over and sit on the chair across from the fireplace. 

"Them," Gustave repeats mildly, a question.

"The family of the Paintress," says the white-haired man. His eyes steadfastly remain on the fire. "My family has been created in the image of hers from outside this world. This Canvas."

This world. This—Canvas. 

He’s still holding the doll of Esquie in his hand. Gently, and carefully, Gustave lays it down on the small table in front of him.

"Expedition Zero," he hears himself say. Up close, he can recognize the sigil on the lapel of the man’s coat. He thought once that he’d burnt everything inside of himself to kill this man, so that Maelle may live. But the man did not die. "You were with them. 67 years ago."

The white-haired man turns to Gustave, then. His eyes sharpen considerably, as if he’s just reassessed Gustave and slotted him in a category that might actually merit his notice. "I was, with my son. While all of the other expeditioners beleaguered to establish your current beliefs, still so wrongly held, we found the truth," he says, sipping the drink he’s been nursing in his hand for a while. "For the Paintress is the only power that has been holding the Gommage at bay. To protect all of us, her creations."

Her—creations.

Gustave reaches out to touch the Esquie. To think. To ground himself from the fear that’s unspooling.

"Protect us—from what?" he asks, and his voice, by some miracle, remains steady.

For a moment, the older man contemplates Gustave, like a specimen from the wilderness that he’s puzzled to find to have suddenly and unexpectedly come across. "Her family. They want her returned to their world so that they may yet save her. For that, they’d see ours destroyed, our Canvas wiped—through the Fracture, through the Gommage."

Thoughts stumble, and Gustave isn’t able to hold fast to any of them still, but he understands now why Alicia has shown him the Manor. Laid down the trail of logic for him to follow, so that he could even begin to consider the possibilities. Otherwise, he’s not certain any of these could’ve ever been convincing. 

Even now, he feels brittle from the yearning to look away from what’s been laid out in front of him. 

"Tell people the truth," says Gustave, his voice fraying at its edges. "If everything that the Paintress does is in attempt to keep the outside forces at bay to save us, we can stop the expeditions, we can help you, help Her, try to save—"

"Do you truly expect everyone to accept the fact of their non-existence with this rather uncommon equanimity like yours?" The question is chiding, almost pitying. "Chaos will reign. Most will fear and destroy themselves and each other. And time and again, we have already told the people of Lumière some of the truth. None of you ever believed us."

The man’s smooth, remonstrating voice betrays little except underlying resentment and contempt.

"So no," the man continues, with finality. "That’s one gift that the people of Lumière received that my family did not receive. I will not take that away."

"Gift," Gustave echoes.

"Oblivion."

Gustave is on his feet, then. "You call this a gift. When none of us could ever learn from any of it. When so many of us have sacrificed their lives just to give the rest of us one more day to live. We—" He presses his eyes shut and swallows the dozens of other words that he wants to say out loud before he could find his voice again. "None of that is for you to decide on our behalf. You don’t get to dictate what’s for us to know, which truth we deserve."

"No?" There’s something akin to amusement on the old man’s face, gently mocking. "Why not, when all of you are just another of her creations weakening and draining her powers with your very existence? I rid the world of your kind, because you expeditioners die meaningless deaths trying to changing the unchangeable, instead of appreciating the precious gift she’s bestowed on you—so that she could preserve what remains of her strength to save this Canvas."

Sophie, thinks Gustave. He could still feel the rose petals drifting away from his fingers.

He watches his hand tremble. "To what end?" asks Gustave. 

That pauses Alicia’s father.

"How long do you think you can continue? What would survival mean at the end of it when you’re stealing everyone else’s future just to buy more time for your own? Would you lord over the empty world when Her family will see it destroyed? What do you even think you can safeguard at the end of it?"

The white-haired man turns to the fireplace. He holds his silence until he empties the drink in his hand over the fire. "Perhaps, we, all of us, are only delaying the inevitable."

The famed Expedition Zero. Their sacrifices. And this.

And this.

"All those years you’ve lived," says Gustave, mostly to himself. "They did not make you wiser."

The old man’s head turns sharply toward Gustave’s. "You still exist on my sufferance. You still draw breath, only because I allow it. It’d be wise to remember that, Expeditioner."

"But we all exist on their sufferance, isn’t that right? You’re no exception, and yet you won’t acquiesce to these—gods that you say can make and unmake us on a whim." Imprudent and reckless, to say the least, but Gustave no longer has it in him to exercise any self-restraint, not even to save his own life. "You may deem our lives meaningless, but you don’t get to ascribe that meaning. You may kill us every time we arrive on that shore, but you don’t get to dictate our will. I—"

Alan. Lucien. Catherine. His hand is shaking badly.

"Tell me, then, at least," says Gustave, stilling his hand and his voice. "If you’ve already sealed us all to this fate, why bother to tell me any of this? Why am I here?"

"Because," says Alicia, "she loves you."

He turns around. It’s Alicia, a small shape of faded grey, and suddenly he remembers one afternoon years back in the school campus. And a small hand that held him back.

She, he thinks. She. 

Alicia, a daughter of the Paintress. Created in the image of hers from outside this world.

And this inarticulate dread he’s carried with him ever since—

Ever since. 

It’s familiar somehow, said Maelle, her eyes wide with awe, over the beings that she shouldn’t ever have seen before.

Maelle.

"Alicia, I— Did—" When the words don’t come, Gustave presses the heel of his palm into his eyes. The sharp pain of it helps him say the rest: "Did Maelle dream of you, or—" 

He lifts his shaky hand from his face. "Or is it that you’ve been dreaming of her?"

For a quiet moment, Alicia only watches him. Then she reaches her hand up to her face, and lifts off her mask.

