Chapter Text
Gustave thumbed through the various bits and bobbles, humming idly to himself. Perusing Amélie’s Menagerie and Second Hand Shoppe, a small antique shop nestled into the downtown square of Lumiére, had become a pastime for him while he waited for Maelle’s art class to finish.
Amelie’s was where he’d purchased most of his (recent) favorite things: a music box for Maelle, and for himself, an intricate pocket watch full of tiny springs and delicate whirling brass gears. Last month’s favored purchase had been a set of brass tinkerer’s tools, which he now proudly displayed on a shelf in his office at the civil engineering firm. Alongside the tools was an old Expedition flag his boss, Alain, had found. Lucien had made fun of them for it, accusing them of erecting some sort of weird shrine in the name of science.
The antiquing had first started as just something to do to fill the time while he waited for Maelle; however, it had since evolved into a routine, one that comforted him and enticed him in equal measure. Most of the time he came in to browse their various vinyl records. Or ‘ Old Man Music’ as Maelle would scoff. Gustave would counter by waxing lyrical on the superior audio quality of vinyl, bemoaning the pitfalls of modern media until Maelle eventually threw her hands up in the air, as if she were saying, “Fine, do what you want, as if the quality of the music is actually what you care about.” Gustave knew, better than [almost] everyone, that Maelle was mature beyond her years, but she also managed to be exaggeratingly melodramatic in ways that only a teenager could be.
A smile tugged at Gustave’s lips, amused at the memory of her theatrics. It was an old back-and-forth between the two of them - the easy ribbing that came naturally with familiarity. One of the burdens of being a sibling, he supposed, was the expectation of long-standing mock quarrels, silly debates to be repeated until they had worn themselves smooth, until their words no longer cut, but comforted with their familiarity. By the time Maelle had reached her sixteenth birthday it was a routine that had become as old and worn as the backs of the antique spines of the albums he now ran his fingers over.
He should settle on something classical, he thought. Gustave drummed his right hand on the shelf next to the cover of Piano Classics Volume III in contemplation; the metal of his prosthetic fingers made a satisfying thump-thump-thump-thump against the wood of the shelf as he weighed his options. His latest engineering project had hit a snag, and the setbacks were currently driving both Gustave and his fellow engineers up the wall. His personal project was sizing up to be a similar disaster. Having music playing in the background during the times he brought projects home helped keep him grounded ; the soft acoustics giving his mind something to focus on rather than running in circles.
Piano Classics Volume III it was then.
Record tucked securely in hand, Gustave soon found himself idly browsing the remaining sections of Amelie’s shelves and decor. He was somewhat disappointed to see many of the same things he’d seen before in his previous visits. It would seem a little shop like this, even with its winding and cramped aisles, had only so much turnover in its stock. A drawback, he supposed, to the city of Lumiére being on an island . Even with ferries to deliver goods and tourists, it seemed there was only so much an antique store could have in stock within its spaces. A small part of him had hoped, in vain it seemed, that he could keep returning to Amelie’s and see something new every time .
Not far from where he’d found his record, Gustave picked up a small…clown figurine? He peered closer at it. Well, it certainly looked joyful enough to be one. Its long arms were extended, going out as wide as they could from where they were raised above its large round body. Its cheerful face - or was it a mask? - was tilted upwards, and its form was frozen in a graceful spin . Gustave hmmed quietly in contemplation, shifting the porcelain statue from one hand to the other before setting it back down on the shelf with its companion, which appeared to be a particularly crude carving of a tortoise.
Well, every antique store was bound to have its eccentricities.
Gustave moved deeper into the aisle, sidestepping lamps and scooting awkwardly around various heavy antique furniture, twisting his way farther and farther back into the interior. For such a small shop, Amelie’s managed to be sufficiently labyrinthine. Farther down, sectioned off towards the back corner was a bin filled with canvases; the wall next to it displayed, with the greatest sense of misplaced and poor judgement, various “Live Laugh Love” signs and several rows of paintings and wall decor.
Gustave frowned as his eyes wandered from one painting to the next .
