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—In this Canvas that they’ve shaped with love, loss and grief
The cafe is less crowded than usual this late in the afternoon. Gustave picks up the Lumière Gazette along with two croissants and takes them to a small table in the corner he always favours, by the large window overlooking the main street.
When he’s mostly finished with the paper and trying to decide whether he wants to continue reading the article on the new planting rosters for the main community garden—without Sophie to inspire him, Cyril’s article qualities seem to be suffering, despite the abundance of new materials to write from—someone slides onto the chair across from his.
"You’re running late today." Gustave pushes a plate with a croissant across the table without looking up. "How did the Council meeting go?"
"On the contrary," says a voice that is decidedly not Lune’s, "I seem to be exactly on time."
Gustave looks up. It takes a second longer than it should for him to place the familiar face of the woman sitting across from him in a sophisticated red dress and a matching beret.
Or rather, not as familiar as it should’ve been.
Gustave folds the newspaper and gets to his feet. "Mademoiselle Dessendre."
Clea Dessendre offers him her hand. "Call me Clea." Her sharp smile doesn’t reach her eyes. "As I understand it, we’re practically family."
He holds her hand for a moment before letting it go and taking his seat again. "Clea, it is, then."
Clea Dessendre isn’t, Gustave realizes, going to be an easy person to read. Or maybe it’s the tension between his shoulders that’s giving him a pause. Confronting the Painters has never been his favourite pastime, and she seems almost fundamentally different from their Clea, who is reserved and quiet, and still remains painfully haunted—all due to what this woman, currently sitting across from him, has done to her.
Gustave consciously loosens his shoulders. "What brings you back to Lumière?"
She breaks one corner of the croissant and takes a delicate bite. "Decent," she assesses, almost clinical with her pronouncement, and turns her gaze to him. Her smile widens a little, even though it still doesn’t reach her eyes. "I was curious to see what you’ve made of this place. Especially since both my mother and my sister are finding it so difficult to stay away from here."
"Should we be concerned?" Gustave asks calmly.
"Oh, do relax. I’m not here to start anything nefarious. Alicia did hide this Canvas particularly well. Even I would’ve had a difficult time finding it, and Maman’s heart is not quite in it anymore. And if I lift a finger against you, Alicia will fight me tooth and nail, and at the moment I can’t afford her as a distraction."
"Can’t you?"
His question, cool and quiet, brings a small, amused lift to her lips. "You’re not quite how you were described."
Before Gustave could decide whether it’d be a good idea to ask how exactly he’s been described, Clea continues, "I do mean it when I say I’d rather not have Alicia fighting me. I suppose I do owe you for that a little. She’s matured a lot during her time here. She came home ready to claw and bite against the threats against her family, even holding the fort during my absences. Not the type of growth I’d expected from her, to be honest."
Her fingernails, varnished in deep red, linger along the edge of the plate, almost absently. "And given how her definition of family seems to now extend to you and the entirety of this Canvas, I’d rather not break the equilibrium while it’s serving me perfectly well. Does that put your mind a little at ease?"
It would have to do, Gustave thinks sardonically, given they have no other choice. "And how’s Mae—" Gustave catches himself, only just barely. "Alicia? Is she well?"
She allows his faux pas, but not the question itself. "Come now," says Clea, almost reproachful. "I know she returns here often enough to galavant around the Canvas with you; you’ve very well had sufficient chances to see for yourself exactly how well she is."
"I’d still like to hear your thought. On how she is when she’s back home, if you wouldn’t mind sharing it."
The smile almost reaches her eyes this time. "In that case, yes, she is doing rather well. Her Painting has improved, even if there isn’t any chance of her becoming next Aline. But then again, who does? I’d say Alicia does have the right balance of strategic mind and initiative that Maman actually lacks. Given a little more time, I think she may even thrive and play an important role in the ongoing conflict." She tilts her head to one side. "Is that what you were hoping for? My honest assessment?"
It may have been too much, Gustave thinks, to ask for her assessment to include something outside of Maelle’s value as a strategic chess piece in the war against the Writers. "It was. Thank you," Gustave says, even though what he’s truly wanted to know was whether Maelle was happy back home. But then again, he isn’t certain whether Clea would even know the true answer. "This ongoing conflict with the Writers. Alicia has also mentioned it. Is a compromise with them at all a possibility? Or a truce?"
"They killed my brother," Clea says, and her face is smooth as marble, entirely free of emotions. "And I don’t forgive easily."
