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Maelle calls it the reunion for the 33rd Expedition, but it's just a group effort to plaster every single wall in Lumiére with flyers. They're of no great beauty, but they get the job done. Date, location, event details, and, of course, name of the special performer. She debated for a long time as to whether she should add his last name—would he hate to see it? Would it seem avoidant of her to leave it out? Eventually, she settled on adding it to half of the flyers and keeping it out of the other half. A healthy compromise.
Lune and Sciel take the market and town square respectively while Gustave takes the rooftops. They're not as empty as they used to be. Nowadays, people have taken to sunbathing, enjoying the leisures of life. Breezes, flowers, gardens. "What, you don't want to monopolize the rooftops?" Gustave teases, accepting the flyers without complaint. "I'm happy to delegate the space to you. You could set up more grappling hooks, if you like."
"No, thanks," Maelle says. "Fear of heights, remember?"
"Oh, yes, and I have two arms."
"Sophie has been a terrible influence on you," Maelle says, laughing. "Really, I mean it. I get dizzy up there. Don't question it."
"You know how I love questions."
"Not answering them this time, old man."
"I'll have you know I'm quite young now. Getting younger by the day, even."
"I'll believe it when your wrinkles magically disappear," Maelle says, and pushes him towards the rope leading up to the rooftops before he can protest any further.
With the market, town square, and rooftops covered, the only thing left is the harbor. Maybe some face-to-face solicitation. No one would reject her; knowing the citizens of her lovely city, she had maybe two more months to milk this whole Defeated the Paintress and Saved the World thing before they get tired of it and start hissing at her like stray cats.
Not that Lumiére has cats, or dogs for that matter. She should change that. If they had stray animals begging for affection, Maxime might soften up for once. To go without dogs in the world—Maman must have been out of her mind.
It doesn't take long before she runs out of flyers. Maelle treats herself to a croissant from the boulangerie and eats it at the pier, savoring it one bite at a time. A bell dings behind her; she scoots to the side, leaving enough room for Monoco to sit beside her.
"Want some?" Maelle asks.
In response, Monoco holds out a wooden hand. She deposits a piece of her croissant in his palm, where he continues to hold it like it's one of Esquie's special rocks. Monoco's strange quirk of accepting food and drink despite not being able to consume it. What on earth must Verso have been thinking when he created that particular trait, she has no idea. She'll ask later, after the concert.
Speaking of which. "Are you coming?"
Monoco grunts. "I have been entrusted with the crucial duty of guarding the perimeter of the opera hall. So, yes."
"You're…a security guard?"
"No. The job of a security guard is beneath me. I am an usher." Monoco says this with the same gravitas that someone might say diplomatic ambassador or monarch of the Continent. She giggles. Monoco's head swivels to her. "You laugh. Why?"
"Nothing. It fits you." Monoco lets out a doubtful grunt. "Will you be wearing a suit?"
"Perhaps. Have you talked to Verso?"
"Have you?"
"Dodging the question, I see."
"I'm not dodging the question. Who do you think I am?" Maelle isn't dodging anything. Really. She's being healthy and facing her feelings. Connecting with friends. Talking to Gustave about everything he missed while he was—gone. Maelle and Verso spar on the weekends, sometimes, though she wins more often than not. In his old age, his stamina is flagging. It's funny. She flicks off a crumb on her pants into the ocean. "Yeah, I…We talk. Catch up. Do the usual sibling stuff."
"Attempted murder."
"No."
"What else is there?"
These Gestrals. "You know, games. Pranks. Lighthearted stuff. No maiming or bodily injury." Monoco makes a noise like, bah. Maelle laughs. "Why do you ask?"
"Because," Monoco says, "I was under the impression that he was rendered mute, seeing as how he no longer talks to me."
The waves crash against the pier. Behind them, the citizens of Lumiére continue to experience completely average, completely normal lives. Except for one, apparently.
"I thought he was happier."
Monoco doesn't dignify that with a response.
She tries not to be hurt by it. A man's best friend and all that. His loyalties will always lie with one person and no other. Maelle picks at the skin on her knuckles. A terrible habit she's picked up recently. Gustave has been trying to get her to stop to no avail. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong," she says. "I—it's so hard to make everyone happy. I can't seem to ever manage it. Everything I do makes things worse."
