Work Text:
Marianne chose one last memory to take with her. And closed the door. She got on the boat. Pretended it was sea spray she was wiping from her face. The portrait went off into the world. She painted the Comtesse's ugly friend, refused another commission, and still went home with more money than she had ever held in her hands before.
It was a bland, pale, youthful portrait rapturously received. There was no challenge for Marianne to reach deeper or go further. No incitement to push herself. No 'where are you?' Marianne hardly knew where she was, or even who she was, so maybe that was for the best.
She stayed in her room above her father's atelier for two weeks. Two weeks: longer than she had been on the island. Four weeks since she had left. How long did these things take to contract? Her father would be able to find out whether her painting had succeeded in its purpose. Perhaps he already knew. Did she want to? That was the question. Not yet. Not yet. It was too raw.
Another week and the miniature lay on the pillow next to her. "You dreamt of running," she told it, "so run."
The next day she was downstairs eating dinner with her father and some of his students. She had made it all the way down the stairs without giving up and turning around. Now she was amongst other people. It was slow progress but still progress.
A great thumping on the door was answered by one of the young men.
He came back shrugging with, "Wants to speak to Marianne."
Marianne rose, heart in her mouth, chair falling back onto the floor. Her father got to the door first. A man's voice.
Still, she held the wall as she approached.
"No," her father was saying, "no one."
She pushed passed him. "Yes?"
A footman. The coach behind. The rest of the road. It unfurled in front of her. She hadn't seen this much of the world in weeks and had begun to forget it was there.
"Have you seen or heard from Mademoiselle Héloïse?" the footman asked.
"No," she said blankly. Then, because she couldn't help herself, "What has happened?"
He looked deeply put upon. "She has gone missing."
Marianne laughed. It was the barking sort of terrified laugh that echoed down the street so that each and every cobblestone laughed with her. Echoed all the way to Milan.
A twitching in the curtains of the coach. The dimly lit but unmistakable face of the Comtesse.
Marianne put her hand to her mouth and did her best not to laugh again. The footman handed over a card and left. The carriage drew away.
"What was that?"
Marianne threw her arms around her father. "Good news," she told him.
The next day the knock on the door heralded Sophie. Marianne hugged her and drew her into the kitchen.
They made hurried enquiries after each others' health.
"Have you seen her?"
Marianne shook her head. "What happened?"
"She gave us the slip the moment we took a stop in Paris three days ago."
Marianne felt proud, triumphant, and triumphantly proud.
"Now Madame has let me go. Or I left. It's not like we are going to Milan. She took a bunch of the Madame's jewellery and a book. That was it. She'll be all right though."
"I have no doubt," Marianne murmured. "You knew?"
Sophie looked coy. "I would have gone with her. But she said she had to go alone."
Of course she did, of course she did.
"I honestly thought she would be here. Maybe she knows they would search for her."
Marianne shook her head. "That was never the point."
"What point?"
"I want her to come here more than I can say. There's only one thing in the world I want more." She put her head in her hands at the enormity of what she was surrendering.
Sophie waited patiently.
"For her to be free."
Over the next few weeks they did indeed come looking. A shadowy 'they' that Marianne sensed had been in her room. The cot in the corner - Sophie's - would have given them pause. But Marianne was not worried. Her sketches - disembodied sections of Héloïse - were all in the atelier and none of these hired men would recognise lips, hands, ears. Even the most recognisable and perfect lips, hands, and ears in the world. The scene with Héloïse and Sophie wouldn't have been recognisably Héloïse even to the Comtesse. Marianne's prize possession stayed always on her person. Even that wasn't damning evidence. The most damning evidence was absent and Marianne was both heartbroken and elated by it.
A few days later a new student enrolled and took up lodging. Marianne needed all of two seconds to know where he had come from and what his intent was. He was clean, for a start. His rent was paid without pleas or bargains, which never happened. He didn't have that haunted artist look she was so used to in her father's students. For a week he joined them for meals and followed Marianne so closely - even running errands with her - that the others teased her for having an admirer. He also had been in her room. Marianne let him do what he liked because what did it matter?