Gustave reaches out. Her face, he finds, is cold to the touch.

Her face, where he could only find pain and suffering etched over his sister’s.

How, he thinks, how much would this have hurt. How much pain— How long would she have suffered— Why—

A thousand questions and more, but every single word fails, until he could only feel his expression break, along with his heart. 

Gently, all so gently so it wouldn't add to the hurt, he gathers her into his arms. 

Alicia’s hand, just as small as another hand he remembers, curls around his. 

Little by little, he feels her sink into the embrace, and it grieves him to find—she fits into his arms just as Maelle does.

Chapter Text

For a long while, he listens.

He asks about you. About your brother. Your story spills at the smallest of his urgings. Haltingly, and in fits and starts, you tell him the story. The life before the Fracture. Before the truth. And the life that came after. 

He listens for a long time. He tries to smile for you whenever your eyes meet. Sometimes tears fall from his eyes and he smiles like something is gnawing at his heart. Over the story of the fire, he grinds his fist against his eyes and doesn’t speak for a long time. You tell him that she’s real, while none of you are.

I want her life.

A thought that you may have unwittingly perpended whenever your lungs start to fill with the acrid and bitter smoke, but never with this startling clarity, never with this ferociousness, until now. And not because she’s real, while you are not.

Because her brother is ruinously kind. 

And once you feel his arms around you, you can’t unlearn it. 

What it is like to have this warmth that won’t blister against your skin. 

"No."

The answer comes easily to Gustave. Renoir’s hard gaze snaps to him, but Gustave is beginning to be acquainted with the shades of anger that Alicia’s father holds fast, in all his wintry vehemence, and Gustave holds his ground.

"No?" Renoir repeats slowly, a single sound sharp enough to cut.

"You want to pitch me against her real brother." The word real has a bitter, quaint taste to it, but Gustave tries, perhaps with only limited success, to inure himself to its sound. "And to that end, you’d have me sell more lies to her. No," says Gustave, in a flat-out refusal. "No, I won’t."

"Leading her toward a right decision needs not be considered a lie," Renoir says, dismissive and conclusive at once.

"But you don’t want her to make a right decision—you want her to make a decision that aligns only with your self-interest. She deserves to make her own decision based on the truth."

Renoir studies Gustave over the brim of the glass he’s holding. "What do you believe your expeditioners, your precious people of Lumière, would want? Would they want you to tell her everything and risk her siding with Verso and help them erase the Canvas? Risk being Gommaged forever—risk the end of our collective existence? Where would their self-interest lie?"

For one disquieting moment, Gustave doesn’t have a ready answer. He doesn’t know what the decision would be if Lumière were to hold a council tomorrow, which decision Emma would be forced to make if—if all of the world was at stake. He is not yet so deeply submerged in self-deception that he could claim with certainty what he hopes Lumière would decide would absolutely align with what everyone would do in their moments of fear and anger.  

And Renoir could easily read this from Gustave’s face. "My son believes that, had you lived, she would never agree to help her father with erasing this Canvas. I’m willing to concede he might’ve been right. That she may still choose to believe you, over him, and you might be capable of convincing her to side with us if you so choose."

"Your son," Gustave counters mildly, because at least in this, he is certain of his answer, "doesn’t know Maelle. You’ll never convince me my sister would willingly choose to condemn her friends, her family, everyone she’s ever known in Lumière, to be erased from this world, just because I’m not with her to convince her otherwise."

Maelle, her head always tilted toward the sky, her eyes seeing far more than he could, and to far beyond Lumière. 

His sister, who’d always wanted to find where she belonged. If she belonged anywhere at at all. 

So, perhaps finding out she truly belongs elsewhere has always been inevitable. The very idea that she may choose to belong to her real family when he’s always thought they already belonged to each other is a fresh heartbreak in itself, one that might easily drown him if he lets it. But even if all of that were true—

"I believe my sister," says Gustave, inexorable. "If there’s a way out of this for us, she will find it."

"So, in your searing, unshaken belief," says Renoir, acerbic, "you would let a sixteen-year-old girl dictate all of our fate."

Gustave meets Renoir’s gaze and holds it again. "Tell me. Were you any more prepared to accept this fate when these Painters were dictating it all on their whims? Were you ready to acquiesce to their decision because it was consigned by adults? How well has that worked out for any of us?"

This time it’s Renoir who doesn’t seem to have a ready counter. For a quiet moment, they only stare at the fireplace, the burning amber and the cinders it leaves behind.

"You believe in this false dichotomy," Gustave says, well into the lengthening silence, "that only one side can survive, and the only way to ensure your family’s survival is to ascertain the other side to fail. But that’s not remotely true. At least, we don’t know if that holds true. I will not ask my sister to choose us without knowing the truth. Without knowing what saving this Canvas could cost her. To her family. Even if it means—" 

Gustave stops. It’s difficult, he finds, to sustain the level of frustration, of anger, required to find the right words to continue to fight, after learning of this weight of grief which has mired all of this family so tightly and for so long that none of them is even willing to consider the possibility of ever breaking free from it.

A beloved son who died in the fire. The resurrected boy who used to play the piano for his sister. The one who would rather fade.

Alicia, who still only seems to burn.

And their father, watching them both. 

"It’s her decision, Renoir." Gustave’s voice softens, at the thought of his family. "And she’s not yours to use. Nor is she her brother’s. You must realize that."

"—but it is OUR LIVES." 

Renoir slams his glass, hard, on the table.

The glass shatters in his grip.

"She’s but a child. Weak-willed and easily swept into Aline’s chroma, unable to control any of her powers, and so easily deceived by the comforting words of my son’s." 

