Chapter Text
Paris, 1906
Alicia found Clea in the gardens, sat beneath her favourite tree. She hadn’t meant for anyone to search for her after their collective moment at Verso’s grave, but she hadn’t exactly tried to hide her hasty exit either.
She still struggled to be around Aline, her blood still singing with resentment and disappointment. Every interaction they had shared since her return had felt like combat, with thinly veiled slights poised on their tongues like blood red on the tip of a paintbrush. So she never lingered longer than strictly necessary, lest her emotions get the better of her and she say something she would later regret.
Clea scrubbed her cheeks of her quiet tears with the heel of her palm as Alicia inched closer, but she did not look at her. Alicia seemed undeterred by this.
She sat beside her, still clutching that ridiculous yet infuriatingly adorable plush of Esquie.
“Leave me alone, Alicia,” Clea said numbly, her voice still thick from crying.
Alicia did not move.
“Please,” she whispered.
Alicia shuffled closer on the bench until their shoulders were pressed together gently. She opened her mouth to speak and a tight but solid sound came out.
Clea looked at her, finally, and found only gentleness and clear intention.
I’m not letting you be sad alone. Not anymore.
Alicia always had an uncanny way of nestling her way, ever so softly, beneath Clea’s armour.
Still she huffed out a sigh, feigning exasperation in the hopes of restoring the distance she had so carefully (and foolishly) put up between them.
“I don’t need you to look out for me.”
Alicia shot her a stubborn look, utterly unconvinced.
It should be the other way around, Clea thought regretfully. I should have been better to you.
She could try, should try.
“I’m sorry,” Clea whispered.
Alicia tilted her head to one side with a rasped ‘why’.
Clea could almost feel the air passing through her damaged throat as though it were her own.
“I shouldn’t have left you alone to grieve. It wasn’t fair, and I wasn’t…kind.”
Her sister shrugged. The first several days after she had been shunted from the canvas, Alicia had been wrecked, both physically and emotionally. It had felt as though they had returned to the day after the fire. She mourned anew for the life and brother she was robbed of and Clea could only blame herself for it.
However, in the weeks that followed, the colour began to return to Alicia’s cheeks. She was still withdrawn, yes, but at least she was leaving her room. And by the time spring had fully made its presence known, she was picking up a paintbrush for the first time since before the fire, a new resolve warming her bones.
Clea did not believe she would ever stop carrying the weight of all that had come to pass, let alone all she experienced within the canvas, but perhaps this, here and now, was enough.
“I don’t want anything like this to happen again,” Clea murmured.
Alicia huffed something akin to a laugh. Clea knew her sister well enough to understand what she was asking. She had always been too perceptive for her own good, after all.
“Yes, even to Maman,” she conceded. “Even if I’d rather not speak with her at the moment.”
Alicia hummed once in understanding.
A thought came to Clea’s mind unbidden then. One of the few she hadn’t thought to ask once Alicia had been ready to tell her more about her time in Verso’s canvas.
“Did you, um,” she exhaled slowly. “Did you meet the other Clea when you were there?”
Alicia nodded slowly, apologetically. Clea understood her meaning completely: we met her, and we unpainted her.
“I see,” she murmured.
Alicia reached for Clea’s hand and squeezed it.
“You must think me monstrous for what I did, repainting Aline’s version of me.”
Alicia shook her head and rested it on her shoulder.
“I suppose we are all just doing what we can to get through this,” Clea said. “Maybe it would have been better for all of us if I’d been more like what she wanted,” she added joylessly.
Alicia squeezed her hand again and shook her head with a deep frown. Then you wouldn’t be you.
Clea thought she might cry once more. Alicia did not owe her compassion, not after all she had done (and not done). And she did not think she was capable of accepting it.
Alicia let go of her hand then and fished a whittled down pencil and a scrap of paper from her pocket. Clea watched her as she scribbled something and handed it to her.
Papa said to hold onto each other. So that’s what I’m doing.
Clea ran her thumb over the crinkled paper.
“Papa does love his saccharine sentiments,” she muttered.
He was right, of course, it was only the two of them now.
Neither Alicia nor Clea said much of anything after that. They watched the world go by under the tree until the sun had begun to dip towards the horizon and the chill of evening began to whisper against their skin. Tomorrow Clea would return to her war and the vengeance she did not yet want to surrender. For now, though, perhaps she could allow herself a moment to remember why she was fighting in the first place.