Then there were no more clean young men, no more vague impressions that her room had been searched, no more shadows when she went out.
The Comtesse concerned her more than she might have expected and in a different way than she might have expected. Apparently she was staying with friends in Paris. There was always a rich friend to be prevailed upon for charity and Marianne hoped she would be happy enough even though it was not Milan.
The weeks kept passing. Christmas came and went. A brutal January was followed by a brutal February and just when Marianne thought she would never have sensation in her fingertips ever again the thaw came and the sun broke through and Marianne could actually feel warmth on her skin that hadn't been warm since Héloïse last touched her.
Marianne painted models but she couldn't talk to them anymore and on the canvas they all turned into Héloïse. Was this possession? No, it was remembering, as they had sworn to do. It was honouring.
So she painted Héloïse. Deliberately this time. Painted her far from Marianne's grasp. On the beach with flames licking at her dress. Gave her solitude and liberty.
"Where do you think she is?" Sophie asked one night when the kitchen was dark and quiet and they sat at the table with a seat between them.
"Wherever she is, I hope she is happy."
Sophie smiled. "I hope so too."
The spring salon came. Her father and several students showed their work. The question of the lady on fire being shown had been raised a few times but Marianne would never consent to that. Instead she wandered the rooms of the salon and tried to care about insipid portraits and the same old mythological depictions. She tried not to care about where the portrait was now. About where the subject was now.
Well aware that someone who had worked so little could not sneer at those who had, Marianne resolved on a project for the autumn salon. Orpheus and, more importantly, Eurydice. A Eurydice who took her fate into her own hands.
Over the summer she worked on her Eurydice and started her own class, for young women. Work finally meant something to her again.
Sophie stood in front of the painting for a long time. "Yes," she finally said. "I see it now."
Marianne haunted her painting - technically, her father's painting - for the first night of the salon, cataloguing reactions. Sophie stood in for her the next day.
"What if -"
"If she comes you must not tell me," Marianne said quickly.
"Very well."
But Marianne could tell, without Sophie saying anything, that Héloïse had not come. She condemned her ego and her vanity and resolved not to look for praise or recognition because what did it matter? The work existed outside of that and she would make what was necessary, not what might be acclaimed. And to hope for Héloïse was to force her into a role she might not want to play. To rob her of liberty.
At the end of the week a message came. The painting had been sold. The full price paid without negotiation and under condition of anonymity. Marianne went to see it one last time. To say goodbye, again.
A year after she had completed Héloïse's portrait she was ready to do another. Her father found an adventurous young man who wanted something bold. Which was certainly what he received.
Over the winter Marianne painted more portraits, taught her students, and with Sophie's permission started to work up a full version of the painting of her abortion.
In the spring the adventurous young man's portrait and the abortion were both exhibited. Both under Marianne's own name. The abortion was attacked and it lost a good deal of one side. The bystanders had been reluctant to intervene, presumably in sympathy with the vandal. It was some of her father's students who came to the rescue. Marianne refused to repair it. The damage was just another part of the story.
The adventurous young man pulled his portrait from the exhibition - his sense of adventure only taking him so far - and disavowed any relationship with Marianne. The newspapers were scandalised and a pamphlet was printed in protest. All but two of her students were withdrawn from her classes. Finally, just as the organisers resolved to take the picture down, a man set fire to it and along with a neighbour it perished in flames. Marianne laughed.
With plenty of time on her hands over the summer Marianne walked around the city. She sat quietly and watched and watched and watched until she felt she had been awake for days. In her pocket Héloïse smiled enigmatically.
Back at the atelier Sophie was seeing a lot of a young Hungarian painter. He was gentle, devoted, and a good artist, and Marianne was not worried.
"I love him." There was an apology in Sophie's voice.
"I am glad you have found love," Marianne said and meant it with every ounce of her heart.