Renoir’s each word is just as sharp as the shards of glass digging into his hand.

"I will not see my family fractured and dissipated once again. Not by them. Not by anyone. Not at any cost."

Gustave feels his heart hammering in his chest. Renoir’s anger feels scalding and damaging just to be near it, as if Gustave, too, has now been ensnared by the same loss from the proximity alone.

But still, he tries again, because that’s the only thing he has left. "There are—there has to be more than two choices. The Painters aren’t the only ones who can use chroma. We also control it to a certain extent, because they don’t always control all of it, do they? So it’s not a given that the Canvas would dissipate altogether if they left our world to us. If there’s a way to convince them to do exactly that, then my sister will find it. She’s stronger than all of us put together. Just—please give me a chance to talk to her. Please."

There’s no emotion to be gleaned from Renoir’s face. "But you would not lie for us."

Gustave closes his eyes. Just briefly. Before he answers, "No."

Renoir watches the blood drip from his own hand without a slight change in his expression. "I killed every one of you that I came across on the shore, because I simply did not care. Your fate, your collective will, as you call it, did not interest me. No more than that of a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas." 

Renoir tears his eyes away from his hand to face Gustave. 

"That’s precisely how they think of us. How little I have thought of all of you is exactly how little they would consider whatever desperate appeal that we may yet make. To the Painters, we’re but some specks of colour that they would paint over on one afternoon, simply because they’re bored and you do not interest them. 

So, no, I will not risk it. And I will not let my son—or you—interfere. She may value your life, but I do not."

Gustave runs a rough hand down his face. Renoir’s words are resolute, leaving no room for argument, and exhaustion overrides any remaining sense of caution. "You’ve already made your feelings on our worth abundantly clear," he says, his words barely tempered. "And I’m not willing to move as your pawn, and I hold no value to you. So why not kill me now and be rid of me, just as they so casually would? If all you are is only exactly how they made you?"


Before Gustave could pause and take another breath, Renoir has pulled him off his feet and has pinned him against the wall.

Gustave winces at the impact, at the pain both new and remembered. How it has felt, to be killed by the same hands.

She’s real, Alicia told him. And none of us are.

But there are still these moments of pain that he remembers. And—of Maelle. Sophie. Of those moments of singular joy. He can’t, try as he might, make himself believe that none of them are real. 

How could he—when all these moments still hurt, just to hold them both within his heart?

"Had you told me a simple lie and promised you’d lie to her to save us," says Renoir, and his anger now only feels distant and far away, "I would’ve let you live. I may have even allowed you to talk to her."

Even if Gustave were to entertain the ludicrous notion of fighting Renoir again and surviving the attempt, raising a weapon against Alicia’s father—even the mere idea that he could become yet another person to take one more thing away from her—is unbearable. 

"Would you have believed me if I did?" Gustave only says instead.

Something else returns to Renoir’s eyes, then. Something old and tired. "Sometimes, some of us want to be able to choose a comforting lie over the truth that we can’t bear."

The vice grip around his neck loosens, and Gustave slides down against the wall behind him. He hears the echoes of the cane moving farther and farther away—until only the familiar and hollow sound of the empty hall remains in this accursed Manor.

Gustave rests his head against the wall, eyes closed.

"You’re a fool," Gustave tells himself.

When he opens his eyes again, he finds Alicia sitting beside him, arms tightly wrapped around her knees.

I wish I knew how to help you, he thinks. To her open, hurting face.

He wishes for so many things. He wishes that she hasn’t witnessed any of what was said, how he’s been goading her father into almost killing him, but he knows there’s little chance of it. He regrets all of those moments, most of all not being able to give anything back when she deserves only the happiest things he could find in himself to give. When all of them deserve so much more than what they’ve been dealt. 

But that’s his hubris, thinking he could effect any change, that he might be able to protect anyone, when he isn’t even going to be able to help lift this terrible weight that Maelle may have to shoulder alone, among all those people who want to use her for their end, in their desperation and despair. 

When Alicia’s hand finds his, he holds it close to his chest.

"I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Alicia." Gustave curls in on himself, shaking and heartsick. "I don’t know how to right any of these wrongs."

Two thin arms, now familiar, wrap themselves so carefully around his shoulders, and just for a moment, he closes his eyes and lets himself hold on.

Chapter Text

You only find her brother in the aftermath, in his room amidst the sparkles of chroma and smoke and blood.

Your breath catches. Your heart, one that you’ve not too long ago believed had turned to stone, leaps to your throat, even after you reach his side and find him alive and breathing, if not entirely whole.

"I just—" he tells you, trembling so violently that you think he might shatter at your single touch, "I wanted—I needed to find another option for us."

Tears fall from his eyes and darken the hair at his temple, his hand still wrapped around the metal gadget he’s been building, now charred with smoke and glowing with broken shards of chroma. The converter that should, in theory, allow more control of the chroma for the Painted.

You grasp his little Pictos that you’ve kept in your chest and pull him back, feeling for his eminently fragile heart that couldn’t possibly process the level of chroma he was trying to channel and slowly pulling all his broken pieces back together. 

Afterwards, you watch him slip into uneasy sleep, looking small and brittle and battered, and think about how, standing among the howling winds of Stone Wave Cliffs, you decided to claim a tiny brushstroke on this vast Canvas. Even without knowing its colour, this softest and gentlest shade that has now taken over a corner of your own canvas, you’d only hoped to leave something of yours in this world. Hardly worth a ripple, but still yours. 

They’re coming, this you know. She, with her expeditioners and your brother. Even now, they’re closing in on the Monolith, ready to break apart the barrier and vanquish their enemies on their path. 

