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"Your fever’s still a bit high," his sister tells him, her palm on his forehead. A tiny frown has found its way onto her face and is showing no sign of leaving any time soon. "You sure I shouldn’t stay home with you?"
"You do know I can actually take care of myself, right? I’m thirty-three, not ten."
Though, Gustave has to admit, the fact that he’s currently bedridden and likely looking—and to be very fair, also feeling—pitiful probably doesn’t reinforce his point as well as he’d personally like.
"Mm-hmm." Sure enough, Emma is giving him this familiar doubtful look that he knows she often ends up giving the Council members. "You say that now, but two days ago you fell flat on your face trying to get down to the kitchen."
"I’m going to be fine, Emma. And you have a city to run. I certainly don’t need you lingering at home and doing nothing with your time when I’ll just be sleeping through the whole day again."
Emma still doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she does finally relent, though not before giving him another look-over and ordering him sternly: "But you will let me know if and when you do need anything."
He would’ve rolled his eyes if he had the energy for it. "Out," he tells her instead, gesturing toward the door. "Go on, shoo."
He watches her leave, and thinks how there was actually a time when he’d convinced himself that Emma, always self-assured and unfaltering, had already come to terms with losing him to the expedition or the Gommage, whichever came first, as most of the younger siblings in Lumière were forced to. That changed once she came home from reading the detailed versions of the expedition journals and the briefing reports, not the sanitized version for the public.
"When are you going to realize lying to your sister about how badly everything could’ve gone—how badly it actually went—isn’t a smart move when she’s going to be reading all about them in detail from the official reports?" she asked, after giving him a long, wordless hug that broke his heart a little.
"I wasn’t lying—exactly? I just underplayed it, at most. Maybe."
She gave him a fully exasperated look that was patented by all long-suffering sisters of the world. "I’d love to tell you never to do it again, except I already know you’ll do it again."
He didn’t deny it. It really wasn’t going to do much good when Emma already knew him too well. Instead, he hugged her again.
Despite what he’s told Emma, he’s finding it hard to go back to sleep now. It still feels odd to be at home at this hour—not at the Academy, not at the lab or the library, not even out in the field for expeditions—and have the quiet house to himself.
Gustave slowly heaves himself up from the bed and makes his way downstairs, taking extra care not to fall flat on his face again, mostly to avoid hearing Emma’s I-told-you-so, but he can’t say he isn’t feeling his age a little. An old man, as Maelle used to say—in fact, the oldest now, if he doesn’t count Renoir or Verso, which he emphatically does not.
Lune has mentioned before why healing potions and pictos could heal all their external injuries and broken bits in an instant, and but not something as innocuous as common cold. At best, they could heal some of the symptoms of some illnesses, but not always the underlying causes.
"Some things," said Lune, "can’t be automatically fixed with potions and pictos. Some things still need to take their time."
They might soon, though, be able to fix even those permanently, and then the real question would have to be answered: whether they should use the chroma conversion, the Painted power, for something else other than mending the remnants of the Fracture. Like, getting rid of your common cold. Or fixing your heart that’s been repeatedly damaged. Or re-Painting a missing arm.
Or bringing people back from the dead.
At some point, as they continue on with their research, it might become the question of whether they should instead of whether they could.
Sophie, he thinks.
Or, tries very hard not to.
Gingerly and with cautious steps, he passes by the kitchen and gets himself over to the living room, then sinks gratefully on his reading chair by the window. He reaches for the hydraulics textbook he’s left there and flips it open, but when he trains his eyes on the pages, none of the words register for him.
He already knows what Sciel’s answer would be to the very same question, even with intimately knowing, as she does, of all the dangers that come with such decisions, just from what they’ve already seen of the Dessendres alone. He’s already afraid of how the conversation would go when she starts to broach the subject with him. He still doesn’t know what he would—could—say.