"Stop, then."
Maelle's blood roars in her ears. "You're telling me to leave."
"You read meaning in my words when there is none." Monoco bangs his bell; it startles her, and her sword fizzles back out of existence. Monoco scoffs. "You and him, two peas in a pod. You have absorbed every wrong lesson from Verso."
"I didn't absorb anything."
"You lied to me," Monoco says, his voice unusually sharp in his criticism. "You don't talk to Verso at all."
"I do," Maelle says, defensive. Every day, for at least twenty minutes. Verso always makes time for her. He wouldn't open the door if he didn't want to see her, but he always did. "We get coffee together every morning. We chat, we take naps together. He tells me stories of when I was too young to remember. We call Esquie and fly around and—and we clean up the leftover Nevrons, and we—" Why is she justifying this to him, anyway? Maelle's knuckles ache. "Monoco, he's happy. You're just lashing out because you're upset that he doesn't talk to you, but that's not my fault. That's between you and Verso."
"You accuse me of lashing out?"
"Aren't you?"
"I have never lashed out. I am perfectly composed at all times," Monoco says, before he fishes out a Stalact leg from his bag and slaps her on the leg with it. Ow. "I am not upset that Verso doesn't talk to me."
"You're angry because he abandoned you."
"Verso always abandons me," Monoco says simply, and Maelle bites her lip so hard she tastes blood.
It's not true. Verso doesn't abandon people. He's loyal. Clea always made fun of him for it, that he could never give up on people and always got himself dunked into a toilet for his troubles. Maman used to chide him for it when he returned from the conservatory over the holidays looking withdrawn and gloomy from some friendship gone wrong or the other. One day, you will learn that some people do not deserve your loyalty, my little prince.
Maybe Verso got tired of making friends over the years, but it never changed his fundamental nature of caring for those he loved to the bone. He never gave up on her and he didn't give up on Monoco and Esquie either. He just—couldn't visit, that was all. This isn't abandonment. It's different. It's circumstance.
"Circumstance," Monoco says. "Just like how it's circumstance that he has never talked to me or Esquie since the day we returned from the Expedition. The way it is circumstance you are the only one he talks to."
Maelle's jaw hurts. "That's his choice."
"You should leave the masks to Verso and me," is the only thing Monoco says to her before he leaves her at the pier.
—
The operahouse is packed by the time the performance begins. Maybe it was a waste of time to put up so many flyers. One note from Verso and the hall would've been full anyway.
The pieces he plays are vaguely familiar—something she heard in a dream, another life, long ago. She closes her eyes and lets the music sweep her away to memories of home, Papa spinning her around the piano, listening to Verso laugh, tugging Clea out of her atelier for just one song. Maman humming in the greenhouse while Verso played downstairs. The song gentles. Verso plucks one note at a time like he can't bear to go any faster. She feels warm, small. Curling up with Maman in her bed, five years old again. Clea pleating her hair, Papa painting them all on his canvas.
Applause brings her out of the reverie. Her face is wet when she opens her eyes. Beside her, Gustave squeezes her hand. She squeezes back and wipes her face, then frowns. The texture of her tears—is that even a thing? Her tears feel thick and cold on the back of her hand.
"Maelle? Everything alright?" Gustave whispers.
A trick of the mind, that's all.
"Everything's great."
The applause fades. Verso flips the page and begins another piece.
He plays five pieces total, but it's hard to tell. Sometimes he waits for applause, and other times he slides seamlessly from one to the next without a pause. He's just so talented. This is what Verso should have been doing all along—not Painting or fighting or pretending to be someone he never was. He should've been here, in the concert hall, playing until his well of happiness ran dry.
When the concert ends, it seems to be unanimous agreement that it ends too soon. "I can't believe I could ever think thirty minutes is too short for a piano concert, but here I am," Sciel says to her husband, laughing. Pierre kisses her on the cheek and murmurs something to her that Maelle can't make out, but Sciel seems to agree. She's happier nowadays, like everyone else.
They're the first ones to take off, Lune and her parents second. Gustave cups her face and stares at her, serious for once.
