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Despite everything, Maelle still talks to Verso, deep inside her head.
Or at least, to the ghost of him. To his grave.
Sciel once told her that pretending—imagining how they would react, what they would say—could ease the grief. Maelle hadn’t believed it then and she doesn’t believe it now, but when the silence stretches too wide, when the air sits too still, she pretends.
She still visits the grave, even though it feels wrong. The Verso in her memory was warmth, laughter, life—all things this cold stone can never give back. But she goes anyway, because there, for a little while, she can almost fool herself into thinking he’s still there, and it helps, in a sad, lonely way.
Most of the time, Maelle stays until her legs burn and her back stiffens, until the weight of time presses down harder than the grief. And when she finally rises, a quiet, cruel thought lingers: One day, she will have spent more hours with this slab of rock than she ever did with her living, breathing brother.
But she’ll return tomorrow. And the day after. And every day after that.
Because as long as she keeps speaking, as long as she whispers his name into the air, the past stays alive—and, for a fleeting moment, so does he. It’s a fragile, desperate kind of magic, this delusion.
But it’s a lie she clings to with both hands, because the alternative is silence.
And silence, cruel and complete. means accepting that he’s truly gone.
So she talks, and she pretends, and she aches, and she comes back, over and over, as if her grief alone could keep him from fading from her memory completely.
It was a windy morning the first time Maelle visited the place alone. Above, the clouds hung low and heavy, smothering the sun until the world felt muted, the type of weather that made the world seem a little more gray, a little more wrong. Not rainy but not sunny, just caught in between. The trees lashed wildly in the wind, shaking off their leaves with such force that the rustling almost sounded like voices—whispers from those long gone, if one dared to believe.
The girl stood before the grave, watching the wind ripple through the grass, exhaling and inhaling, her breath coming up unsteady, just trying to measure the words that would first come out of her mouth as if he could still hear her. As if anything less than kindness would disappoint him.
"I’m quite angry at you,” is all she manages to spit out, the words hanging between her and the stone, brittle as dried leaves. She pressed her lips together, as if to trap the rest of the sentence inside—you left me, you left me, you left me—but it didn’t matter. The wind carried them away before they could take shape.
For a second, the word hate flickered through her mind, but she dismissed it just as quickly. She could never hate him. Not when they were kids and he stole the last piece of her favorite dessert, not when he teased her mercilessly, not even now, when he had chosen her life over his—twice.
Saying so would be a lie anyway.
They both knew the truth—the only one she could truly hate was herself.
And hate, she did. Maelle has come to hate a lot of things since his passing—the way her throat closed up, the way her anger dissolved into something helpless the moment she tried to hold onto it. She hated the world, hated his choices, hated the fact that he was gone and she was here, screaming at a slab of stone that would never, ever answer, no matter how much she wished it to.
Her knees buckled and she sank onto the grass, fingers brushing the cold edge of the headstone. She opened her mouth again—to say what? Nothing ever came.
But maybe that was for the better. Any words now would only be sad. She could feel it.
Maelle stayed there, motionless, until Papa’s hand settled on her shoulder, warm and steady. When she looked up, his eyes mirrored her own—fragile, like one wrong word might shatter him completely.
"Lunch is ready, dear. Will you join us?"
The please went unspoken, but she heard it anyway.
Nodding silently, she let him pull her up. As they walked away, she glanced back once—half expecting, half hoping to see him standing there, grinning at her like it had all been some stupid joke.
He didn’t.
She went back inside.
Despite the cruelty of it all, sometimes she’s grateful there’s a grave to shout at, to leave flowers on, to collapse beside in tears.
After all, not everyone got one.
The victims of the gommage didn’t. They vanished so completely as if even the earth refused to remember them. No bones to bury. No whispers left in the wind. Just absence, vast and unrelenting.
“It’s weird to wake up and not hear you play downstairs, Verso.”
She didn’t elaborate—just let the words hang in the air. It’s been months, and still, every morning, she expects him to be there. One day he existed, and the next he simply… didn’t.
Maelle sat down, arms wrapped around her knees, face pressed against them. She didn't cry, but something just as heavy settled in her chest—resignation, exhaustion, the weight of an ending that never truly ends. The relentless gnaw of after.
“I can’t believe I’ll never see any of you again.” Not Gustave. Not Sciel. Not Lune. Not Esquie. Not Monoco. Not Noco. Not— “None of you were real, I know that. But…”
She buried her face deeper, surrendering to the dark.
Gustave’s eyes, bright with pride whenever her inventions worked.
