Chapter Text
The first breath of Gustave’s new life tastes like roses. The second, iron.
Sensation comes back in one, overwhelming wave—blinding light, voices, warmth, the uneven tread of cobblestones under his long thin-worn boots. From nothingness to everything in a moment. He doubles over, gasping, clutching his chest. His fingers twitch and scratch against his shirt, expecting the slip and stick of his own coagulating blood, but only finding dry, clean cloth. He claws deeper, as though the cavity that the white haired man had left between his ribs might be hiding just below his skin. Still nothing. His shirt is as fresh as the day he got it, his blood and organs all neatly nestled back inside his rib cage.
But that isn’t right. He remembers. He remembers the strike, the blade that pierced through him, the pain, Maelle’s cries, the cold, cold stone of those cliffs as he fell to the ground, as his eyesight faded, as he died—
Someone is talking to him. He should probably listen. He can’t make out the words, his own stubborn heartbeat pounding cacophonously in his ears, but he forces himself to look up. When he does, he finds himself staring into a pair of familiar eyes, framed by unfamiliar hair.
“Maelle?” he says, disbelieving.
Her face is the same, albeit bruised, dishevelled, and with specks of what looks like dried blood splattered across her cheeks and forehead. It’s the hair that changed—and the clothes, he realises. Where her distinct copper hair was once pulled up into a high ponytail (“It always gets in the way if I don’t,” she used to complain), now it falls in loose, white curtains around her face. Her expedition uniform is gone, replaced with some kind of black skirt ensemble and a ruffled blouse Gustave suspects was once white, now so covered in dirt and grime he can’t be entirely certain.
Before he gets the chance to analyse any further, she rushes forward and tackles him with a hug.
“I missed you so much,” she sobs into his shoulder. She’s shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
What else can he do but hug her back?
“I’m here. Shh, it’s okay, I’m right here.” The words come to him as reflex, that sort of parental instinct for care that rushes forward before his thoughts can even stand up.
Another pair of arms wrap around Gustave from the side, and another—Sciel and Lune, he realises—and then the jostle of more layering on them in turn somehow, until he’s in the centre of a tight group hug.
“Welcome back,” Lune says, almost casual, but her voice is thick and wavering, and Gustave realises with horror that she might be on the verge of crying as well.
“It’s good to see you,” Sciel says. She isn’t crying, for some blessing, but the grip of her arms around him is so tight that Gustave is worried she might break his newly-fixed ribs.
“This is so nice,” Esquie’s voice booms from above. “I love hugs.”
Another voice, this one deep and unfamiliar, chimes in behind him. “I don’t know you, but I wanted to be included. Hi.”
A little overwhelmed and more than a little baffled, it is all Gustave can do to try to pat the people around him reassuringly, although the way his arms are trapped beneath the others’ means his pats come out more like floundering hand flaps than anything resembling intentional movement. His bionic arm is back too, he realises, fully functional.
The bodies around him crowd out his vision, but from the glimpse he can see of their surroundings, Gustave gleans one key piece of information about his situation: they must be in Lumière. Albeit, a thoroughly wrecked Lumière.
The city has always been in some state of disrepair since the Fracture—stone shattered and scattered across the sky in gravity-defying clouds; entire buildings and streets blocked by wreckage; furniture and clothes and instruments left behind as drifting vagrants on the streets after every Gommage. Now, though? This is different. He recognises the remains of battle. Scorched stone and broken statues litter the ground. The air stinks of smoke and ozone, tinging the entire sky a deep, stormy grey. Save the rumbling of the storm and the distant sound of waves crashing against the edge of the harbour, it is eerily silent. There is no one around but them.
Gustave clears his throat and does his best to affect being calm. “Not that I’m not enjoying the uh, attention and group hug, but, uh, can anyone explain what’s going on? I mean—Lumière, Maelle’s hair, the—how am I…”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Maelle says with a shaky laugh, pulling away from him just enough to wipe away her tears. “It will take a while to get through everything, but the most important thing is… we won, Gustave. We won. The Paintress is gone and… and I know everything looks like a mess right now, but I’m going to fix it all. I promise.” She smiles at him as she says it, eyes still gleaming.
The words process slowly in his mind, drip by drip. Some subconscious force drags his gaze to the side, over everyone’s heads, to the monolith, far past the edge of this harbour—his eternal compass point—and sure enough, that carved 33 is gone. The monolith still stands, but something new is carved there now, glowing words he can’t quite make out between the fog and the distance.
No one sits at the monolith’s base.
The Paintress is really gone.
They won.
They won.
How long has he waited to hear that? How many years spent researching, training, desperate to the point of invention in the hopes that they would finally be the ones to stop the cycle? How long has he lived in the shadow of that monolith, watching the Gommage of friends, family, loved ones, dreaming of a world they could gift to the next generation with pride and not guilt?
It's all he ever wanted. He should be ecstatic! And yet, his heart sits heavy in his chest, and he can’t help but notice there is something hollow in Maelle's expression. Something off. Something distinctly not… Maelle.
Maybe he's imagining it. Or the hair might just throwing him off. She must be exhausted, after all, after whatever has gone on. It will all make sense once she explains, and if there are any problems, he's sure they'll be able to sort it out together, just like they've always done. He’s sure of it.
(The light shudders, inverts. Rain and dirt and blood force Gustave's eyes shut in a squint. He can barely see, but he summons up every last bit energy left in his dying body and rushes forward, blade aloft, only for the older man to cut through him like butter, like he is nothing, like all this time none of them were even the slightest shadow of a threat—)
Gustave blinks back into the present. Maelle falls back into the hug and the others smile at him. Gustave swallows, smiles back, hugs back, and does his best to believe all is truly well, even as his stomach twists and churns with sourceless anxiety.