"You sure you're okay?" He asks, searching her eyes.
She used to love it when he did that. It made her feel seen, loved. For some reason, it doesn't feel like that anymore. She removes his hands and squeezes instead. "I'm okay," Maelle promises. Gustave doesn't move. She laughs and shoves him towards Sophie, who catches him the same way a shining armor in knight would. "Go, go on. I have something to wrap up here, anyway."
"Maelle."
"Gustave," she says, rolling her eyes. "Go. I'm not a child anymore."
By the time Gustave sets off, the concert hall is practically empty. She weaves past a few people—staff, loitering music enjoyers—to head onstage.
Verso hasn't moved from the bench, hands frozen on the piano.
"Stage fright?" she calls, clambering up. Verso cuts her a quick look, then he goes back to the piano. She nudges him with her shoulder.
Wordlessly, he moves aside.
Which is fine. Verso gets like this after performances. Stuck in his own head. "I enjoyed the concert," she says, filling the silence. "It seems like everyone else did, too. No empty seats. Thanks to me, of course. Or, well, thanks to you, but I like to imagine I had a hand in it. I think you had a few new pieces, right? Those were nice. Do you have a title for them?"
The music sheets answer the question for her. Untitled, by the looks of them.
"It's a good thing your lack of naming sense doesn't affect your ability to compose," Maelle says. Verso lets out a slow breath. A little light returning to his eyes? That's a good sign. She plucks out a few notes on the piano, something to jog his memory. "You taught me this." A series of five notes, a tiny fragment of a larger, greater piece. "I don't know if you remember. I used to drive Papa crazy when you were at school because I played it for hours on end. I told him I was practicing."
Partial truth. She was practicing, but not the piece—practicing to be like Verso one day, grown up and cool and collected. Infallible Verso, defeating Osquio with one swing of his blade, chasing away the monsters in the dark, dropping her off and picking her up when Papa and Maman were too preoccupied with Canvases to do so.
"I really loved that song," Maelle says, playing the same five notes again. "But you don't play it anymore. I hardly remember what it sounds like."
Verso's hands twitch. Then he gathers them in his lap and balls them into fists. Maelle averts her eyes, looks back at the piano.
"Maelle," Verso says, his voice rough. "You came."
"I always come to your concerts," Maelle says. "You know that."
"Right."
"Do you have plans?"
"No." He picks up the sheet music and tucks the book into his folder, closing the lid on the piano. "It's looking to be an early night for me today."
"It's an early night for you everyday," Maelle says. She intends for her tone to be teasing, but it comes out wounded and she winces. Verso doesn't look at her. "Sorry. I'm…It must've been a tiring day. Long concert and all, right?"
"Yeah."
"Verso."
"What?"
"Why—" Why aren't you happy, is possibly the most thoughtless question she could ask. It's unfair. Verso deserves happiness more than anyone else in the universe. More than her, who robbed it from him in the first place. Why can't he be happy? She had the power to grant him any wish he desired, but the moment he came back, he didn't ask her for a single thing. She could bring back Julie if he asked. Simon, his other friends from Expedition Zero. She could even bring back Alicia and he would probably be so happy to see her that he would live properly. And yet, he doesn't. It's like leaving a genie bottle untouched.
Verso is waiting for her to continue.
"Monoco and Esquie miss you," Maelle ends up saying.
"I know."
"You won't see them?"
"It's better this way."
"You're doing this to punish me," Maelle says, unable to stop herself.
"Is that what you think?"
"You—you think that this is just some sort of waiting game, don't you? That if you stay miserable for a long enough time, I'll tire of it and leave on my own accord? Or—or erase you as part of a temper tantrum? I'm not a child anymore, Verso. What you're doing changes nothing. I'm staying here in the Canvas—you can't think that if you're depressed enough, it'll somehow make me leave. You're not the only reason I stay here—"
"But I am a reason."
"You're not."
"Alicia—"
"I'm Maelle. Maelle to you."
"I wish you would go home," Verso murmurs.
Maelle's eyes sting. "This is my home."
"This is your grave. You want me to be happy knowing that I am the sole reason that you are withering away when I'm not even real—"
"You are real!"