And so, they will fight. Your father, who has held you together. Your brother, who has died for you, but would not live for you. Unable to look at their own pain in the face, they will fight against each other. 

Papa wants you all to live.

Verso wants everything to end.

They're never more than what they’ve been Painted, and neither are you, unable to support either of their wishes without ever betraying the other.

You watch her brother, who’s tearing himself apart to find another way out for all of you. Who wants to right all the wrongs himself even knowing just as well as you do that he can’t.

You brush away the sweat-damp hair from his forehead, once again feel the warmth that doesn’t blister against your skin, and tell yourself you have always known what to do, even from the moment you saved his life. So, it’s fine. You’re prepared. You’ve always known. You always have.

So, it’s fine. 

It’s just—it’s only that you didn’t know back then. 

That in this wide, desolate Canvas where nothing of yours ever remained, you would still find something that you couldn’t bear to lose.

Gustave wakes up to the sound of the music echoing throughout the Manor.

Fear seizes him briefly, until he sees it’s Alicia, alone, next to the music player across the room.

Feeling feverish and ill, he tries to calm his heart and listens to the melancholy melody filling the splendour of the Manor, even knowing, as he does now, how it is only an empty shell that has imprisoned its occupants with the remnants of its suffocating history, with enough shared grief in the very air to leave him stricken and sick.

The test of the Chromatic Converter has been hurried and ill-planned. At the thought of Renoir, wanting to demand the same concession from the gods that he himself is unwilling to make. At the thought of Maelle, the weight that she’d alone have to bear. Alicia, forever subsumed by the ashes she’s been painted with. At the thought of them, Gustave has tried. And failed.

What can they do against the will of the gods that can make and unmake them on a pure whim? 

When one fails, Gustave—

Lune, he thinks, devastated. Sciel. Lucien. Alan.

He wishes for their collective strength. Even just a small assurance that what he leaves behind could have a meaning for those who follow even at their last moment. Even knowing there’s no answer to that hope.

When the music stops, Alicia is at his side.

"Your brother’s music," Gustave says—or tries to say. His voice cracks badly, words rough and hoarse.

But Alicia nods in answer to his question, with her cool hand on his forehead. She brings a cup of water for him to drink and helps him back to the bed again.

For all his time in the Manor, Alicia has been uniformly unwilling to listen to her brother’s music, or even go near the piano, the pain that the music brings still too much to bear. What changed, he wants to ask her, but he can’t quite hold onto this question, or any other pertinent thought, in his head. 

"It’s okay," says Alicia, and her hand on his cheek is still gentle. And soothing. Like the first time. "You will be all right."

And it feels, despite everything else that tells him otherwise, like a promise.

"Where are we?"

Her brother looks to the sky and the horizon. Even in this mist and fog, all his colours resist the dull chromatic light of the Reach, while yours remain only grey and indistinct.

You tell him this is where you were told to reach for the sky. You don’t tell him this is where all the dying hopes of your father’s still remain. You don’t tell him this is where you always wanted to be in your last moment that may never come while the Canvas still exists.

Your last painting is finished. Or just about. There remains a stroke that you haven’t yet covered with black and white. Just a small brushstroke of colour at one corner of your canvas, unassuming and unremarkable, but yours still.

Instead of returning to behind the easel, you choose to sit over the edge of the precipice, your feet dangling over the abyss and watching over the Canvas that you cannot, even now, entirely see. The sun doesn’t reveal itself, not all of its brilliance, to you here, not within the permanent haze enveloping the view of the world. As if to tell you, you’ll have to reach out. Reach out forever. To ever see it again.

"Careful," her brother says, coming to stand next to you with an uncertain smile. "Please."

"The fall will not kill me," you tell him, which is entirely, regrettably, true.

"But you hurt, all the same."

You look up and study his eyes. The earnest, guileless fear in them. He’s still pale, wilting like a plant cut off from the soil and the sun. You’ve healed him as much as you could, and he’s recovered as much as he could be, but certain damages, you are well aware, run far deeper.

"Please," he says again, his smile small and pained, and reaches out with his hand. "Come on. I have something I wanted to show you."

You let his hand pull you up to your feet. He leads you carefully away from the edge, his steps small and gingerly and still not quite able to recover his balance fully. You catch him when he sways on his feet, and hold onto his arm, letting him lean on you.

He stops next to a little mound of stones and rocks that Orphelins have left behind. 

"Here." He bends over to pick out one of small rocks. "Now this one, this one is perfect. Just the one I’ve been looking for."

He tosses it in the air and catches it with his palm, a small but real grin on his face. "See? Perfectly angled all around. With the right edges and surfaces. And just the right grip." 

You hold fast to this moment. To this smile, because you remember.

"You did this with her," you tell him, because you remember her smiles. You remember her adoration for her silly, lovely brother. You’ve seen it more than once. Their little ritual of throwing rocks against the Paintress. Before Papa almost—

Almost.

So, you expect him to ask.

Ask you to let him go. Let him go so he can return to his sister to whom he belongs. 

You’re prepared. You’ve already prepared your answer. You’re prepared to stanch the bleeding from your open wound and to withstand the chill without even the small warmth that you’ve only just found. 

Your painting, coloured in ash grey, awaits for its completion. 

So you tilt your head toward the horizon and tell him, "Your sister.  Maybe it will reach her."

But he only shakes his head. "This is for you." He drops the stone on your palm and wraps your fingers around it. "One day, I hope—I really hope I can show you how to throw it against the ocean waves. What that feels like."

You hold it. You remember how his little Pictos felt in your hand. You remember once again how it felt, to hold between two palms this bird with a fast beating heart and two broken wings that fluttered all along to fly away from your hands.

