Work Text:
Renoir was making the final touches on Creation when he felt a distant shiver of chroma in the Canvas. He knew it was Alicia, hopping around the Canvas with that damned copy of Verso. He could feel the chroma ripple whenever she gathered it to herself, freeing it from Clea’s traps. Whatever she was doing now felt different, but still familiar. Then he realized he had felt it sixty-seven times before.
Every year, just before he performed a gommage, Aline had painted on the monolith and it had felt just like this.
Abandoning his work, the Curator immediately teleported to the first level of the Tour Lumière and looked north. Squinting, he could just make it out, a taunt in gold lettering.
Papa va t’en!
When had his youngest become so impudent? He could have expected this behaviour from Clea certainly, Verso perhaps, but Alicia had never been so churlish. Yet as he stood staring across the vast distance between this tower of steel and that of stone, he was impressed by her boldness, if not her painting skills. Pride and amusement at the absurdity overcame his disbelief and anger. He chuckled and then wondered at that reaction, laughing again despite himself.
Go away? Ha. Impossible. Hahaha.
Soon the laughing was uncontrollable. Rather than attempt to stop, Renoir let the blessed feeling saturate him, laughing until his sides hurt, until the chroma roiled around him. The Canvas quaked. The tower’s twisted steel beams groaned around him. He stepped off the tower, floating lazily towards the ground still laughing, but as the hysteria receded, panic replaced it with the idea of Alicia refusing to leave the Canvas.
No. He was not leaving without her either. Why was he always made into the villain?
Angry now, but resigned to his role, Renoir landed back on solid ground next to Creation. The nevron was skittish from the earthquakes. The Curator looked down at his fist and the chroma he had unconsciously gathered there in his frustration. Unceremoniously, he shoved his hand into the void at the centre of the creature and released the blight into its essence. Then he gave a dismissive whack to the nevron’s rump and the thing cantered off toward the gardens.
Sighing, Renoir summoned his paint brush and started painting anew. There was nothing to do now but wait for his daughter to return. He was not going anywhere.