He closes the book and leans back instead, and watches the morning sunlight settle on the windowsill. His skin feels a little too warm, a little too tight still, and for a moment, he understands the Paintress more than he’s ever wished.
He doesn’t know when he’s dozed off, but when he wakes up, there’s a blanket over him. The book he’s thought has fallen on the floor at some point is carefully laid out over his lap again. There’s a glass of water at the side table.
He finds himself smiling. "Hi," he says out loud.
When he turns his head, he finds Alicia, sitting quietly and unobtrusively over by the kitchen table. His kitchen, one that he’s always thought was rather small, feels huge, with her taking up only such a small part of it.
No words are needed from her to tell him what she’s thinking.
"It’s just a cold," he tells her, light and reassuring. "The hydraulics broke over the main garden again, if you can believe it. I was completely drenched when the pipe burst while we were trying to refit it. I should be fine in a couple of days."
She gives him a small nod, but her hand looks restless on the table, and she’s eyeing him with the transparent concern that she’s never been able to conceal, even when she had her mask to hide behind.
"Would you like to keep me company?" he asks, keeping his voice gentle. "I’ll be sleeping a lot, but you can still stay, if you like?"
She gives him another nod, relief clear on her face. He thinks that her own, and her family’s, invulnerability makes her more worried over those who aren’t exactly built to be immortal, but then again he can’t on good conscience say he hasn’t already given her enough cause for concern in the past.
"And feel free to look around the house. It’s only fair," he adds, with a smile.
For a long moment, he doesn’t think she would move from the kitchen chair at all, but gradually she moves further into the kitchen—hesitantly at first, and then slowly and more boldly, looking at the little jars of spices and preserves, and the small baskets of fruits and bread, all with a curious tilt of her head. She’s been learning to take up more spaces around her, Gustave knows, but remaining unobtrusive and inconspicuous still seems to be her second nature that she can’t ever seem to shed, and her each step is still feather-light and soundless.
Under the late morning light that feels more pleasantly warm, he watches Alicia slowly move onto the living room, to the framed pictures and the bookshelves, and falls asleep.
When he wakes up again, he catches a glimpse of the long white hair, entwined with gold and red, glinting in the soft light of his own living room, and wonders if he’s really awake at all. If so, which one has been the dream all along—this very moment, or every harrowing moment at the Manor.
But this moment feels warm and safe, and when he strains hard enough, he can also hear the kids playing out the streets instead of the hollow echoes of the Manor’s song thrumming within the chromatic shell. And the way Alicia’s fingers catch around the edges of the books on his bookshelf—there’s no hesitation in the gesture. No muted fear in her move that he’s become so accustomed to during his stay at the Manor.
Alicia is in his living room, going through his books with curiosity and a smile on her face—small and faint but still there. Still present.
Then he knows. Every moment at the Manor had been worth the cost, even just to earn this moment. To be able to see this.
"That used to be a favourite of mine when I was a boy," he tells her, a little thickly, when she pulls out The Three Musketeers.
Alicia looks over her shoulder to catch his eyes. He smiles a little and nods at the book she’s holding.
Dumas. Cervantes. Jules Verne. H.G. Wells. Like every little boy of Lumière, he’s read all the adventure books he could get his hands on. He can easily guess which might’ve been Verso’s favourites among them, just from the beautiful eccentricities that adorn many corners of this Canvas. Victor Hugo—now he may have been still more of Emma’s favourite than Gustave's, but he’s still read all of his works faithfully. He’s fairly certain he’s seen all of these at the Manor, too, but Gustave can’t rightfully picture Renoir or Aline sitting up in the beautiful library of their extravagant manor and reading Les Miserables. Still, Alicia—Maelle—might have.
Perhaps these have always been more of The Writers’ domain, and it could’ve been one of the sources of the conflict, the cause of which is still so unclear. And the fire—
It’s not a thought he really wants to dwell on, not during this precious and hard-earned moment, so he slowly pulls himself up and walks over to the shelves, deciding to choose a book for himself.