Six months had passed since he and Sophie had finally ended their years long relationship. And yet, the bittersweet truth that Gustave had come to realize in those last few months of awkward togetherness was that the end of Gustave and Sophie had been much longer in making than either one of them had wanted to acknowledge. Gustave had loved her - did love her - but it seemed like their relationship had come to an impasse. Time marched on, and the aspirations that had once brought them together became the things that drove them apart, to the point where the distance between them became insurmountable. To cross that chasm would have required changes far too great for either of them. Changes beyond what was fair to ask.
It had been amicable in the end - all sad smiles and well wishes - but the ache remained.
His sister Emma had been at him since her last visit; regaling him with ideas about him sprucing up his new place. Gustave suspected that her sudden interest in interior design stemmed more from the desire to distract him from his sad circumstances rather than any actual concern, but he wisely chose to hold his tongue on that point.
“A little décor wouldn’t go amiss,” Emma had said, taking in the unadorned walls, causing Maelle to snort under her breath.
“You mean this barren bachelor pad of an apartment that I have to live in?” Maelle snorted.
“It’s not barren,” Gustave muttered to himself now, wondering why he was giving any thought at all to Emma’s urgings as he locked eyes with the portrait of a dog dutifully holding a duck in its mouth. “It’s, just…utilitarian is all. Practical even.” The dog stared soulfully back at him.
“What was that, dear?”
Gustave startled, eyes widening as he shuffled backwards and whirled to meet the concerned eyes of the titular Amelie - who was peering at him around the corner of a nearby shelf.
“Oh! I - Err- Sorry. It’s nothing. I was just, um, thinking to myself. Uh, aloud.”
I’ll be damned before I get caught talking to a dog painting. She’ll think I'm crazy, Gustave cringed internally , well, crazier.
The elderly shopkeeper blinked owlishly in response, her wrinkled eyes made comically over-large through the thick frames of her bottle-like glasses. She raised a shaky hand to adjust the frames before glancing past Gustave.
“Ah, a fellow connoisseur of the arts!” She leaned in bringing her hand to her mouth to whisper conspiratorially, “And one with good tastes at that!”
Oh, mon Dieu , thought Gustave, flinching inwardly, please don’t be talking about the Dog-Duck portrait . Perhaps she meant the print of the cow wearing a flower crown? Not that that one was much better in Gustave’s opinion.
“Is there anything in particular I can help you with?” Another owlish blink. “Anything specific you are looking for?”
“No!” Gustave exclaimed quickly, hoping to forestall her suggesting that the Dog-Duck portrait would look well adorning his empty walls, only to be reminded just as quickly that his empty walls did indeed need some filling. “Or, well, you could say that. I have a house,” Gustave said a little lamely.
He felt his mouth quirk into a wry smile.
“Well,” he corrected, “I have an apartment. What I mean is - yes? I am looking for something to add to try to liven the place up. Um, add some character. I just don’t know…what I’m looking for.”
At that the shopkeeper's face lit up.
“Oh, you are in luck, young man! We just got a shipment in the other day! My husband found the most delightful estate sale from the continent - just outside of Old Lumiére , and well,” her voice was excited with the possibilities and Gustave found himself absently nodding along as she prattled on. “They’ve just come in; I haven’t even the time to properly display anything yet, here - follow me to the back,” she continued as she led him farther back into the depths of the store.
“Ah, here we are!” she said, gesturing broadly towards the haphazardly stacked clutter. Several rugs lay on the ground before her, on which an ornate chest rested. Beyond that Gustave could make out the silhouettes of several larger furniture pieces along with a cloth covered easel and several framed canvases propped nearby.
“Feel free to look around. I’ll be back at the front so come find me if you need anything, dear!”
With that, she hobbled back around and ducked under Gustave’s arm, who gave a small start, flapping her hand dismissively at him as she wove her way back towards where they had come from.
Gustave once again found himself alone.
“Right,” Gustave muttered under his breath. The fingers of his prosthetic hand tapped against his leg absentmindedly. Twenty more minutes before Maelle’s lesson was up.
Might as well take a look.
