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~~~~~~~~~~
Blankness. Blackness.
The kaleidoscope colors of Verso’s Canvas fade to nothingness. Renoir finds the absence of sound more disorienting. The Fracture is a deafening cacophony—Aline’s creations screaming below, the earth and wind howling in protest as their conflict tears reality apart. Beneath the Monolith, all is silence—entropy—shapeless, formless. The Painter is aware of two things: the bars of his prison, biting into his ‘flesh,’ and Aline moving above him, trapped at the Monolith’s peak.
Arrogant man! Arrogant, spiteful—
She spits the words into the Void, her skirts thrashing behind her as she moves, a veil of captive stars caught in her orbit. Renoir closes his eyes, trading one shade of black for another.
He thinks of dread Persephone, hurling pomegranate arils into the dark, her lips stained blood-red with its juices. Kore, mourning, endlessly tied to the Underworld and its king. Renoir feels cold. It is the oldest retelling of the tale—he is Hades, come to steal away his Queen, take her, force her. She is life and light, thrashing against his hold as he pulls her down, down, down into the dark.
It will pass, Renoir assures himself. They have fought in the past and will fight again in the future. Such things are in their nature.
The season will change. Aline will return to him.
As she always has.
~~~~~~~~~~
Time is shapeless in the dark.
Renoir gives it shape. He plants a tree at the center of the monolith, stringing gold threads from its branches alongside fluttering gossamer cloth. It glows, casting artificial sunlight that beats back the shadows. Renoir feels Aline’s attention shift to him as he works, curious despite herself. The differences in their respective styles have always been vast—they are, in many ways, the antithesis of one another.
For a moment, her venom quiets. Renoir imagines her staring down from her prison, pale white hair fluttering out behind her on a cool breeze. He longs to feel the ocean air on his face; everything below the earth is stagnant.
He paints. He has nothing to do but paint.
The designs in his atelier are the only things that come readily to mind—Sirene, clearest of all. She requires the fewest adjustments. She has always been Aline. The Hauler is not a perfect fit. The creature in his atelier is a crude, ugly thing, far removed from Clea’s elegance.
He has time to make adjustments. And if he cannot leave this cell, he will set the Axons for Aline to see.
The Hauler: holding the world on its shoulders, wandering where it will, always alone.
Visages: beautiful, two-faced, false.
Reacher: wounded, still climbing high on increasingly unstable scaffolding.
And Sirene, beautiful Sirene, trapped, caged, lost to her wonder and dragging others down in her wake.
~~~~~~~~~~
A decade passes.
He marks the passage of time with every Gommage. For a year, he rests, gathering his strength to slip his chains and erase the oldest of her creations. It is a necessary cruelty. He tells himself as much. He finds their Chroma in the Canvas and wipes it away, marveling at the intricacies of her creations.
Every one of them has a story. Each of them has their memories.
Here is a woman, ancient now, a survivor of the Fracture. She carries the weight of her losses on wizened shoulders: a son, a daughter, both dead in the initial collapse. Alongside the pain, he sees the sweetness: one son remains. He has since wed. The old woman lives long enough to see the birth of three grandchildren, to cherish them. She goes in peace, Gommaging in her sleep.
For the first few decades, the people of Lumiere do not realize what is happening. Too few of them reach the number etched on the Monolith’s surface. Renoir gathers Aline’s creations into his arms, cannibalizing their chroma.
“I find it curious,” he murmurs, speaking into the Void. Aline’s attention turns towards him. Renoir presses a red petal between his thumb and forefinger, pressing until it bruises. It leaves a stain across his fingertips, looking like blood. How suited. “You might have cast me out—could still, if you wished.”
A decade (roughly) apart, and he still remembers every minute detail of her face. They have spent thirty years together in the waking world, thousands of years at each other’s sides across hundreds of Canvases. He sees her settled amidst her flowers, legs folded beneath her—the posture of a girl, lost and lonely. Alicia’s posture, some inane corner of his mind supplies. The airiness of her voice, distant, hollow, speaks to grief rather than rage. “What are you talking about?”
“Your chroma,” Renoir says. “We both know what you are, what I am—erase Lumiere, and there’s a chance you might send me back. Erase them—”
“No.” Her voice snaps, cold as spring frost. The Monolith trembles with her rage or grief. The two are braided together these days. “Are you really so spiteful? You’d kill all of them? For what?” The question isn’t worthy of response; the answer is too blatantly obvious: for her. He would do worse—far, far worse—for her. Aline sighs, recognizing that same truth. “Go home, Renoir.”
Stop, she says. If you love me, then stop.
He won’t. Can’t.