"I know you loved her. I can't imagine what leaving her - knowing you had to leave her - must have done to you."
Marianne squeezed Sophie's hand.
By Christmas Sophie and the Hungarian were married and it had been over two years since Héloïse had made her escape.
In case she was ever allowed to exhibit again Marianne began thinking of a new project. It refused to take shape. So she absentmindedly sketched Héloïse over and over. She could have assembled an army of all her Héloïses and what a formidable army that would be.
Someone had left a programme for an orchestra on the dining table. Marianne hadn't been to the orchestra since before the island and was tempted, idly flicking through the pages. When she saw the Vivaldi piece listed all her memories pooled in one spot and when she stood the landscape was a new one. She rushed into the workshop. Sophie was there drowsily posing for her husband.
Marianne took her by the shoulders. "Which of us was the storm?" she demanded. "She or I?"
"Both of you," Sophie replied - surprised at being asked so abruptly and surprised at being asked at all when the answer seemed so obvious.
Marianne worked as everyone left and was still working when everyone arrived the next day. Sophie stood silently behind her for a while. "Yes," she finally said. "That is it exactly."
Later her father stood in the same spot. "It's... what is it?"
Marianne stood back. "A collision. To consume. To be consumed."
He stepped away. There was no explanation. Only the sensation.
A full day after she started painting she finally stopped. She went into the kitchen where the students looked at her in awe. She sat down and was asleep before they could bring her a drink. They ate their dinner around her sprawled on the table. Until Sophie discovered the scene, scolded them all thoroughly, and helped Marianne upstairs and into bed.
Over the next week Marianne worked compulsively. Barely eating, fitfully sleeping on a battered sofa in the atelier, given a wide berth by everyone. Until the moment came where the haze lifted and she stood in front of the painting for hours, hesitating for the first time.
Sophie touched her arm. "It's finished."
Marianne shook her head. "I don't want it to end."
"It will never end. But the painting is finished."
Again Sophie helped her to bed and held her until she slept.
She did not emerge until the next afternoon. The painting was gone. In its place stood Sophie's husband. "It was the most important piece of art I have ever seen created," Lajos said, twisting his cap in his hands. "I was afraid that just going by your name it would be rejected. So I took it to them. I told them they would never have another piece from me, or from your father, or from anyone here, if they did not show it."
Marianne managed to breathe. "What did they say?"
"They said they would have shown it anyway." He grinned. "Marianne, it is a masterpiece."
Again she refused to see the painting in situ but she did wander the rest of the show on the opening night appreciating the passion behind each and every piece. The stories each one must hold.
Marianne was the talk of the spring salon for the second year in a row though the notices could not have been more different. The Coming Storm was both revered as groundbreaking and condemned as modern but everyone seemed to agree that it mattered, somehow.
"They don't understand it but they recognise it," Sophie said. "They know it in their hearts."
Such a bidding war ensued that it sold for five times the two times Marianne had been assured it would make.
So Marianne bought a new dress and a balcony seat for the concert.
A new dress, however, was not enough to dampen the echo and Marianne's heart reverberated around the room as Héloïse took her seat opposite. Every charged cell in Marianne's body leaned in and was drawn closer and closer to Héloïse, dragged mercilessly through thin air so that she swore she could hear Héloïse breathe.
She wept and smiled, wept and smiled, and Marianne recognised each moment and what it signified - how each breath of these minutes mapped to each moment of those weeks. And finally she had the answer to the unanswered question. Darling, so soon? she asked her across the theatre. Soon? came the reply in Héloïse's heaving chest. No, soon would have been when she stopped running at the cliffs. Maybe even before she turned around.
How brave Héloïse was. How brave Marianne was. They were both braver than they had believed themselves. How much of Marianne it took to stay away. It was enough that Héloïse was here and was living her life. That Marianne had been allowed to see her in whatever fashion and bear witness. Which was all she could do. If that was all she ever did it would be enough.
Back in her room she wept and smiled too. For the two weeks and the two and a half years since.