The training sessions with Sciel she will never have.
Lune’s quiet guitar drifting through the night.
Esquie’s hugs, warm enough to make the world feel a little more okay.
Monoco’s eager voice before a fight.
Noco’s laughter.
They were all gone. All of them.
Every stupid, fleeting moment. Every joke, every argument, every quiet breath between them. Erased.
"I keep waiting," she whispered, voice raw. "Like if I just sit here long enough, one of you will walk up behind me and say something stupid. Or if I turn around fast enough, I’ll catch a glimpse—just a shadow, just a flicker—of any of you."
A breeze stirred the leaves above her, a sound like hushed voices. She exhaled sharply, almost a laugh. "I know you’re not there. I know you were never there. But my stupid heart keeps—" Her throat closed.
She thought of Gustave’s rocks, sinking under water. Thought of Sciel’s smirk, the way he’d toss her a weapon without warning just to see if she’d catch it. Thought of Lune humming under her breath.
"It’s not fair."
Why her? Why was she the one left choking on nothing? On the shape of a laugh she’d never hear again? On the weight of a hand that had never truly touched her?
She dug her fingers into the grass, wishing she could rip the memories from her skull.
Perhaps she would have been better off with nothingness. Better to have emptiness than this—better to be hollow, a mere vessel of absence, than to linger here, choking on the almost, the might-have-been, the what-never-was.
"I will tell you something, but keep it between us, alright?" She started, "Or I will tell everyone about your depressive poems. You know, the ones where you begged the world to be kinder."
She’s not sure what response she was expecting from Verso. She doesn’t know why she was even saying this. Maybe this whole thing was all because the silence had grown teeth, and it was eating her alive.
Maelle can’t quite bring herself to say the truth right away, so she tiptoes around it, "Do you remember the stupid songs you used to play for me?"
The memory comes unbidden—her brother, sprawled on the floor of their old house, humming and grinning as he plucked out some ridiculous tune he’d made up on the spot. "This one’s for you," he’d say, before launching into something so off-key it made her groan and throw a pillow at him. But she’d laughed, too. She had always laughed.
Now, the piano sits in the corner, swallowing dust. No one ever played it. It was always his, after all.
But she’s seen the way their mother lingers near it sometimes, fingers hovering over the dust-covered keys before pulling away like she’s been burned. The way Renoir slows his steps when he passes it, as if waiting—hoping—for the music to start again. How Clea would look at it with a complicated expression on her face.
She is no better. She didn’t touch it. Couldn't bear to.
“I miss you, Verso. I really do,” the words clawed their way out of her throat before she could even think about them.
She misses him in ways she can’t even articulate. Misses the way he’d ruffle her hair when she was upset, the way he would make funny faces when their parents weren’t looking, how he’d stay up with her when nightmares clawed at the edges of her sleep.
She misses the sound of his voice. The warmth of his presence. The way he’d call her "little monster" when she was being difficult. How the world felt less heavy when he was around.
Maelle wants to say more—wants to tell him how the house feels like a museum of things that used to be alive, how every meal is shared with his empty chair. Every conversation is missing a voice. Sometimes, she still turns to say something to him—only to remember, all over again, that he’s gone.
"Right, here it goes," she breathes in, shaky, as if the words that were about to come out had their own gravity. "The truth is, I’m afraid I’m never going to be as happy as I was."
The admission hangs between them, heavy as a stone.
After all, how could she be?
Her voice is gone, stolen by fire and pain. Her face is a ruin, a testament to things she can’t take back. Her family moves through the days like actors in a play, reciting lines, pretending they’re okay. But the truth is in the silence. In the untouched piano. In the way no one says his name too loud, as if it might break something.
The house has become cold.
And Verso isn’t there to play his stupid songs anymore to fill it with laughter.
Outside, the world keeps turning. People laugh. Birds sing. The sun rises and sets like nothing has changed.
But everything has.
And she doesn’t know how to live in a world without him. Maelle doesn’t even know if she wants to.
She wonders, sometimes, if grief is just love with nowhere to go.
It festers inside her, a wound that won’t close. She carries it in the hollow of her ribs, in the quiet moments when she forgets—just for a second—that he’s gone.
Sometimes, Maelle just wants to scream until her voice shatters. She wants to claw at the piano until her fingers bleed, until the wood splinters under her nails—as if breaking it might somehow undo the breaking inside her. She wants to dig her hands into the earth and drag him back, to shake the heavens until they cough him up, until the universe admits it made a mistake.