“Unpaint them, Aline—if you wish me gone, that is the only path left for you.”
She won’t. Can’t.
She leaves again. Renoir wraps himself in her chroma. All he feels is cold.
~~~~~~~~~~
Clea comes to him.
“Surely there are better uses of your time, Renoir. We’ve a war to win, and here you sit, wasting away.”
For the first time in decades, he trades the Curator’s form for his true face. Clea’s eyes widen; he is thinner than she remembers, hair long and disheveled, an echo of himself. A gravelly rasp steals into his voice when he speaks. “It will not be much longer.”
A lie. Their eldest’s lips press to a tight line. Clea arches a brow. She is no student. Clea is a master Paintress in all but name. She feels the flow of chroma within the Canvas, knows it has not yet shifted in his favor. And once it has? It will be years before he can wrest Aline from this place. It will take her starving, barely a shell of herself, to overcome that gulf in their abilities.
Clea scoffs, shaking her head. Her dark hair thrashes around her. Her smile more closely resembles a dog baring its teeth. “In case you’ve forgotten, Aline is not the only member of your family.”
He thinks of Verso, buried in the cold earth. He thinks of Alicia, a ghost of herself.
A better man would have at least considered leaving, compromise—so many things. There would have been a moment, a crisis of faith, where he stopped and saw the insanity of their situation.
For Renoir, the moment never comes. He swallows, reaching out to take Clea’s hand. He brings it to his lips. “This will all be over soon.”
She no longer believes him.
If that is the cost of Aline’s life, he will find a way to live with it.
~~~~~~~~~~
Clea has long since killed, buried, or repainted Aline’s portrait of her. Of the pair, Aline might remain the more powerful Paintress, but the Canvas belongs to Clea. Half of it is hers, regardless of the balance of chroma. Wherever that other Clea has gone, she is hidden from Aline’s sight.
He remembers his wife’s howling, agonized cry from the peak of the Monolith. Here is a second child for her to bury.
He should not be surprised when she treats the Hauler with similar disdain.
There, he thinks. She hates us both.
But hate is the wrong word. Hate is too shallow, hate is something he could stomach. He places a hand on the Hauler’s arm, impaled with so many blades, glowing Dessendre gold. Renoir wonders how it’s come to this and how much longer it can last. The season will change—must change.
Another decade passes.
~~~~~~~~~~
As Aline weakens—or as the world continues to wind down, reality going soft—, Renoir finds himself able to slip from his prison with more regularity. He walks the Canvas, marveling at their children’s creations. The force of memory threatens to choke him.
Here is the mountain they visited together. They'd skied for hours. Renoir wonders if the cabin is still there near the peak. They’d spent weeks there together, bundled in furs and blankets. Here is the beach where Verso insisted he was unafraid of Clea’s creations and she’d set Sprong upon him. Here is the white tree where he and Aline would escape while their children played heroes half a world away, curling together beneath its pale bows. Renoir turns his face up towards the shattered sky, the enormity of the damage they’ve done pressing in on his heart.
He keeps to the axon’s islands after that. Here, at least, there are no memories. Most days, he sits in the coliseum with Sirene, watching the familiarity of her dance, pretending he doesn’t feel the enormity of Aline’s absence. There is an emptiness within him, a hollow space shaped like her.
No memories, Renoir thinks, scoffing. The ballet swirls alongside Sirene, red hair swaying in the wind. He sees Alicia dancing with her mother in the ballroom, her little face turned up in pure delight. An ache settles in his chest so deeply it feels like it will tear him apart. The impotent urge to take his family in his arms, gather them close, shelter them from the world threatens to choke him. He misses them.
Aline’s portrait of him visits the island from time to time. That Renoir’s hair is shorter, his flesh fuller—grief has touched him, but he stands powerful beneath its weight, the Paintress’ bulwark against the world. The initial revulsion—hate, jealousy; both are equally honest descriptors— he feels looking upon the man fades to a duller note as he watches him navigate the coliseum.
That Renoir settles on the dais nearest to Sirene, watching her. A slow smile spreads across his face. The axon turns to regard him, tipping its head to the side. She lowers one hand, reaching out as if to let him take shelter in her palm.
He wonders if, on some level, they recognize one another. If every version of her calls to every version of him.
~~~~~~~~~~
There is an Alicia within the Canvas.
He watches her wander, almost always at either her father's or brother’s side. She is a little thing, delicate, but he cannot help but note the way she carries herself. Alicia holds her head high, shoulders back. Age has given her a gravitas that his little one has yet to grasp.
On rare occasions, she roams further afield. Renoir follows her to the base of the Reacher’s tower. She cocks her head to the side. Beneath her masks, he thinks she smiles.