His eyes are on the misty horizon for a moment, and he takes out his gadget from his jacket. Alarm must show on your face, because he tells you, "It’s all right. I’m not trying it again. I can’t do this alone. I know that now." 

Still, he doesn’t let it go. It remains on his hand, and his eyes remain on it for some time. "Only mortals that we are, whose deaths are only final," he murmurs, to himself. Then he tells you: "Alicia, I have something to ask you."

You know what he will ask. 

You’re prepared. You’re prepared to stanch the bleeding when it starts. You’re prepared to answer:

I’ll return you to your sister. 

This one bright corner you were able to paint and hold in your canvas, even just for a short while. You are going to paint it grey again and let him go.

Because he’s ruinously kind. And when the world ends for all of you, he deserves to be with the people he loves.

I’ll let you go and return you to your sister. Because you’re kind. And I’ve always known nothing of mine ever remains. I’ve known it all along.

So, I will let you go.

I will.

Your painting awaits in anticipation, to be submerged in complete grey once its only remaining colour leaves its canvas. As does the Axon, in the shape of you, wanting to be asleep forever.

"I know there’s precisely little I could do—your father is once again frightfully correct in that regard—and that I can’t just engineer a way out for us. So maybe this is all I can offer, like this silly rock that will never reach, but—" 

He stops over his stumbling words. And his smile turns rueful again, small and familiar and heartbreaking.

You solder that smile onto your soul. 

And you wait.

"I understand what your father wants and why. I understand what your brother wants. What do you want, Alicia?" 

Gustave meets your eyes and holds your hand.

"Would you tell me? Would you tell me if I could help? I wish I knew—I wish I knew how to help you, and lessen even a just little of all this. But I don’t know how, and I don’t know what I even have, if there's even anything that I can give you. I—" he stops, and gives you the smile that breaks your heart. The very one that has now been soldered to your soul. "So, please tell me, if you know—if I could. What do you want, Alicia?"

Here is what you know.

No one has ever asked you.

You’ve wanted to reach. You’ve wanted to fall. You’ve wanted oblivion.

But no one has asked. Until now.

Tears prickle your eyes.

Standing amidst the howling winds of Stone Wave Cliffs, you decided to claim, on this vast Canvas, a tiny brushstroke. Hardly worth a ripple. You’d only hoped to leave something of yours here before everything dissipated, even when you’ve never been Painted to be more than what you are. Never more than what Maman decided you to be.

What do you want, Alicia?

I want you to live, you think. This bright corner I’ve been able to save. I want your gentlest and softest shade to remain on my canvas. To exist on this Canvas. In this world of ours. The one that should’ve been ours.

I want.

I want.

You take the chroma converter from his hand and feel its hum under your fingertips.

You don’t remember seeing the dawn. Not here, not in the permanent haze, in this grey that buries all colours. You swipe your hand. You reach.

And you Paint.

The colours spread from the tips of your fingers, in soft chromatic petals, and smudge the sky. Your fingers run over the canvas of your own.

And you watch the sun rise over the horizon. 

You stand over the precipice. Gustave stands next to you, his palm pressed over his mouth. You watch his eyes, filled with tears, reflecting the chromatic dawn.

And so now you know. The colours you can hold in this vast Canvas.

And now you know what they feel like, reflected in the kind eyes of the gentlest and softest shade you've ever held in your heart.

Chapter Text

Inside the Monolith, your father and your brother are waging war. 

With a sliver of hope in mind, you insert Gustave back into the Frame. In your mind, that sliver of hope is a miracle. That he may yet open the hearts of the others as closely locked as yours.

You almost do not make it in time. In a true testament of the Expedition’s united determination—or of vengeance, in the case of your mirror image—your father is nearly felled.

"Wait." Gustave, heedless of the mortal danger, rushes into the battlefield and steps right onto the oncoming path of the blast of electric lights aimed directly at your father. A turn of the event, that you later think of with certain wryness, you should have expected and been prepared for accordingly. "Maelle, wait—please stop."

For a single, heart-rending second, the blast of light nearly pierces through Gustave’s chest once again. But your hand is already stretched out and humming with the energy from the converter. The space around him bends and gives around a shell of cacophonic light of chroma. It repeals the blast, and cracks into pieces that slowly flutter away like petals in a breeze. Revealing in their wake Gustave, still intact and whole. 

And they see him. They all see him now.

"Gus—" 

None more than his sister, who takes one staggering step forward, and comes to a lurching, shuddering stop, uttering the rest of his name without a sound.

She chokes back whatever words she might have truly held in her heart, and says, "You’re not—you’re not real." Her eyes, even with tears filling them up, are shining with incandescent, blazing anger, and she whirls toward your father. "How dare you. How dare you to use his image—"

For one searing moment, you think her rage might just awaken her Paintress side, and that alone would be sufficient to wipe off every living being from this Canvas. 

But Gustave is already halfway there. "Maelle," he says with a shaky voice, swallowing thickly. His face, wet with tears, slowly cracks apart with a small smile. "Do I not smell enough to be real this time, then?"

One of the Expeditioners, Lune, gasps from behind them. "It’s—him. It’s really—"

His sister takes in a shaky breath, loud enough for everyone to hear. Her expression crumbles, little by little, shattering every emotion on her face until nothing is left. 

And then nothing stops her from reaching her brother. Nothing can. 

She runs into his open arms, and Gustave rushes to meet her rest of the way and lifts her up with his hug.

"I’m so sorry—I’m so sorry I came back so late," he’s murmuring quiet, frantic words and planting light kisses on top of her head, "God, I’m sorry, Maelle—"

You don’t think she’s listening. You don’t think she can. She’s wrapped her arms tightly around his chest and does not let go. For a long moment, there is only the sound of her broken, muffled sobs that she can’t seem to swallow, while their expeditioner friends surround them both in a loose, protective circle.