A week later Marianne was invited for dinner - because this was the sort of thing that happened to her now - and she did not especially want to go for a variety of reasons including that her hard-earned equilibrium had recently been very much upset and it was exhausting and all she wanted to do was draw Héloïse over and over again and not speak to anyone at least until the worst of it had passed, which after this much practice she now trusted it would.
Sophie pointed out that this was not just a dinner party but a dinner party in her honour by the gentleman who had bought her painting and in consequence enabled the leaking roof to be fixed and guaranteed the ateliers survival for the next ten years. So she was as well to go, really.
Marianne had not told Sophie about having seen Héloïse at the concert as she feared getting severely told off. So she told her now and after getting severely told off - "She was crying?! And you just left?!" - was promised that Sophie would look into the guest list.
"It's a party in your honour," Sophie pointed out. "Are you more worried she will be there, or that she won't?" It was not a question Marianne could answer.
In any event the guest list was reported Héloïse-free, so Marianne accepted.
As it turned out the guest list was not Héloïse-free in the slightest.
Marianne was being introduced to guests and presented with a Mademoiselle de... "Héloïse," Marianne breathed. It was the first time the name had passed Marianne's lips since she left the island.
"Marianne." Héloïse's smile was knowing and wry and everything that Marianne remembered. They stood opposite one another, Marianne immobile and desperately searching for something to say. Héloïse's eyes were saying a lot but Marianne feared she was out of practice because her translation was alarming.
But then her host was introducing the next guest and Héloïse moved into the room.
"Excuse me," Marianne mumbled and followed her.
Héloïse stopped in front of the painting hanging in pride of place. "It really is magnificent. I always knew you were capable of something like this. But it is quite another thing to actually see it."
Marianne didn't know what to say, didn't know if there was anything she could say.
"Did you enjoy the Vivaldi?"
It shot right through her. "Of course you saw me."
"You didn't come to me."
Marianne wasn't sure whether it was a question or what the real question was. The truth, then. "I wanted to," she said, raw, a trembling to her voice.
"Why didn't you?"
"It's not about what I want."
Héloïse considered that. "So I have come to you."
"Have you?" Marianne could hardly get the words out.
"If you will have me." The pain was audible and that there could be any doubt made Marianne feel ill. "I felt your absence every day. I bought your Eurydice. I hoped it meant something. And this..." She gestured up at the painting.
"It means everything," Marianne managed to say.
Héloïse smiled at her and Marianne melted and hoped that somehow, from Héloïse's vantage point, it looked like a smile in return.
"I did want you. I just had to be sure it was for your own sake. Not simply to escape my fate. I had to be free before I could choose."
"I understand."
"You do?" Héloïse looked back at the painting. "Yes, you do."
"We have to go."
"But your dinner."
What did it matter? So she stormed out and went back to everyone's bad graces? None of it mattered. There was art and there was Héloïse and that was all that mattered.
"Come." She slipped through a panelled door briefly opened by a footman serving drinks. Through the kitchens and out the side door before she turned to see if Héloïse had followed. Before they were alone in the quiet and the cool of the night.
Marianne, finally liberated, began to laugh.
Héloïse put her fingers to Marianne's lips but it was not a silencing gesture. Her eyes closed at the feeling of Héloïse's hands on her once again. Héloïse's fingertips now on her cheeks and eyebrows.
"I cannot wait another moment," Héloïse breathed against Marianne's lips.
"Don't wait," Marianne breathed back and then there was no waiting, only wanting. No absence, only love.
It was a new kiss because they were new people and this was a new world. It was an old kiss because the echoes of the past were strong and precious. It was who they had been, who they were, and who they were becoming.
"I won't ask anything of you -" Marianne said with a strained, desperate voice, running her hands over Héloïse's hair.
Héloïse clung to the front of Marianne's dress. "You can. You can ask anything of me."
Marianne shook her head. "Only an offer. Of a home and my heart."
"Yes," Héloïse smiled. "Always, yes."