"I'm a copy of your brother who died saving you," Verso says loudly, "and you make a mockery of his sacrifice by choosing to drown in your grief."
"Don't say that!"
"I'm not punishing you. I'm not even a person, Maelle, how can I punish myself?"
It's like getting scolded by Maman, scathing words that bite all the more for how accurate they are. Verso sighs. He steps closer to wipe the tears from her cheeks. She grips his hand, shaking. Verso, Verso. The familiar callouses on his palms. His long fingers. Gentle touch. If she leaves, this is what she'll lose. She'll have to live the rest of her life without this comfort. He'll never play the piano again, or dance with her in the lounge, paint another painting. He'll never tell her tales of Esquie and Monoco and Osquio, never argue with Clea over the dinner table, never help Maman in the greenhouse, never share silly jokes with Papa. He'll never hug her again. He'll never love her again.
"I feel just as guilty as you," she manages to say. "Every day I live. I have to live knowing this came at the cost of your life. You would put that burden on me."
Verso pulls her into a hug, and it's awful. His warmth, his solid presence, Maman's chroma swirling inside him. She presses her face into his chest. In a few years, it might be his shoulder instead, but she'll never get to know.
"You're stronger than you think," Verso says.
"I can't do it without you," she sobs. "I can't."
"It'll pass one day."
"I'm—" She hiccups. "I'm going to live the rest of my life feeling like this."
"Shh," Verso says, stroking her hair. "It's ok. It's ok."
—
They don't talk about it again. The routine continues. She helps Gustave tinker in his lab when she feels like it, asks Esquie to take her flying. She and Lune hunt down the remaining Nevrons. Sciel sits with her in Goblu's garden. Verso spars with her when she summons her sword, but soon enough she puts an end to it. It feels too hollow. She'd trained her entire life in preparation for the Paintress and now it feels like playing pretend at best. She buys a journal from the market, leather-worn but sturdy. For the first week, she leaves it empty. She doesn't even know what she would write in it, anyway—it's not as if they're recording entries for those to come and no one else would have an interest in her thoughts.
Then, Verso stops holding his concerts. He won't budge, no matter how hard she pleads or yells. He won't touch the piano and she can't convince him otherwise.
That's when she opens her journal for the first time. Inside the pages, she spits out every bit of poison stewing inside her. How she hates Verso. His self-pity, his oozing misery, disdain that he doesn't try to hide. She writes that Lumiére feels wrong, that she wishes Maman could've been fucking normal. Clea and Maman resent her and Papa pities her. She dreads the thought of facing them again. Everything is her fault. It's everyone else's fault except hers. She hates herself and hates Verso and hates Clea and hates her parents. She hates everyone and she loves everyone so much that it feels like there's no place all this love can go. One day, it might kill her, and a part of her wishes that it will.
Gustave says, "This vertigo thing. Is it a side effect of the hair?"
Hair is Gustave's shorthand for the Alicia side of her, which isn't untrue, technically. She nods. He takes this into consideration.
"It's odd," he says. "You used to love running on the rooftops. You remember when you broke your leg while jumping across the rooftops and Emma had to tie you down to keep you from doing it again on the broken leg?"
"It wasn't broken," she says, because it wasn't, and Gustave laughs. She rubs the smooth side of her stone before she tosses it into the water. "I don't know. I do miss it. Running around and feeling so free. But it's also scary."
"Do you wanna try it together?"
"Not really."
"Come on. It'll be like riding a bike."
"You don't know how to ride a bike, Gustave."
"Then we can add that to our list of things to learn. Come on."
The first time she ascends the rope, she grips Gustave's hand so hard that he winces and makes her switch to the metal one. "Breathe in and out," he says. "You've got this."
"Kindly shut up," she manages, gasping for air.
"Think about it this way. Even if you fall, it'll only hurt for a little while, and eventually you'll get back up. Well, unless you break your neck."
"You're the worst," she says, not meaning it, and he squeezes her hand.
They keep doing it. Ascending the rooftop, taking it one day at a time, one step further each time. The vertigo eases. Looking down doesn't help, so she keeps her eyes fixed on the horizon, the empty slate of the monolith. Like riding a bicycle, Gustave said.
