Chapter Text
The Continent - Monolith Year 33 - After
They did it. They beat the Paintress, they made it home. They won. And Sciel barely has time to think about the cost before a seismic wave erupts from the sea and people start turning to ash and petals. People of all ages: 32 year olds, the orphans, everyone. Everyone is panicking. But Sciel is not. Death, her old friend, is beckoning and she is ready. She kept her promise to her home, her friends, to Maelle. She takes one last look at the people around her, fading, one last look at Lune, beautiful, brilliant Lune, then Maelle. Her little star. Fate had given Sciel a second chance at life, and as far as she was concerned she had made the most of it. She hadn’t meant to make it back from the Continent anyway but the fact that she had feels like the perfect ending. She’ll see Pierre soon, their little one, too. Sophie, Gustave, Catherine, Lucien, Alan, and since they are all going to die, she’ll still be with Lune and Maelle, and perhaps that’s enough.
It isn’t painful, the Gommage. Not like drowning. It’s easy, like falling asleep. So Sciel smiles, turns her face to the last dregs of evening light and closes her eyes.
Sciel comes to consciousness on the soft ground. She coughs, certain her lungs are filled with ash, but nothing comes out. She looks around wildly, then sees Maelle, Verso, Monoco and Esquie looking down at her. To her left, Lune does much of the same.
“How did we—?” Lune gasps.
“We Gommaged,” Sciel says.
She tries to form more words but can’t find any to bring shape to everything she feels. She has no memory of what happened between her Gommage and now. Part of her is devastated, angry almost, to have been given a third chance by Fate. But then she sees the look in Maelle’s eyes and it fades.
The relief in her posture, the new clothes... Her hair!
Lune expresses the same aloud and Maelle just smiles at them, like they’ve come home. Besides the change in clothing and her now stark white hair she looks much the same, except there is an air of confidence that hadn’t been there before, as though after all this time she has finally become herself.
“We have much to talk about,” she says, still beaming.
Sciel clambers to her feet, knees unsteady still from the shock of returning to this plane. She stumbles towards her and pulls her into her arms.
“Look at your hair!” Sciel exclaims, like a mother would, shocked.
“Are you alright?” Lune asks, and begins to fuss over her, also like a mother would.
Maelle just rolls her eyes and lets both of them ask their questions. She answers diligently, precisely, explaining how there is a world outside of this one and that they are living within a Canvas created by Verso — the real Verso — and all that came after. The fire, the Writers, the feud between Aline and Renoir within the Canvas, what Renoir now intends to do; all of it.
It is so much to take in.
Then Lune is shouting at Verso and calling him a coward and all Sciel can think of is how to bring back everyone else they’ve lost.
So they make a plan. Bring back the lost Expeditioners in whatever way Maelle is able to, and take the fight to Renoir, back to where it all began. Monoco dubs it ‘The Greatest Expedition in History’ and Lune starts to draw up a battle strategy.
Sleep is difficult to come by that night, for all of them. Sciel tosses and turns beside Lune, her mind and heart at war in a way she has never experienced before. Eventually she gives up and goes to perch on the cliff side to speak with the stars. She tells them about all that’s happened, about how much hope Maelle has given her, how she doesn’t know how to reconcile her feelings for Lune and the prospect of having Pierre returned to her. She keeps going for so long she doesn’t hear movement beside her until she feels the gentle pressure of Maelle’s arm against hers.
“Talking to the stars again?” she asks softly.
“Mhm.”
“Are you alright?”
“I’m not sure, honestly,” Sciel admits. She could never lie to Maelle.
“I’m sorry I can’t bring Pierre back. Not in the way you want, at least, for now.”
“Don’t be.”
“What will you do? You and Lune, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I don’t know much of anything anymore.”
“I get that.”
Maelle rests her head on Sciel’s shoulder and looks out at the blank Monolith for a long while. Sciel runs everything she’s learned through her mind for what feels like the hundreth time tonight: Maelle is Alicia. Her parents are the Paintress and Renoir. This is all real but also unreal. This painted life is tangible, but also a creation, a facsimile of life. A question comes unbidden to Sciel’s mind, then. A very selfish, very cruel question. If this is all someone’s creation, how real is the relationship she has built with Maelle? How does she see her now that she has all her memories back?
“It’s still real,” Maelle murmurs, as though she’s read her mind. “Everything we are, here in the Canvas. Everything we’ve been through still means something. Gustave, Emma, Sophie, Pierre, Lune’s family…they were still real. What you — what we — feel still counts for something. It has to.”
“Why?” Sciel asks. Not because she disagrees, but simply because she needs Maelle to affirm it.
“Because the worlds we build leave an imprint. Everything I experienced here before I got my memories back still remains. It’s like an ink stain. It’s proof.” Maelle exhales shakily. “I’ve lived more life in this Canvas than I could hope to outside of it. Met people who see me as more than just the girl who tore apart her family, all because she didn’t want to be a Paintress. Here I’m more than that, and none of it at the same time.”
Maelle’s fingers brush her throat, like she remembers the pain.
“And I love my mother and father, Clea too, and Verso, the real Verso,” she continues, “but here I have friends who really see me. And you…”
Sciel's breath catches.
“Me...?”
Maelle’s lip quirks sadly.
“I know it’s not the same,” she says carefully, “and I know it’s complicated for you, but you’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mother. I wasn’t sure that’s what it was before, but now, with my memories back, I see it far more clearly. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring when it does come, but I wanted to tell you.”
“Maelle…”
“You don’t have to say anything, and I don’t want to burden you with it if it’s just my own childish want to belong, but you are my family. You and Lune, Monoco, Esquie, Verso…”
How terrifically ironic, how fateful.
Sciel doesn’t know when she had started crying but she chokes on a sob now and wipes her eyes.
“Did I say something wrong?” Maelle asks, moving to withdraw, apologise.
“No,” Sciel shakes her head, nearly laughing. “No, not at all. And you could never be a burden, don't you ever think that."
“Then, what’s the matter?”
Sciel puts an arm around Maelle and sighs.
“Right now, nothing.”
“Alright.” Maelle sounds unsure.
“Right now, I just want you to know that you are my family, too. And that while I may not be your mother by blood, you’ll always be my little star, yeah?”
Maelle presses herself further into Sciel’s side and Sciel thinks perhaps, even if they can’t bring back everyone, this could be enough. Yes, it is enough.