Chapter Text
She gets a mask.
It’s not as delicate, nor as ostentatious as the painted Alicia had … but it serves its purpose, and it’s not like masks like this are entirely unseen, not after the war. And people are … kind enough to avert their eyes, not ask why so young a girl is wearing one.
She has to fight to be able to go outside at all. They’re worried for her, for her safety, the Writers are still out there after all, Clea’s fret and worry coming out to the point of cruelty. But Alicia needs to do something and if Papa wouldn’t let her keep the Canvas, he can at least let her go outside and try to live, as he keep insisting. Maman, however, she doesn’t argue. She supports Alicia … she also grieves for Verso and the canvas , after all, knows full-well how hard it was to be forced to let go before she was ready, even if she ultimately agreed with its destruction.
Eventually, Papa agrees— but — he’s only trying to assuage his guilt, for the second chance at life that was taken from Alicia, for the people that he killed … and they were people, she knows. Sciel, Lune, Gustave, everyone she loved— they were real, they had lives and interiority, they weren’t just paint.
(Sometimes, she thinks if she could try and repaint them, make a new Canvas and a new Lumiere where they would get to live again, to grow old and be happy. But Alicia has never quite been as good at painting as the rest of the family, she’d probably just — just make a mess of it.)
She doesn’t go far, not at first. This city isn’t like Lumiere. It’s massive, sprawling, with twisting alleys and streets that she doesn’t feel safe going down, not like in the Canvas where she knew every inch. She wishes she had a sword … no, she wishes she had the strength to use one. She doesn’t, not anymore, that was when she thought she was Maelle and — Maelle is long gone.
She does spend some time staring longingly at a small academy offering fencing instruction. She sits in a park and watches as students filter in and out, many of them her own age. She returns often enough, to sit and get fresh air and let people avoid making eye contact.
Before — before the fire, she’d asked Maman about taking lessons, but she’d been more concerned with painting, of course. And now … well, there doesn’t seem to be much point in asking now.
It’s a day she is watching the academy that she hears him and it makes her heart stop and then start again when she sees the source of it.
There’s a man, maybe 30, walking down the street chatting to another man. Dark haired, bearded and terribly familiar.
She hadn’t realized … she didn’t … when she filled in that void in her that was aching for her brother, she wasn’t making a person wholecloth. She must have seen him, somehow, sometime before.
He’s not— entirely, exactly identical. His shoulders are wider, his beard tidier and thicker, the nose isn’t so much like Verso’s— But it’s him. Even one sleeve of his jacket is pinned up to where his arm is missing … the prosthetic arm that ran so easily on Chroma and Lumina impossible here.
Alicia realizes she’s shaking.
He waves goodbye to his companion and turns the corner. Alicia cannot help herself when she chases after him.
She follows him at a distance, just barely keeping keeping up, her throat searing with every breath. He walks briskly through unfamiliar corridors and alleyways and Alicia starts to think she’s getting lost when he stops and she realizes they’re in the Engineer’s district. The Engineers haven’t had much to do with either the Painters or the Writers, leaving the conflict of the artists aside while they do— whatever it is they do.
She's… so glad he's still an engineer.
He pulls open a door leading to a crooked building and vanishes.
For a long time, Alicia stands on the street, staring at the building. It’s an atelier … a workshop, the engineers call it. She can just barely see movement in the window for a moment … a sign flipping around to show it’s open. Maybe she could—
Alicia gets home a bit later than intended and thanks heaven that Clea isn’t there to ban her from leaving the manor at all.
It takes her a few days of retracing her steps, but she does manage to find the workshop again. There’s no convenient bench or park across the street to inconspicuously sit at, so she tries to pace up and down the road, occasionally peeking in, trying to catch a glimpse of the man inside.
He keeps strange hours — opening his workshop long after other ateliers and studios have opened, closing at random throughout the day for errands. It’s inconceivable to imagine him sleeping late, leaving work to wander around and socialize, but that seems to be the reality.
After a week, she makes a promise to herself to stop. He is not her — he is not Maelle’s brother. And after all the pain of having Verso’s canvas ripped away from her, she can’t let herself—
It is, unfortunately, the day she promises is the last the same day he catches her.
Alicia watches the workshop entrance from a few doors down when he clears his throat behind her and nearly makes her jump out of her skin.
“Think you might like to… actually come inside this time?”
She spins around and gapes up at him.
Gustave.
“I don’t blame you, for the record. My first apprenticeship, I think I lurked outside for a fortnight. It’s just, uh, sensible to do a little reconnaissance.”
It’s Gustave’s voice, but lighter and more relaxed than she’s ever heard it. No jangled nerves, no problems finishing his sentences. But why wouldn’t that be the case? There is no Gommage here, outside the canvas. He’s had a full life, with friends and family around him.
Alicia feels sick, suddenly, for intruding on this man’s life, just because he looks like the dead brother of a person she pretended to be.
If he notices her mortification, he ignores it.
“The Engineer’s Consortium sent you, right? You’re my new apprentice?”
And though she knows she absolutely shouldn’t, Alicia nods, unable to tear her gaze away when he smiles at her like he used to.
“Ha, here I was thinking they’d been ignoring my application again. Pleasant surprises. I brought breakfast —"he nods to a paper bag from a nearby bakery tucked under his arm, “Uh, well, lunch by now, I guess. Hope you weren’t waiting long.”
He strolls past her, before looking back to her over his shoulder, “Ettiene, by the way, if the Consortium didn’t tell you.”
Alicia feels foolishly caught off that his name isn’t Gustave.
Ettiene doesn’t wait for her to answer with her own name as he strides forward to unlock the workshop door.
“Ready to get started?”
Alicia pauses again. She should stop this now, she should run home and forget this man with her (Maelle’s) brother’s face.
But she nods again and steps inside the workshop.