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In hindsight, Renoir realized he could have taken a seat before entering Verso’s canvas to confront Aline. Pain shot up his arm as it fell useless to his side and he nearly collapsed over his cane in sudden exhaustion. The string of expletives he began coughing out was quickly overtaken by chroma instead.
Aline was still sitting on her painting stool, stiffly straight, but no longer looking at the Canvas. She was staring at him, wide-eyed, her breathing fast and ragged, still recovering from her own exit just a moment before.
“Aline.”
He reached out instinctively towards her, but his arm was so weak from being suspended for so long he could do little more than turn his open hand. He took two stumbling steps and awkwardly lowered himself to the ground at her feet, a knight kneeling before his queen.
Looking up at her, a lock of his greying hair fell across one eye.
“You came back.”
The relief and adoration was so plain in his expression that Aline was nearly embarrassed. She rolled her eyes instead.
“To prove you wrong.” The words were sharp, but there was no malice in her voice, low and weak as it was from disuse.
Her words should have inspired caution in him, but after what felt like nearly seventy years, Renoir’s patience had sublimated like the chroma around his eyes. He shuffled forward beneath the guillotine steel of her gaze to rest his head on her lap, dropping his cane and wrapping his one movable arm around her waist.
“I love you,” he simply declared.
She considered whether she wanted to reciprocate after all he had put them through. Admittedly his words in the Canvas and seeing him so battered, by Alicia no less, had softened her resolve. She was so tired of fighting. Now, his breath on her palm, the sensation complementing the aches of the frail body she had returned to, felt more alive than anything she had experienced in decades.
She sighed heavily, “That much is clear, Renoir.”
Even so, she relaxed into his hold, folding herself over him.