Don Quixote is a little too on the nose, he thinks. The D’Artagnan Romance, with the third book on the twin brother of the king, locked in a tower and forced to wear an iron mask for all eternity, also seems a little too close to home, so he reaches for The Time Machine. He almost drops it, though, when a sudden knock on the door startles him and Alicia both.
At the door, he finds Sciel with a wide smile on her face and holding a large pot.
"Special delivery," Sciel says, cheery and bright. "Thought you could use something to eat." Even through the closed lid of the pot, he can already smell her specialty soup, hearty and earthy. "And this is from Lune." Sciel pulls out a little medical vial from her pocket. "You’re hereby ordered to take it twice a day with meals."
After thanking Sciel, Gustave studies the medication. "Lune gave you this?"
"Yeeep," says Sciel, with a knowing look, "which apparently she got from Matthieu, from the Medical."
"Wait, he’s still trying to ask her out, and she still hasn’t preemptively let him down—or dropped him like a hot potato—yet?" He feels his own eyebrow inching upward. "Does it mean she might actually be interested?"
"You try to get it out of her. I asked her once and I ain’t trying again. Also, she wants me to inform you, not once but twice, that you are totally and comprehensively banned from the lab and the workshop until you’re 100% better and cough-free."
"Yes, yes, she told me that already."
Sciel knocks him with her elbow. "You gonna be okay by yourself? Want some company?"
"I’m not alone," he says, tilting his head a little to the side.
"Ah," says Sciel, her expression softening when she peeks around to see behind him. "Heya Alicia," she says out loud, and sends a full-bodied, enthusiastic and eager wave to Alicia, who returns it after a startled pause, just not quite as enthusiastically.
"Feel better soon, Gustave," says Sciel, with a quick squeeze of her hand over his arm. "And remember, if Lune sees even a shadow of you up at the lab again for the rest of the week—"
"—then she will ban me for the rest of the month." He doesn’t roll his eyes, even if he’s desperately tempted. "She’s turning more dictatorial by the minute, I swear."
"Oooh, I’m telling her you said that."
"What. You’ve been thinking it, too."
"Yes, but I’m wise enough never to say it out loud while anyone’s listening and can incriminate me easily."
Sciel leaves after another wave for Alicia, and Alicia helps him with bringing in the pot into the kitchen. He opens the lid, looks at the steaming soup already filling the kitchen with an incredible smell, and raises an eyebrow at Alicia, who quickly nods.
While he goes to find a ladle and two spoons, Alicia grabs two bowls from the kitchen shelf, and they carefully scoop out the soup into the bowls. Then they eat. Alicia starts off a little cautiously, taking in each spoonful somewhat experimentally, and then gradually digs in with more eagerness. He finishes his quickly, cleaning up the bowl with a piece of a day-old brioche bread. When they’re both done, Alicia pushes the medicine vial across the dining table, so Gustave, dutifully, takes it as ordered.
It’s quiet, with neither of them feeling the need to fill the silence with words, and he feels warm inside—in a much better way than before—and somewhat amazed to find his appetite might be coming back.
What they could use now, he thinks, would be desserts. They could always get something from the bakery down the street, but—
"I think we need cookies," Gustave declares. "And maybe milk."
"Cookies," Alicia repeats, sounding a little unsure.
"Yup. I can whip some up quickly."
"But you’re unwell," Alicia points out, almost reluctantly.
"Nah, I can do this in my sleep." He tilts his head toward the pantry. "Come help me, though?"
In the pantry, he opens up the cabinets and hums a bit. "We’d need flours. Baking powder. Brown sugar and white."
Alicia trails in after him and picks up an armful of the glass jars he takes out from the shelves.
"Chunks of dark chocolate and semi dark." He looks at Alicia, and decides, at once, that they’re due something truly sweet and decedent. "And sweet milk chocolate."