Abruptly a memory comes to her. Five years old, pulling at Maman's skirt and begging Maman to teach her. She taught Clea and Verso, Papa said, which meant that she would teach Alicia too—and Maman did. She scolded Alicia for falling in the same breath that she fretted about Alicia's bleeding knee. The fall was painful, but Maman treated her to ice cream afterwards, then braided her hair, helping her keep it out of her face. Two neat little braids tucked behind her ears. Maman's fingers were so gentle that Alicia wished her hair could be as long as Clea's. Within two days she was riding circles around the manor with Verso and Maman while Clea and Papa watched from underneath the shade of a tree in the garden.
She writes about that memory in her journal later that night. I almost forgot, she writes. It seems like that happened in another life. She pauses, then she adds another line.
I miss Maman.
—
On the second week of her exposure therapy, they make it to the Hanging Gardens. There's a piano beside the shed. Gustave tests a key. It makes a discordant ting. "Ouch," Gustave says, peering at its insides like a doctor before surgery. "This guy has seen better days, clearly."
"Don't make fun of the poor piano," she says. "It's been exposed to the elements."
"I could fix it."
"Bragging, are you?"
"No, I was thinking—" Gustave glances at her, almost as if he's being careful. Then he says, "I was thinking about that pianist. He hasn't played in a while."
Suddenly, the flowers in the garden look magical. "Yeah."
"I don't suppose you know what that's all about?"
"Nope."
"Hmm," Gustave says. "If I fix this, do you think he'll play on it?"
"Probably not. I don't—I don't think he'll ever play again."
"Right. So, fixing the piano would be useless."
"Yes," she says, a touch too harsh.
"Maelle," Gustave says. She looks at him, feeling guilty. Sometimes, Gustave has this—supernatural sense. Like he's peering into her mind and seeing all of her dark, terrible skeletons without flinching. "You know that I love you, right?"
She tries to laugh it off. "Ew, Gustave."
"Hey. Hey. None of that." Gustave dusts off the piano bench and makes her sit down, before he takes the chair nearby. He sits on it backwards, like a father about to have a casual talk with his daughter. The thought of it makes her want to hide or cry or both. Gustave's gaze is unwavering. "You know that no matter where you go, you're my family. Nothing about that changes."
It's humiliating, how fast it makes her break down into tears. She scrubs at her eyes. "Why do you keep trying to send me away?"
"You're growing up," Gustave says simply. "You have to live your own life one day."
"I'm still a teenager."
"I know. Still, I feel like sometimes you don't know it. We are family. I'm always going to love you, no matter what you do or where you go." She shakes her head. Gustave reaches out and holds her knee. "Hey. Look at me. It's true. I wouldn't lie to you about this, you know that."
"You wouldn't love me if—if Emma died for me." Gustave blinks. Maelle goes on, voice raw. "You would resent me. You wouldn't even be able to look at me in the face. You would hate me so much, you'd want me dead."
"Oh, come on, that's not true."
"How could it be false? You can't understand how much I resent myself. I can't even look at myself—"
"One day at a time, that's how. You take it one day at a time until it passes."
Everyone keeps saying that, but so many days have passed and it never seems to get better. What, then? Will she just have to keep waiting with the hope that it might get better with no timeline in sight? Some nebulous, intangible possibility of a future where everything isn't shit? Is that all she can rely on? Her throat aches. It's tearing her throat from the inside, having to breathe. Gustave is hugging her too. When she leaves, this will be gone along with the rest of Lumiére and her life here. She's not ready for it. She won't ever be ready for that.
"Maelle," Gustave says. "Let's fix the piano together."
"I told you he won't play again," she chokes out.
"Who says it's for him? It's for us. Let's learn to play together. It'll be another memory for you to hold close."
"Please don't make me go. Please."
"I love you," Gustave says, kissing her on the head. She clings to him tighter, dreading the day she'll let go.
—
The piano gets fixed one string at a time. It's in such a state of disrepair, it might be a better idea to summon the chroma to make a new one entirely, but Gustave insists that there's nothing that can't be fixed. "Now who's the one speaking in metaphors?" she teases.
"Ah, you caught me, I've been infected," Gustave says. "Come on, hand me the screwdriver."