It’s hard not to wonder, once again, what the Dessendres would have been like without this tragedy. How it would’ve shaped and changed Clea Dessendre, and how it would’ve been different from the version that he’s seeing in front of him. Even harder to contemplate is the idea that none of Lumière would’ve existed without said tragedy. "Forgiveness isn’t necessarily needed for a compromise if your goal is to lessen future casualties," Gustave points out mildly, "but if that’s off the table, would you accept our offer of assistance?"
"Oh?" She raises an elegant eyebrow. To her credit, it’s not entirely mocking. "What do you have on offer?"
It’s a thought he’s had some time to consider, and to expand on with the help of his colleagues in the engineering lab at the Academy. "I understand most of your industrial machines operate on steam and electricity. If you’d like, we can run any of your industrial research here and facilitate it with our engineers. We can go a lot further with a lot shorter time span compared to what it’d take outside the Canvas. If successful, it may still give you an advantage in addition to your own Painted powers that you can use back in your world."
She taps her fingers on her lips, slow and rhythmic. "Not a bad attempt," she says, almost approvingly. "Proving your worth to me to ensure my good graces. Hedging bets, are we?"
"Our survival, as you say, depends on your good graces. Making ourselves even just a little valuable to you is the least we can do, even though none of this would ever begin to make up for the power imbalance. And—"
Clea prompts, "And?"
Gustave hesitates for a moment before he admits, more honestly than he’d have wished, "And if anything I can do here could help protect Maelle outside, I’d do it in a heartbeat."
It is still difficult to read any thought from Clea’s face, with her smooth, impenetrable veneer in place, but something small, and subtle, shifts in her eyes.
"And I’d honestly be surprised," Gustave adds, "if you haven’t already been experimenting with similar possibilities in other Canvases of your making. You’d already have, at the very least, entertained similar concepts. If you would like to put any of them to test, it may be something we can facilitate here, something that might be of value."
"You’re right. You wouldn’t be surprised, because I have entertained such thoughts," Clea says, at length. "And your offer is, shall we say, not uninteresting. I will consider it."
There’s a hint of flickering amusement on her face, then. "Also, there’s really no need to underestimate the value of this Canvas. Even our best creations in other Canvases, as magnificent as they are, fall short in comparison. Granted, we can make all manners of fantastical beings come to life, but none of them is," she says, flicking her hand in the air, "you, for instance."
She leans over to him, and catches an edge of his shirt collar between her thumb and index finger. Amusement settles on her face as she runs her fingers down and flattens his collar against the shirt.
"It is remarkable," she observes, lifting her hand to skim the line of his jaw with the tips of her fingers. "What my mother has achieved with you."
Gustave thinks, distantly, of himself at the Manor, appraising the sculpted Nevrons with detached curiosity and little concern for the beings that still, no matter their purpose, lived.
He feels cold, and perhaps more than a little furious. "Don’t," he says, quiet, grasping her fingers with his and pulling them away from his face.
She tips her head to the side and drops her hand. One corner of her lips curls up. "Oh dear, I made you mad," she says, with feigned contrition. "And to think Alicia paints such a lovely picture of you. Kindhearted, generous, and all so forgiving. I was beginning to believe you were positively fictional. Her description wasn’t altogether completely accurate, was it?"
"We trend towards being far more forgiving with those we love." With not inconsiderable effort, Gustave keeps his voice calm and even. "At least, here in this Canvas."
"Touché." She leans her face against her palm. "But it really is rather remarkable, the way this Canvas breathed its own life and made the world its own. It would be a shame to see all of this destroyed. But of course I would, if I must."
He’s well aware how unwise it is to provoke a god who could instantly erase everything and everyone he’s ever loved—except perhaps for one. He's had more than his share of experiences where he's had to martial his own words, painstakingly and exactingly, for the survival of himself and his loved ones.
And yet. "Tell me," says Gustave, "do you take pleasure in engendering existential crises everywhere you go, or just to those who can’t possibly defend themselves from you? Or is there no difference?"
But his sharp words, in fact, only seem to delight her. "Oh, don’t sell yourself short. From where I’m sitting, you seem to be handling all of these rampant crises, existential or otherwise, with such aplomb. And what’s life without a few challenges?"
Whichever thought she seems to be able to read from his face in answer to that only widens her smile. "I really must wonder. What makes you, this Canvas, so different?"
Gustave, unbidden, thinks of a little lost boy without a face, who, even now, continues to fade.
