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“You’re okay.”
The last words of Verso echoed in her mind as he––no, not Verso, this painted copy that wasn’t really a copy, her brother but not her Verso, repeated to her as she gommaged in his embrace. She cried, held onto him as she desperately tried to hold onto the Canvas and will herself to remain here. She didn’t want to let this world, her sole joy after the fire that had taken her Verso, be destroyed. She couldn't. Maelle couldn’t go back to being Alicia, without a voice and without a future. She screamed internally.
She tried to fight back, but even the Gods that were Painters in their created worlds couldn’t stop what Verso had expedited. The obliteration of Verso’s soul, the real spark that kept the Canvas together, all but basically gone and too tired of painting. She continued to disappear not into the characteristic carmine red petals of the Gommage, but muted gold petals that floated in the air, dancing around her as if taunting. She looked up at Verso’s face, blurred by her tears, letting herself drown in the detail of his anguished yet at peace expression. For he wanted this, much as she didn’t want her life to come, he did not want to live anymore. He was tired of painting too. She looked up at his pearly blue eyes that always softened when looking at his little sister, those same eyes that had held that same gaze when they’d been engulfed by flames that fateful night.
Memories returned unsolicited, even as she felt her face burn, hot agony overwhelming both their bodies as they melted under the smoke and heat he had kept muttering to her over and over again,
“You’re okay.”
She dug her face into Verso’s chest, finding comfort in his characteristic rosemary scent that soothed her in her final moments in the Canvas. She wasn’t sure whose voice, although they sounded the same yet so different in retrospect, she was hearing as the last of her was consumed by the peaceful oblivion of her erasure
“You’re okay.”
.
.
.
.
She awoke suddenly, a violent spasm of coughs erupting from her burned throat. She collapsed onto the cold mahogany floor of what she soon recognized to be their manor, her vision reduced to a half once more. Out of the corner of her one eye she could see the Canvas, the treasured last part of her Verso, implode in a small burst of energy, destroyed forever.
“No!” She cried out in her rasped voice, reaching out to the Canvas all too late and collapsing in another fit of scraping coughs that made her throat bleed. She felt warm hands envelop her in an embrace, undoubtedly Papa who had been waiting for her moments after his own expulsion from the Canvas. She leaned into him, clutching onto his shirt and sobbing, leaving the fine cotton tearstained. “Alicia.” Papa muttered, burying his face into her hair, his voice marked by tenderness and yet the weakness that probably plagued him as it did her from being in the Canvas for too long. They stayed there on the floor, him weeping silent tears and her crying out with whatever strength was left in her voice.
“You’re okay Alicia.” Papa whispered, and that broke Maelle further.
.
.
.
.
It was some months after the destruction of Verso’s Canvas that the Dessendre family once more visited his grave. Her parents stood in the center, embracing each other, still grieving the death of their only son but now together. Gone were the days of an endless fight between them in the Canvas, her mother leaned against her father in quiet acceptance and promise to move forward in their grief together. Clea stood on the other side, holding a bouquet of flowers, her face marked with some semblance of melancholy but all too aged and preoccupied with the worries of her war against the Writers. Still, she understood the importance of this moment for her family and in some way, for her own closure as well.
She, still Maelle but now Alicia as well, clutched Verso’s childhood plush that all too well resembled Esquie close to her chest. She stared at Verso’s grave, reading the inscription carved on the marble stone
“ A jamais peint dans nos cœurs”
“ Forever painted in our hearts.”
Grief overflowed her, not only for her brother but also the inhabitants of the Canvas, creations of her brother’s childhood and later her mother’s grief, caught in the middle of a conflict they could not prevent. She thought of her friends, Lune and Sciel, their devotion to the Expedition and their city. She thought of Gustave, her brother and father from another life. She thought of the Gestrals and Monoco and Noco and Esquie, the creatures that had accompanied her brother in his fantastical adventures and remained, waiting for a friend who could not return.
And she thought of Verso, not her Verso but nonetheless a Verso. She couldn’t call him fake, for his feelings were anything but. A small part of her understood why he did what he did, her anger towards him replaced by quiet acceptance.
She took a deep breath, now left alone standing in front of the grave as her family left one by one. She felt their presence there, though the Canvas destroyed their ghosts still clung to her. In that moment they stood before her, smiling and waving at her, whether in greeting or farewell she didn’t know. At that moment she made a choice. She buried them there in her mind, in the same grave as her brother, her most beloved companions resting together in the same place. Their hopes and ambitions laid to rest as she too was finally allowed to grieve. She could see them now, disappearing into the Parisian horizon before her, at last at peace.
She recalled Verso’s words to her, as Maelle and Alicia forced speech out of their burned throat together, a silent acceptance, words that both comforted and haunted her but that she would use as her muse nonetheless.
“You’re okay.”