Gustave tentatively made his way past the chest towards the easel. A frame rested upon it obscured by a linen cloth. He raised the corner, sliding it back to reveal the painting underneath. A large landscape met his eyes; a forest washed in the warm yellow hues of twilight and scattered with trees. Fanning strokes fleshed out soft grass and small white flowers dotted the ground. But what caught Gustave’s eye the most was the massive painted tree of red leaves slightly off center but clearly the focal point of the scene. Gustave squinted and tilted his head slightly to better get a look at it. The coloration of the tree seemed to imply autumn, however everything else in the painting seemed to say otherwise. It was pretty, he supposed, in an eerie way. A liminal place suspended out of time.
Gustave leaned back and let the linen fall back and once more cover the painting. Pretty or not, it was still much too big for any space he could think of for his and Maelle's humble apartment.
He turned to look below the easel to see several other smaller paintings propped up against the nearby wall, faces tilted inward and mis-matched frames clashing several canvases deep as they nested within each other.
Gustave reached out, somewhat warily, to the first stack of canvases, to tentatively tilt them back and up to better see their subjects. The first canvas was another landscape; this time an underwater scene painted in deep blues. Handcrafted sunlight filtered through kelp forests to illuminate grand corals rising out of the ocean floor. Also illuminating the ocean scape appeared to be various…light posts?
Gustave furrowed his brow. Surreal.
The next canvas revealed a simpler design: a character study of some kind of creature with a strange mask surrounded by a thick red mane on a plain white background.
As Gustave leafed past it to look at the final painting - two shrouded figures painted in stark shades of black and white surrounded by red flowers - a clatter startled him as a smaller, fourth canvas broke free from where it had been wedged between the two. The hidden canvas landed, gilded frame in all its glory, corner first sharply onto the top of Gustave’s foot.
“Merde!” Gustave hissed, as he tried to cradle his savaged foot while simultaneously making an awkward and harried play to collect his fallen aggressor before it could slide farther away from him.
Giving one final wince as he tenderly set his foot down, Gustave straightened with the frame in hand. It was smaller than the others, but the ornate burnished gold frame, both darkened and aged by time, made it surprisingly weighty. Gustave’s lips quirked. A surprisingly effective weapon. Provided in the event of an ambush .
“Oh, hello,” Gustave murmured softly to himself as he flipped the canvas recto. Like many of the others it too was a landscape.
It was a nighttime scene, depicting some sort of mountain pass captured in the myriad blues and grays of dusk. Distant peaks seemed to be suspended in the air, or perhaps they were rising through the distant clouds? Gustave could make out the rocky crags of nearby boulders; however, the sky was a whirl of abstract brush strokes. Lighter blues and grays gave the impression of clouds backlit by moonlight, the sky beyond dotted with tiny pinpricks of distant stars. A fanned line of blue and green streaked upward and across in the upper left corner of the canvas. An aurora borealis, a vibrant ribbon of light, suspended and frozen in time.
Gustave felt his breath catch in his chest. It was beautiful.
He ran his left hand carefully over the glossy surface; the pads of his fingertips lightly caught along the raised edges as he noted the textures and ridges of the paint. Real brushstrokes , Gustave thought. None of the cheap imitation crap screen-printed out onto canvases that seemed to flood every home decor store from this side of the continent to the other.
But what really drew Gustave’s eye was the stark use of light scattered throughout the painting contrasting against the night.
His eyes traced the flocks of small white birds delicately flitting across the painting, their small bodies seemingly aglow as they hung suspended midflight in the distance. Golden kerosene lanterns seemed to hover mid-air at random, adding to the dreamlike surrealness, their warm light casting the foreground in shades of soft yellow. A freshwater creek, flanked on either side by rocky shores, and painted in deep blues made up most of the lower right side of the canvas. Short, choppy blots of color were interspersed between the blue creating an illusion of crystal clear-water as the stream wove back deeper within the canvas before disappearing amidst the tree line of a forest’s edge.
Only because Gustave was already inspecting the painting up close did he notice the anomaly.
Unlike the previous canvases, it appeared that this painting was no mere empty still-life. Curious, Gustave leaned in slightly, frowning and squinting his eyes in concentration.
There, beneath a lone tree at the creek’s edge, sat the unmistakable figure of a man. The inky brush strokes hinting more at a man’s silhouette more than anything - facing out towards the distant horizon.