But she doesn’t, because she knows the world doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t pause for the kind, the gentle, the brothers, the ones who never got to live at all. It just swallows—relentless, indifferent, unfair.
So instead, she kneels in the grass, fingers tracing the cold letters of his name carved into stone. The wind whispers through the trees, but it doesn’t sound like him. Nothing does.
"Dinner’s almost ready," she murmurs, like she’s telling him a secret. "I’ll come back tomorrow, so…" Her throat tightens.
"Wait for me, okay?"
"He still waits for you by the door, you know?"
The late afternoon sun cast long shadows, painting the grass in hues of gold and amber. The air smelled of damp earth and the faint, lingering scent of wildflowers—something he would have liked.
The dog paid her no mind, simply content on laying right in front of the grave, his muzzle pressed against the cold stone. His tail, usually wagging at the slightest sound of footsteps, lay still against the grass.
Maelle knelt beside him, her knees sinking into the damp grass. She reached out, fingers trembling as they traced the headstone before settling into Noco’s fur. The dog didn’t react, he just exhaled, a slow, shuddering breath that made her own chest ache
"You miss him a lot, right, Noco?" Her throat tightened around the words, letting nothing but a few grunts where her voice was supposed to come. "You’re a loyal little guy, after all."
A low, mournful whine escaped him, so quiet she might have imagined it. But then, he turned his head slightly, just enough to press his wet nose against her wrist. She let out a shaky half-laugh, one that ended up dissolved into a sigh. "Well, guess that makes two of us."
Noco shifted then, dragging himself closer until his weight settled heavily against her side. His warmth was a small comfort and she buried her fingers in his fur, gripping tight, as if he alone could keep her from drifting away.
They sat like that for a long time, with the sounds of rustling leaves and the distant call of a crow, until the sun dipped lower, staining the sky in bruised purples and pinks.
Finally, Maelle took a slow breath.
"I started painting something," she admitted, her voice quieter now, like a secret meant only for the grave to hear. "It’s... I don’t even know what it is yet. Just colors, mostly. Blues and greens. Like the sea." She hesitated, chewing her lip. "Maman doesn’t know about it. Not yet, anyway."
Her fingers absently traced the edge of the headstone.
"I want you to be the first to know when it’s finished."
A laugh, bright and sudden, echoed in her memory. "Show me the second it’s done! No, scratch that—show me while you’re still working on it. I want to see the messy parts too."
The ghost of his grin flickered behind her eyelids, that eager, unwavering faith he’d always had in her—even when she had none in herself. Almost as if the only painting she was only allowed to put in the walls of the manor wasn’t so small it almost disappeared. "It’s gonna be incredible. I already know it."
A quiet breath escaped her. And then, against the silence threatening to crush her ribs, she smiled. Because she knew, with the same certainty as sunrise, that if Verso had his way, every wall in the manor would wear her art like a second skin.
Maelle hesitated at the edge of the grave, fingers twisting together before she forced them still.
"So. Today is your birthday."
Biting her lip, she turned away—just for a second—before circling the headstone with slow, dragging steps, her arms wrapped tight around herself.
"I don’t… know what to think about that," a brittle laugh. "So I guess I won’t."
Kneeling, she placed the rock in front of the grave with trembling hands. Smooth, sun-warmed—she’d carried it in her pocket since yesterday, polishing it absently while her thoughts frayed.
"This one’s for Esquie." Her thumb brushed over the stone once more before pulling back. "I tried to think of something for you, but… you were always happiest when they were." A pause. The wind rustled the grass, indifferent. "So. There."
She swallowed, throat tight.
"Maybe it’s for Gustave too. I mean—He liked rocks. Or throwing them. Doesn’t matter." A weak shrug. "It’s for all of you. For every dream that—" She stopped. Shut her eyes. "For every dream that couldn’t go far enough, no matter how hard we tried to throw it."
"I didn’t… want today to be sad." She admitted, with a weak chuckle. "Maman hasn’t left her room all day. We can hear her crying through the door. Papa keeps bringing her tea, but she won’t drink it. Clea’s just… gone. And you—" Her breath hitched. "You’d hate this. You’d tell us to stop. To laugh instead."
She sank onto the grass, the familiar dip of her usual spot yielding beneath her. The earth remembered her grief better than she did.
"I made your favorite breakfast," she whispered. "Burnt the edges a little. Got the pastries from that bakery you liked—the one with the awful pink sign. The owner asked about you. I didn’t know what to say. And I…" A shaky inhale.
"I tried to play one of your songs. On the piano, I mean. It sounded terrible. You would’ve made fun of me."