"What have you done?" 

It’s Verso’s hard-edged words, spoken so softly to your father, that break the quiet that follows.

And it’s Gustave who answers them. With his sister’s head still tucked under his chin, Gustave looks over to Verso and says, just as quiet, and hard-edged: "Tell them the truth. Please." 

That stops Verso. Frozen in his tracks, almost as if you have stopped him.

Your father slowly drags himself up with his hand braced on his knee. He looks, you ache to think it, so much older.

"Do you still believe they will let us live?" Papa asks Gustave, and his voice, also, sounds decades older. "That she could bear the weight of it all and face them for us? If she can’t—"

"—then we help," Gustave snaps, sharp and cutting. "Then we help her, Renoir," he repeats, softening like he can’t quite help himself. "All of us. With everything we’ve got. And we will, because she deserves everything good we can give."

Gustave turns to Verso, and there's sadness in his face, and in his voice. "If your intentions are to free your mother and sister, to free yourself, your friends deserve more than your deceptions. You deserve more than what you carry by yourself."

Gustave unwraps his arm from his sister and reaches out with his hand, looking directly into the abyss where you stand. 

"You deserve so much more than all of this," he says, soft and stricken.

"Alicia," Verso says, when he finds words again, his languishing heart and broken hope on full display.

You’ve once thought life has flattened you and ironed out every crease of foolishness that any hope can bring, that no one will choose you ever again.

Because, you, none of you, could ever be more than you’ve been Painted.

But now, when you close your eyes, you feel the colours of your own flowing and scattering between your fingertips.

You step out of the shadows.

And this time, you choose.

When the Paintress relinquishes her hold over the Canvas and releases the chroma, you’re at the Reach. 

Instead of sharing her last moment in the Canvas with Verso and Papa, you sit under the sun, under its gentle and soothing light, and close your eyes to feel your Axon, finally free, floating up and above.

You take up a canvas, white and pristine. 

And you fill it with your voice, now finally—finally—your own.

"I don’t really know if I can do this."

Maelle’s voice is so small and uncertain that Gustave can’t help but tighten his arm around her shoulder. "You’ll know the right thing to do when the time comes. I know you will."

"You didn’t see me while I thought you were—gone," says Maelle. He has been noticing, with a deepening ache in his heart, that she never quite says dead. "I never knew what to do then, not once, and I still don’t."

He lifts his hand and tucks stray hair away from her face. He’s still getting used to her hair, the auburn tinged with white and grey, as if her colours resisted the change even after her memories have started to return. "Hey," he says, light and playful, "is this really coming from the fierce paintress who managed to convince her mother to give up the chroma and leave the Canvas?"

"I had Alicia," says Maelle, a little glumly. "And Verso. And Papa. To help with all that convincing."

"A group effort, then," he says, gently.

"But what if I’m not who I thought I was when I’m outside? What if I"—she takes one shuddering breath—"fail to protect the Canvas? What then?"

He reaches out to wrap his both arms around her this time—which now he could, thankfully, since Sciel and Esquie brought back his prosthetic arm for him from the Forgotten Battlefield. "Has Lune ever told you how she found me—after the beach?"

Maelle mutely shakes her head in a no.

This, he thinks wryly, takes more courage than facing any dangerous Nevron by himself, or talking down Renoir from the verge of another massacre. He takes a breath and tells his sister, "Lune found me next to Catherine’s body, holding a pistol at my temple."

He can feel the sharp flinch that goes through Maelle’s entire body at the exact moment when the meanings behind his words finally register. "No," she says. "How—" her voice starts to crack, in shock and dismay. "How could you?"

I’ve disappointed her, he thinks, rueful, but he has no desire to hide his fallibility from his sister. "I couldn’t bear it—I didn’t think I could. You were gone. Everyone was. I didn’t think I could take another step. And then—there was Lune. And I—I can’t thank her enough. She kicked my butt thoroughly and reminded me in no uncertain terms when our own strength fails, we are to rely on our friends to pull us back on our feet. That we don’t really falter, not really, when we’re together. That we’re never truly alone. And then—and then we found you." 

The memory is still vivid and sharp. Finding Catherine among the piles of the dead and the dying in the red-tinged waking nightmare. His world, he had been sure, ended there. And he could no longer bear to breathe. 

But his friend found him.

And tomorrow came.

Gustave nudges Maelle’s shoulder with his. "Forgive me, please?"

It takes a moment, but Maelle eventually says, somewhat begrudgingly still, "I suppose you are allowed to have one or two moments of weakness. I forgive you."

Gustave tries not to grin too widely. "Thank you." 

"But you don’t get three, okay? Don't you forget it."

Maelle looks pointedly threatening, and Gustave nods, completely solemn. "Right. I won't ever forget."

She sighs and kicks at the dirt. "All right, so I do actually want to see my family again. Even Clea," she says, like a secret that she doesn’t ever want to admit out loud. "And make sure Maman is well. I’m not too worried Papa will go against the promise he made, but still, I should also check the Canvas is kept safely away."

She shifts in his arms a little to peer up at him. "But what about you?" She pokes at his chest with her finger. "Could you be happy without me here?"

"I don’t know," he answers, in all honesty. "But I would be happier knowing that you’re safe. Knowing you can love yourself enough to be happy wherever you are. And find your way to come back to us whenever you can. Maelle, you can still give a life outside a fighting chance," he says, ever more gently. "We will be here. I’ll be here waiting, I promise."

That thaws her a little, except then she proceeds to scowl fiercely. "You and your promises."