“Huh,” Gustave said, voice pitched low in contemplation, his thumb sweeping across the lone figure tracing the raised ridge of paint.
Realistically, Gustave knew a decorated apartment wouldn’t fix things. How could it? New pillows or hanging a painting was in no way a means of returning to normal.
But, he thought, as he carefully cradled the painting in his hands, it was a start.
“So, what sort of myriads of treasures did you make off with from Amélie’s this time?”
Maelle smiled up at him, the late afternoon sun catching in her red hair and setting it aglow. She was in a good mood, her gray-blue eyes bright and shining with mischief. Today’s lesson must have gone well, Gustave thought. He could see where a bit of yellow paint was still smudged alongside the bridge of her nose.
“More old man music?” she continued airily, her tone prompting when she got no response, pulling Gustave from his musings. His mind must have been wandering for longer than he thought.
“Hey! ” Gustave laughed, his voice indignant even as the corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement. He knocked his shoulder into Maelle’s playfully, rocking back on his heels in response to her retaliatory shove while simultaneously shifting his parcel further up under his right arm, readjusting and tucking it more securely against his side.
“I’ll have you know that thirty-three is a perfectly respectable age,” he chuckled as he raised his fingers up to scratch through the short scruff along his jaw. “Young, even.”
“Mm-hmm,” Maelle hummed skeptically as she spun around to walk backwards a few paces ahead of him, her fingers laced behind her back.
Maelle leaned in, “I even bet it's jazz,” she said conspiratorially, her voice low and mocking.
“Hey!”
They continued their way through the downtown streets of Lumiére. The afternoon sun was fading as early evening set in, and their shadows became long and spindly as they stretched along the cobblestones behind them as they walked.
“It’s Classical, I’ll have you know,” Gustave piped up after a moment. “And a good one at that! Or, at least, I think it will be a good one…”
His voice trailed off as Maelle looked up at him, her brows steadily climbing higher.
Several moments passed silently as they strolled on. Maelle’s eyes darted down to eye the larger paper-wrapped parcel under his arm, distinctly non-record shaped, a silent question.
“So, you got another old record and…?” Her voice trailing off meaningfully. A not so silent question.
“And a, uh. Painting.”
“A painting,” she repeated.
“Mm, yes. For decoration. You know, figured I’d take Emma’s advice. And I was thinking. The apartment - what with Sophie being gone…” Mon Dieu, I’m babbling . Anxiety coiled tight in his gut.
Focus .
“It’s actually rather quite nice,” he continued, trying resolutely to push past the grief. “ Especially since a certain someone won’t let me hang up their work.”
Maelle had always been weird about the idea of having her own art displayed, a trait that stemmed all the way back to the early days when she had first joined the twin’s household. From school art projects to doodles on the family fridge, none were deemed worthy, and thus were promptly squirreled out of sight.
“They’re not perfect,” had been Maelle’s heated answer, the one and only time Emma had dared to tentatively inquire about it, her tiny hand tirelessly working and reworking the same drawing in frustration from where she had been sprawled on the floor.
Despite her artistic aptitude and capacity to create, which seemed to only grow and change as the years went on, Maelle’s views did not. In her eyes, each new creation fell short, flawed by imperfections that only she could see. The eyes of an artist , Gustave supposed, incapable of seeing things as they were, and not how you wanted them to be.
His diversion worked, however, and Maelle sniffed dismissively before spinning back around and leaving Gustave to trail behind her in comfortable silence the rest of the way home.
Well, no time like the present , Gustave thought as they arrived back to their shared apartment.
He had spent the majority of the time of their quiet walk back mentally turning over potential locations for the painting. After he’d decided on a spot, the remaining time had been spent completing a quick mental inventory of tools and supplies, double checking to make sure he actually had the correct means and materials required to hang it.
Now all that was left was to actually hang it.
“Maelle,” Gustave called from over his shoulder as he went to adjust the frame from where it hung on its hook, “does this look even to y- ”
He turned back to the painting and his voice cut off sharply, the remainder of his question swallowed in confusion and alarm.
The man was gone.