She sabotages the repair job once. Their repairs are going too quickly, and she knows what will wait for her at the end of it, so at night, she sneaks up to the rooftop and clips a few strings and saws at one of the legs until it's back to wobbling. The next morning, Gustave catches it immediately. His expression is fully Disappointed Brother-Dad. "Maelle," he says, with a twist to his mouth.
"It wasn't me," she says. "It was the piano goblin."
"I hope you know that if you do this again, I will do overtime on these repairs to fix what this piano goblin has damaged, and it may very well be in the middle of the night. The night, mind you, where old men like me can't see well and may be prone to slipping and falling to death on such a high rooftop."
"You're not old."
"Sorry, did you miss the whole falling to death part of my sentence?"
"I won't do it again," she mutters, feeling sufficiently scolded, and Gustave nods.
With Gustave's skill and her chroma to aid along anything his tools can't fix, it isn't long before they're staring at a fully repaired piano. It looks good, she has to admit. Clean, polished, not one key off-pitch. She tests out a few scales and it stays in tune.
"A job well-done," Gustave says.
She can't bring herself to agree. "What now?" she asks.
Gustave hums. "Well, now we can try to play it, or cover it up, or let it be vulnerable to the elements again. Up to you, really. I don't have much stake in this whole piano thing."
"I thought we were going to learn to play together."
"We were, until you betrayed me by showing off your expertise with those scales of yours." He mimes her playing by wiggling his fingers.
Ridiculous, and what's more ridiculous is the way it actually makes her smile. "Expertise is an exaggeration. I know a few things, that's all."
"Teach me your 'few things,' then."
"What happens after that?"
"That's up to you," Gustave says, "and I think you already know."
As usual, Gustave is right. She dusts off the bench and sits at the piano, finger hovering over C. "We'll start here," she says, and plays the first note.
—
Three days later, she knocks on Verso's door. "Can you play for me again?" she asks. The request feels like she's baring her soul, like she's waiting for the moment he closes the door in her face without another word. She swallows. "One last time."
He stares at her for a long moment, face unreadable. Then, it softens.
"One last time," he agrees.
—
Verso holds his last concert outside on the anniversary of the Gommage. She sits among the flowers, rubbing the soil between her fingers. She breathes in the salty ocean air, the bumble of the people below. The smell of fresh bread wafting up from the boulangerie, the piano notes on the wind. It's a beautiful place, Verso's Canvas, and the perfect reflection of everything they've done to his soul. They've fractured it, ravaged it, made it work to exhaustion. It's only right that she lets it rest.
He plays the first song he played her, back when they were on the Expedition. It's slower than she remembers; he's trying to cherish this last moment, too. She stands up and takes her seat beside him, letting her head drop on his shoulder. One day, she'll grow taller and older, and maybe even happier. Maman will help her, just as she helped in the Canvas, and Clea will tell her in no uncertain terms that all she owes is a happy ending. Papa will have left the lights on.
The song ends. His fingers rest on the piano, frozen on the last note. She takes his hand and lets out a shaky breath.
"I'll miss you," she says. "You and Verso both. I—" She blinks, hard. What else is there to say? A lifetime has come and gone. Everything he needed to know, he already did.
He knocks his head gently against hers. "Take care of yourself, Alicia."
"I will," she says, and she lets him go as petals on the wind.
—
When she opens her eyes, the atelier is bright. It takes her a moment to orient herself, shaking off the nausea of emerging from the Canvas. The door has been left cracked open; beyond, the hallway is dark. The manor is quiet. She takes the Canvas off its wooden frame and sets it down on the floor. Then, she turns on her heel and heads out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Monoco and Noco are dozing by the fireplace when she passes. She stops briefly to give them a pet on the ears and a kiss on the head. They should give new names to the dogs, she thinks. Clea would like it, at least, but Maman might take some more convincing. She'll discuss it with Papa first.
The master bedroom is closed, but light spills from the first floor. Someone has left the library lights on.
Inside, Papa has fallen asleep with a book on his lap. He looks exhausted, gray hairs even whiter at the temples. His cane has rolled to the floor. She picks it up and places it on the seat next to her, then touches his knee lightly.
His eyes open and land on her. "Alicia," he breathes.
Alicia smiles. She's home.