Love and loss, he thinks. And grief.
And Clea is clearly also thinking of the same. "Love, is it? But that’s what brought us all of this mess along with it, don’t you think?"
"I don’t disagree. But without it, none of us would be here." Even you, Gustave doesn’t add.
"Fair, but it also complicates things. If imbuing something so inherently unquantifiable as love into a Canvas is a requirement for recreating an exquisite rarity like you, it wouldn’t be exactly easy to duplicate, would it? And I’m not as irresponsible as my mother or my brother to leave anything I love behind in a Canvas."
"You have left something behind."
Her smile thins. "That thing walking around in this Canvas wearing my brother’s face is not my brother."
If she expects him to bristle at that, she would have to be disappointed. "Francois," says Gustave.
The way her face turns ever so carefully blank grants him a little hope—that this Clea may still be human, and that something like mercy may still be expected. "I don’t think there was a single minute in the last few decades when he hasn’t missed you."
Gustave learns of his mistake when her smile gradually turns sharp, with serrated edges. "It’s a good thing, then, that you and your expeditioners were able to heroically set your Clea free to roam this world, isn’t it? Since now he can see her as often as he’s always wished?"
Gustave almost, but not quite, closes his eyes. At this realization that he should've seen coming. "Is this why you are here?"
Her smile, still, does not reach her eyes. And her silence is an answer enough.
"Don’t," Gustave hears himself say, edged with desperation that he can no longer hide from his voice. His hand on the table curls in on itself. Impotent. "She’s already suffered enough for several lifetimes. It costs you nothing to leave her be. Please."
"Are you asking for my mercy? For my compassion?" Clea sounds genuinely curious, and also more than a little chastising. "It seems rather uncharacteristically unwise of you."
Love. Loss. And grief, thinks Gustave.
And how they, too, would’ve shaped and changed this Clea Dessendre.
"You may believe mercy a failing, that compassion achieves nothing of value," says Gustave, quiet. "But here, there’s little else that we have left. Little else that matters more."
For a moment, she only watches him, her impeccable veneer still in place.
"It’s quite a feeling, I admit," she muses, long into the silence, "realizing you’re seen as a grotesque monster by these mere—pigments that you didn’t even believe truly existed."
Her eyes still reveal nothing of what he could read. But— "Didn’t?" Gustave asks, mildly.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, with a faint smile curving her face once again, she pushes herself up from the chair. "Well, I certainly occupied enough of your time. This was—enjoyable. I would say we should do this more often, except I get the feeling you didn’t enjoy it quite as much."
He stands up after her. "One tends to have some difficulty enjoying a conversation," he tells her, wry, "where one wrong word could raze an entire world."
"Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’d say you’ve acquitted yourself very well. Exemplary, even."
She rounds the corner of the table and lightly kisses his cheek. Gustave, very carefully, does not move.
"It’s a lovely evening, and your city is indeed beautiful," she says before stepping away. "I think I’ll take a walk around your city of lights before heading back home. Goodnight, Gustave."
Just as she reaches the doorway of the cafe, she turns on her heels again, with a little swirl of her dress and another smile.
"Oh, and tell your Clea hi for me, would you? I don’t believe I’ll be needing to see her again."
It takes a long moment, until well after the red silhouette slips into the evening crowd outside and disappears completely from his gaze, for Gustave to be able to relax again, as if his body needs to relearn how to breathe with ease.
He’s still watching the streets when Lune enters the cafe, looking harried.
"Sorry I’m late," says Lune, also sounding harried. "You won’t believe where the Council wants us to go next for the Expedition—okay, wait, did you eat my croiss—"
She stops instantly when she catches his eyes. "What is it," Lune asks, sobering.
He doesn’t know how to answer. His eyes linger outside just for a moment longer, in search of an answer he could still give.
Love, loss and grief. The things that shaped this Canvas and made his city ever so luminous. He wonders if Clea could ever find them again, in their city of lights or elsewhere. The things that also shaped her.
In this Canvas that they've shaped with love, loss and grief. And hope.
Always hope.
There’s no spectre of the red silhouette haunting the streets of Lumière—or any remnants of Clea’s smile, one that never seems to reach her eyes. Save, perhaps, for that last moment.
Gustave moves his croissant, one that’s remained untouched, onto Lune’s plate.
"We should drop by the Manor at the Old Lumière before the next expedition," he tells his friend, and finds a small smile on his face. "We may have something good to share with Clea."
END