He has, in fact, walked right into that one himself, as he often does. "I do try to keep them," Gustave says, helpless and sheepish.

"You didn’t even try to run," Maelle cries out, as if all of her feelings have flooded back to her and they’re standing once again on that cliff, desolate and bleak and hopeless. "You just. You just went and—"

She stops herself with one hand pressed against her mouth, and Gustave knows—he knows there’s no defence for this. He can’t even bring himself to regret what he’s done. Maelle had been the only future, the only tomorrow, that he’d desperately wanted to safeguard then, and he knows he wouldn’t ever have chosen otherwise. 

He can only offer her the truth. "I’m sorry," he tells Maelle, "I’m so sorry I wasn’t there with you when you needed me." 

Sometimes he dreams. That no matter how he flings himself against the sleek, impenetrable walls of the Manor and shatters himself into pieces, the world outside still dissipates along with his sister, while Alicia, inside, drowns in the quicksands of ashes.

Maelle looks up at him once, and stares at her hands. "But you were," she says, her voice brimming with tears. "You were with me. Every moment. Every step."

For a long moment, he’s almost unable to see through the tears of his own. He can only hold onto his sister, as she does, neither of them able to believe they have each other back again. 

That their tomorrow is here, and they’re still here, together.

"I’ve missed you so much. And I missed so much of your life." He hums quiet words against her temple. "Your expedition across the continent. And what the life was like for you outside."

"Yes." Maelle brushes a hand across her tearstained face and curls up a hand over his chest. "Yes, you did."

"Will you tell me about it?" he asks gently.  

Gustave feels her breathing calm, as his does. Her tears, ever so slowly, subside, along with his.

And she tells him.

Chapter Text

Alicia’s brother finds them three days into their new expedition.

Lune has been playing her guitar, and Gustave has been walking the perimeters of the camp, listening to her singing voice that's occasionally joined by Sciel’s. Esquie and Monoco are playing a game of cards—or Monoco is trying, and Esquie is, on purpose or otherwise, not quite grasping the supposed rules, at Monoco’s never-ending exasperation.

And this calm of the night, its underlying peace, doesn’t break, not even when he finds Verso on the edge of the cliff overlooking the campfire.

They haven’t seen Alicia’s brother since the day the Paintress has left them. Truth be told, Gustave has never been certain if they ever would again.

But now Gustave joins Verso at the cliff, choosing to stand next to him without a word, not quite willing to break the self-imposed silence until Alicia’s brother chooses to do so.

And Verso does, a long moment into it, without turning away from the ocean unfolding ahead of them. 

"What’s next," Verso asks, his voice barely above the sound of the waves, "for Expedition 33?"

Gustave hums thoughtfully before he answers. "We’re starting with the attempts to fill in the blanks we have on our map, and with the secondary priority of finding all the records of the previous expeditions. To know their fate, learn what they’ve learned, and see what we can do to honour their memory."

And all of them are in keeping with their newly defined mission of going toward the farthest reach of their world, neutralizing Nevrons where they can and collecting the chroma scattered around their world along the way, with the hope that they may find more ways to mend the Fracture and heal the breaches.

"And the Painters? Whatever right to exist that we think we might’ve won from them," says Verso, and his words are still lined with bitterness, "we still only exist on their sufferance. And there will never be any true defence against them if they ever change their minds. And they still very well might."

Despite however long they may have been at odds, Verso is still his father’s son, Gustave thinks, almost ruefully.  

"You’re right. They can always change their minds. But until then, we’ll still be here," Gustave says, with as much certainty he could imbue in his words. "And we’re not just as we’ve been Painted. I think all of us have already proven that. And all that’s already changing. We are changing it. We don’t have their level of control yet, but we’re all learning."

No one other than Alicia has gotten anywhere close to controlling the chroma Aline and Renoir have left behind, but there are promising signs. Lune is getting fairly close, and together with the scientists and engineers in Lumière, they’re still finding more and more ways to improve the Converter. 

And they have Maelle, always Maelle, on their side.

"Call me foolish," Gustave says, with a small smile, "but I have hope."

Gustave could feel, if not see, the way Verso hardens at the very notion of hope. If any semblance of hope remains in this man, Gustave can’t tell from his restrained silence. Or from his limited words.

But Gustave still could, at the very least, guess what might have brought Verso back here. "For what it’s worth," he starts, not entirely without hesitation, "I don’t—I can’t blame you for the choices you made."

Verso turns sharply to him, and in the weight of that look, Gustave thinks of Renoir. And Alicia. Alicia’s brother may not be as much of a locked box as Alicia has been, but he is still much harder to grasp, mercurial and changeable seemingly at every turn. 

And also just as much wounded.

"I can’t begin to imagine what it would’ve been like, year after year, crushed under the choices that you have never made dictating every facet of your life," says Gustave. "For you and everyone you've ever loved. For seventy-odd years. And I will never be able to say I wouldn’t have made the same choices you did."

Verso’s eyes return to the the ocean, toward the direction of the Monolith that still stands over them. 

"Would it be all right for me to ask if—if life is still worth living?" Gustave tries again, as gently as he could.

For another long moment, Gustave doesn’t think Verso would answer. But eventually he does. "Father and I—we’re talking again. That’s still something. And Alicia—" Verso pauses. His eyes squeeze shut briefly, as if the thought physically hurts him. "I could never live up to her idea of Verso."

She’s only ever wanted you to be there, Gustave thinks, saddened by the thought that he can’t ever voice out loud. He’s meant it when he can’t say he wouldn’t have made the same choices, not when he could see all that pain even from the weight of the memories alone.