Once they’re done, they lay out all their bounties from the pantry carefully over the kitchen table, along with a couple of mixing bowls and measuring spoons. He understands, in theory, that she’s lived far longer than he has, that she is not his sixteen-year-old sister, but when Alicia looks absolutely befuddled and more than a little at a loss by the entire display, it’s hard not to think that Alicia, too, might have been frozen in time all along, along with the Manor itself.
"Here," he says, leaning over to show her measuring spoons and cups and whisks and a sieve. "We want to measure everything out exactly. Two cups of the flours. Sugar. A spoonful of baking powder."
While she runs the mixture through the sieve, Gustave brings out a bar of butter from the cold storage and cuts it into big chunks. "We want butter to be still a little cold. So it will melt as it bakes."
He drops the butter chunks into the bowl and lets Alicia mix it.
"Don’t overmix. We want everything just gently combined. Just so, like that." She looks up at him with a question in her face while showing her work, so he nods. "Good. That’s just about perfect. Do you want to taste the batter?"
She thinks about it for a moment, before she nods in a yes, so he runs his finger around the edge of the bowl to show her how. She follows, almost cautiously, and then says, "Oh," after tasting it, so he generally considers it a success.
After spreading out each dollop of the batter carefully over the baking sheet, he places the pan into the oven. He keeps himself between Alicia and the oven, making sure to shield her from the heat, but she doesn’t seem afraid of the heat as he thought she might be.
She sits at the corner of the kitchen table and watches the oven, intrigued.
"When will they be ready?" she asks.
"In ten, fifteen minutes. And then they’d need cooling off afterwards. Some things," he says, thinking of Lune’s words, "still need to take their time."
At the look on her face, he smiles a little.
"But," he says, drawing up his index finger, "I promise they’ll be worth the wait."
Alicia nods, solemn and serious.
Maelle never could wait. Eyes large and always over-eager, she would drag him over to the oven and wait right in front of it until the bell would go off, and then immediately reached for the handle without gloves and earned his ire for it.
For a second, he misses Maelle so much that he can hardly breathe.
But the moment passes. Slowly, he starts washing the mixing bowls and wooden spoons at the sink while Alicia dries them with a towel. When he’s finally feeling spent and maybe slightly woozy on his feet, the oven beeps with a little pleasant sound, and when he opens the oven, the entire house smells like sweet cookies.
It’s a trial and a half to wait for them to cool, but he waits until they’re not quite piping hot before picking up a couple and plating one each.
The cookie is still a touch too hot, but he can’t bring himself to regret it when it crumbles just in the right way and melts right in his mouth.
And not when Alicia’s eyes turn so large and wide at the taste.
They eat standing over the kitchen table, their hands stained with gooey chocolate, and wash it down with a glass of milk each.
He sets a few asides for Alexander, Guillaume and Adrien, and puts the rest of the cooled cookies on a large plate. "They won’t be as good tomorrow, but they can still be warmed up a little, and the boys won’t know the difference," he shares with Alicia, rather conspiratorial. "We would, since we’ve tasted it fresh out of the oven, but they won’t. And the rest of the cookies, though, are all for us."
When everything is put away, he feels drowsy and warm again, and a little dizzy, so he brings himself back to his reading chair.
Alicia looks at the kitchen chair, and then looks at him by the window. In another moment, she brings over the plate of cookies and a glass of milk and sets them down on the side table next to Gustave’s chair. Then she picks up The Three Musketeers and sits down on the chair across from his.
After making sure he’s tucked in carefully, she leans back in her chair. "When you’re awake again, I’ll be here," she assures him.
Then after very carefully wiping her sticky fingers on a towel, Alicia opens her book.
This isn’t his dream, he knows. It can’t have been, because he wouldn’t have been able to imagine anything close. Not then. And not now, as he watches her under the afternoon light, warm and sunlit. When he’s not quite as certain what is, and isn't a dream. What has, and hasn't been.
But still, he drifts into sleep, watching her flip another page. And then another. All with a little smile on her face.
END