A wet, fractured laugh escaped her—more a sob than anything else. She pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes, shoulders hunching like the weight of the sky had settled there.
"I just… wanted to remember you, without the weight of everything that went wrong, you know? Without the—the guilt, the what-ifs. I just wanted to remember my brother. As he was. Not as he—"
She cut herself off, jaw clenched so tight it ached.
"A selfish part of me is glad they are all like this, to be honest," she admitted, voice hollow. "Nowadays… maman smiles sometimes. She hums while making tea. Dad doesn’t flinch when someone says your name anymore. And Clea talks about the future now. Like it’s something that still exists."
Her fingers twisted in the grass, ripping blades free.
"I was afraid of being the only one left like this. Stuck. Never moving on, even when I know you’re never coming back. But I guess everyone is still the same, we just pretend better."
A tear hit the back of her hand. She didn’t wipe it away.
"I don’t know how to let go. Tell me, Verso—" Her voice fractured. "What do I do with all this love that has nowhere to go?"
"Clea said I should leave the house more," she murmured, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. "So I did."
“I was afraid, though. People don’t look at me the same after the fire. It’s always… pity. Or worse—fear. Like I’m the monster under their bed now. I guess no one knows what to do with the girl whose brother died."
"But then I thought… it wasn’t that different in Lumière, really. The whispers, the sideways glances. So I told myself, It can’t be worse here." She let out a humorless laugh. "Turns out, I was right."
"Surprisingly, it was… nice. The town’s changed. The old fountain in the square? They finally fixed it—water actually sprays properly now, not just that sad little trickle we used to laugh at. And the bookstore we used to go to is filled with bright red flowers. I think you’d hate them. I know I do."
A faint smile took form on her face, there and gone.
"I sat at that café you loved, the one with the terrible striped umbrellas. Ordered the too-sweet hot chocolate you always teased me for liking. The foam was stale. You were right—it’s better with espresso."
"It’s strange," she admitted. "Seeing the world move on like it didn’t end. Like it wasn’t supposed to keep you in it."
She pressed her palm flat against the grass, cool and alive beneath her fingers.
"But… it was nice, too. To remember the world didn’t end when you left."
"I finally finished the painting," she said, voice barely above a whisper as she carefully unrolled the canvas. Her fingers trembled slightly against the edges. "The one I kept telling you about. I made... a world of my own there."
She held it up against the gray sky, the vibrant blues and purples glowing like stained glass. The colors shifted as the wind moved the canvas - deep ocean blues melting into twilight violets, with flecks of silver like distant stars.
"It's not the same as before," she admitted, tracing a finger along a swirling nebula of color. "But I'm happy there. In this world... there are no goodbyes. No sadness that lingers like smoke after a fire. Just... quiet. And peace." Her thumb pressed against a particularly bright patch of cerulean, as if trying to press herself into the pigment.
"Look," she pointed to a cluster of violet strokes in the corner. "That's where I sit sometimes. I can watch the colors change without... without it hurting."
Then, suddenly, violently, she crumpled forward, the canvas pressed against her chest as her whole body shook.
"Verso," she gasped, the name tearing out of her like a sob. "Why did you die in my place? Why did you—" Her nails dug into the painting, leaving crescent moons in the soft surface. "I miss you so much. Every day. And I can't— I can't forgive you for that. I can't forgive myself for still being here when you're—"
She choked on the words, pressing her forehead against the cold stone. The painting, now slightly crumpled, slipped from her fingers to land in the grass, facing upward like a window to another world.
"After you died," she whispered, "It's like all the color drained from everything. Like someone turned down the sun. The world keeps moving but it's... grayer. Slower. Heavier. Almost as if you took all the happiness with you too." A tear fell onto the canvas, blooming into the purple like a new star.
Her fingers brushed the wet spot absently. "But there... in the painting... I can pretend. Just for a little while. I can be someone who isn't broken. Someone who might smile sincerely again someday."
Maelle carefully smoothed out the wrinkles in the canvas, her touch surprisingly gentle now. "I'll bring it again, next time," she promised, voice raw. "When it's more complete. When I've... when I've added more happy things."
"And why is it," came Clea's voice, sharp as the click of her boots on the gravel path, "That every time I go looking for you, you're always here, my sister dear?" She stopped just behind Maelle, arms crossed. The late afternoon sun casting her shadow long over the grave. "One might start thinking the stone is you, not him."
Maelle didn’t turn. Just grunted, low and dismissive.