"This still has to be what you want," says Gustave. "And whatever choice you may make, Maelle, even Alicia, will have to accept it. Because their love alone can’t be the reason to keep you. It can’t be, when so many terrible things already happened under the name of love. It’s just—we’re only hoping it wouldn’t be the choice you’d make again, because we just want you here, with us."

Gustave stops, when he feels Verso’s glance on him. Embarrassed to be rambling on, Gustave says, "I don’t think—I do know I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know. Did you and Maelle—" he trails off.

"We talked," says Verso, looking away again. "Before she left."

"Good. I’m glad. I know you don’t need me to tell you that she loves you so much, but—she does."


Verso stares at the soil under his feet. "Do you know when she might be back?"

"We don’t know yet. But I trust her to find her way back to us."

"Thank you," says Verso, abruptly. "I owe you—an apology. Is this truly all I should—could—give?" Verso runs a hand through his hair and lets it fall limply to his side. "Over the things that I’ve done? Just a mere apology? Can it ever be enough?"

In his face, Gustave can still find the little boy that he’s glimpsed in Alicia’s precious, joyful memories. In the effusive melodies reverberating from the walls of the Manor. In the fiercely guarded memories of the Paintress still haunting every corner of this very world.

What they’re asking from Verso, Gustave still can’t fathom. Asking him to live when all he wants still is to fade away from the pain he can’t withstand. Gustave can’t imagine it. He can’t imagine not wanting to live. That much pain.

And this thought softens his voice, his expression. "There’s really no need. I do understand your choices—in that there really was none to choose from, not for you." At the stricken look on Verso’s face, Gustave adds hurriedly, "But yes, I accept your apology, just the same."

Verso looks at Gustave for a moment before clearing his throat. "I came, because I found my sister, Clea. My Clea. I’ve always thought that she was lost. That we’ve lost her forever. Except I found her trapped." There’s a dark, hardened look on his face that he doesn’t even try to suppress. "She was Painted over by Clea the Paintress, from outside, and I don’t know how to break her free from it all."

Verso turns around once, and ducks his head. "I came to ask, even after everything, if all of you would be willing to help me find a way to free her—"

"You silly, silly man," says Sciel, appearing from behind Verso with a little wicked grin on her face, and puts her arm over Verso’s shoulders, "do you even need to ask?"

Monoco harrumphs from Verso’s other side. "I, for one, need to be asked. To be persuaded. To be properly courted with all the bells and trimmings and some more feet." Then he glances at Verso’s face once and cheerily throws a burly arm over Sciel’s arm already wrapped around Verso’s shoulders. "All right, I’m in."

“What do you mean she was 'Painted over'?" Lune asks, her fingertips already twitching with eagerness to take down notes and fast. "Does it mean that if our chroma conversion method improves, we could also Paint over the landmarks that have been Fractured? Should be be focusing more on Painting over things instead of rebuilding entirely? And how, exactly, did you find all of this out?"

“Mon Ami, you’ve returned!" Esquie flaps his arms wide, making a giant snow angel in the air. "Let’s go for swim-swim!"

Gustave watches Verso swallow whatever emotions he might be holding inside and let himself be dragged to the campfire by the group, where all of them immediately start discussing their plan of attack—and for Verso to begin his struggle of fending off Lune’s continued questions.

Gustave lingers behind at the cliffside, just for a moment.

The Monolith is lit brightly under the moonlight, in all of its familiar imposing glory, and without the engraved number to remind them of the looming fate. 

It still takes him a moment to remember that there is no number. That there will never be another one again. That it won’t, between one breath and next, appear again, dooming them with its very existence. 

That all of this, all of their collective will and pain and sacrifice, has not been for naught.

But then he feels it. A familiar presence. A warmth. A faint whisper of the displaced air.

He smiles to himself and lets its presence soothe away his unfounded fear.

"They’re going to be at it for the next while," Gustave speaks up, looking over his shoulder to the campfire, to Expedition 33, before turning back again. He adds gently, "Would you mind keeping me company?"

In a moment, Alicia steps out of the shadows, crossing the Frame silently as she does. 

She has taken on colours. Not quite entirely, but in her eyes, and on her face, there are now colours that brighten her as much as her presence itself in their Canvas. 

Gustave wants to imagine that one of these days she might choose to remain in the Frame, with them, and stay. That she would choose to enjoy all of these new wonders that she made happen along with them. 

But until then, she’s still here with them when she wants—or when he needs her.

"I’ve kept this for you," he tells her, when she joins him near the edge of the water. "From Maelle, before she left."

She takes the journal he hands to her. Caresses its cover with a careful hand, just the way he remembers she’s done with her books that she couldn't bear to touch.

"I—Alicia," he says, uncertain why his voice is shaking again, when it’s not the first time he’s ever said these words. "Thank you, for saving my life."
 
He offers her his hand.

This time, she takes it.

"Thank you," she says, and her newfound voice, so much stronger and of her own, also shakes, just a little. "For saving me."

When Gustave opens his palm, he finds what she’s left behind. It’s a small rock, glinting under the moonlight.

He turns it over in his hand. He closes his fingers around it. Feels its perfect corners and surfaces, the way it takes up just the right amount of space in his grasp.

When he closes his eyes, he can hear the sound of the laughter around the campfire. Shared joy and happiness. Of Expedition 33, still going strong. 

He could almost hear the echoes of the Manor. Its song, lonely and desolate.

He swallows something thick in his throat. His eyes burn.

When he opens his eyes again, there is the ocean, and the Monolith in the far distance. Maybe they can still reach it.

Together with Alicia, he throws a rock toward the ocean.

It’s a small one. Hardly larger than a pebble. Not enough to make a dent against this whole wide ocean.

And yet. It still leaves ripples. 

END