Clea exhaled through her nose. "When you left the dinner table, dad was worried. Mom too, even when she pretended she wasn't. It would do you good to come here less."
Maelle’s jaw tightened, remaining silent. What good would answering do? Her sister only ever listened to the words she wanted to hear anyway.
A beat. Then, grudgingly: "Do you… talk to him?"
Maelle nodded slowly, a little taken back by the question.
Clea shifted. The stern line of her shoulders softened, just barely. "…I do too," she admitted, voice quieter now. "Not here. But… everywhere else. The kitchen. The garden. That stupid corner of the living room where he kept all of Monoco’s toys."
Her thumb rubbed absently over her wrist, where a faint scar—Verso’s doing, from some long-ago accident when they were kids—still marked her skin. "Sometimes I still yell at him for leaving them everywhere. Then it hits me."
Maelle finally glanced up, noticing that Clea wasn’t looking at her—her gaze was fixed somewhere beyond the trees, her usual stone face replaced by nothing but tiredness. It was surprising to her, but, in the end, when all was said and done, Clea loved Verso just as much as everyone else.
"Do you ever think—" She stopped, as if the words were barbed in her throat. "Do you ever think, ‘Am I allowed to be this happy again?’ Like you shouldn’t be? Like he should be here instead?"
Maelle went very still.
Clea didn’t wait for an answer. "If you do… don’t." Her voice was firm, but not unkind. "It was your fault. But it was his choice too. And you forgetting that—you acting like your life is yours to throw away after he gave it—that’s the real insult." She turned her head just enough to meet Maelle’s eyes. "He chose you. So live. Be happy. Because if you don’t, then what was it for?"
"And before you say it—no, it’s not that simple. I know. I’m angry too. At you. At him. At the universe. But the soup’s getting cold, and maman’s trying, and you—" She reached out, hesitated, then flicked Maelle’s shoulder—a ghost of their old bickering. "—you still have a long way to go."
Clea let out a slow, shaky breath. "Come home, Maelle.”
Her older sister didn't offer a hand. Didn't soften. Just turned away and started walking, the space between her shoulder blades saying everything: I'm here. I'm waiting. But you have to move yourself.
And Maelle did, albeit clumsily. One foot. Then the other.
The colors seemed to breathe inside the painting.
Maelle dipped her brush into liquid gold—not pigment but memory made tangible—and traced the outline of a new friend. Narrow shoulders where his were broad. A closed-lipped smile where his used to split his face like sunlight. She didn't intend for them to look alike at all, but when the light pools just right at dusk...
There.
A tilt of the head that’s too familiar. A laugh that rings in a way that cracks her ribs open.
She didn’t correct it.
Verso was gone. She knows this in the way she knows the sun will rise—inevitable, merciless. The truth already made home in her bones.
But… she still sees him, sometimes.
Not just in the smudged edges of her paintings, but in the living world—in the way she still hums his old songs, even when the notes scrape her throat raw. In the ridiculous tower of Noco’s toys teetering in the corner of her room, because "You can never have too many," he’d say, grinning. In the mirror, when she scowls and—just for a second—it’s his stubborn frown staring back.
She plays his favorite symphonies now, the ones she used to groan at, and tries to hear them the way he did. She bleeds yellow into every canvas because he once told her it was the color of happiness. She makes pancakes on Sunday mornings, flipping them the way he taught her, because Maelle misses doing so with him. She greets strangers on the street because he did it first.
Verso is gone.
But not from the way her hands move when she tries to convey an idea to someone. Not from the recipes she can't stop making. Not from the colors she chooses or the songs she endures or the extra kindness she gives to the world on his behalf.
He lives now where all loved ghosts eventually settle—in the quiet spaces between heartbeats, in the shadow of every decision, in the person she's becoming because she knew him.
As long as she remembers, as long as she breathes:
Verso lives.
The sun dipped below the horizon as Maelle stood at her window, fingers resting against the cool glass. For the first time since returning from the painted world—since seeing that familiar tilt of a head in brushstrokes—she didn't walk the path to the grave.
The unfinished canvas leaned against her desk, still wet in places. A new figure stood beside her painted self, their hands almost touching. Not Verso. Not Gustave. But someone who carried their warmth in the curve of their smile.
"For all those who came before, right?" The thought settled inside her mind, not bitter, but not quite sweet. Like the first sip of tea after it's cooled.
She didn't visit as often after that.
And somewhere beyond—somewhere spun from golden light and the whisper of turning pages—Verso and Gustave laughed, bright as sunlight dust.
They were alright.
And now, at last, she would be too.