Renoir loathes the cold plaster. The white stands out too starkly against her ashy grey skin.
Could you not stomach the sight of her long enough to finish your portrait? He asks Aline, tone bitter. For a moment, he wants to scream. Lash out at him all she likes; he can weather her rages. But to turn the knife of her temper upon their daughter?
She doesn’t answer for a long moment. Exhaustion laces her voice. You said it yourself: I only see what’s right in front of me.
As if it excuses the little ghost clambering up the scaffolding.
Renoir fights the urge to shout a warning or correction. The winds are strong this high in the mountains. The weather grows steadily worse as she ascends, passing through thick layers of clouds. Their youngest’s portrait remains unperturbed. She climbs, leaping from handhold to handhold. The bottom threatens to drop out of his stomach each time.
Alicia stops, leaning over, hands on her knees. She flexes her fingers; they shake. The girl flicks her wrists as if to dispel the nervous energy before returning to her climb.
When she reaches the peak, she wanders into the Reacher’s home without fear or reservation. The pair sits in companionable silence. To his surprise, Alicia summons a canvas, turning it so the Reacher can watch her paint. She leaves the piece of art—unrefined, but charming—when she takes her leave, beginning the arduous climb down.
He watches her go, hands clenching at his side. Aline’s portraits represent unconscionable crimes against their order. They must be erased. That truth remains unchanged.
If the weather shifts around the axon to something more temperate, more suited to climbing, it is neither here nor there. If Alicia finds a little orphelin waiting for her, puttering away at its inventions, offering her a set of wings, that is also beside the point.
Alicia cocks her head to the side, the scarred flesh near the corners of her eyes crinkling, suggesting a smile. She feathers the tips of her fingers across the shoulder straps, miming slipping the device on. The orphelin cheers excitedly.
When Alicia leaps from the platform, he does scream. She does not hear. This body has no lungs; it comes out as a warbling mess of nothingness. The gentler updrafts catch her, holding her aloft. She lists to the side, catching herself quickly, righting her own course.
Alicia soars.
~~~~~~~~~~
Verso—
No, Aline’s portrait, Aline’s creation, comes to find him.
He does not know how. The Canvas barely seems aware of him, almost as if he exists outside its inhabitants' cognizance. Verso sees him.
The boy is Aline’s finest work. Looking at him aches. The way he lifts his hand—hesitant at first, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s doing—, the lopsided smile, all of it is so clearly their son. There’s something more guarded in his posture, shoulders slumped after carrying too much weight and too many sleepless nights, but still him.
“You’re the Painter, aren’t you?” He asks. It’s been decades now since he heard his child’s voice. Renoir stiffens. He nods. “The real Renoir? Not…not like us.”
Another nod.
“I want your help,” he says, lips pursing. There is all of Verso’s conflict, all his pain, his pale eyes glittering with grief even as he fights to smile. “It’s killing her, isn’t it? Maman? She can’t—” something cracks in his voice. Verso shakes his head, the mask of certainty slipping back into place. “ —she can’t stay.”
Renoir cocks his head to the side.
Verso takes a step forward. “She has to go home.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Time passes. The number the Monolith ticks down. His control waxes as Aline’s wanes.
Years pass before he sees Verso again. It comes in the form of the boy showing up at the manor door. Painted or not, he is a Dessendre; their sanctuary opens to him. Renoir lingers on the upper landing.
Verso lifts his head, palm still pressed over his eye. It comes away wet with blood. The flesh beneath has pulled shut, but an ugly mark remains, highlighting a gash that should have blinded him. He offers a lopsided grin, glancing around the foyer. “Can’t remember the last time I was back here.”
Renoir raises his hand, tapping the approximation of where his eyes would sit.
Verso shrugs. “Familial disagreement gone wrong—I’m sure you understand.”
The Curator huffs, the sound discordant and strange in the still air. Somehow, he expects that will be the end of it. Aline’s creation will state his purpose and be on his—no, its—way. But the boy loiters. His shoulders slump inwards, expression falling as he glances around, melancholy and nostalgic. Verso lowers his head before staring up, something deferential in the look. It’s a habit their son took too long to grow out of—but he had, around sixteen or so, coming into a little extra height and more confidence in his abilities. Either Aline has forgotten, or something has set this boy on the back foot, regressing to his youth.
The latter, he thinks. Verso’s throat bobs as he swallows.
“I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here. But—” Verso's mouth thins. He stares towards the empty frame where their portrait used to hang. “—Look, I’ll be out by morning. After today, I want to sleep in my own bed. For old time’s sake, eh?”
He’s watched the boy spend the night in his ramshackle shelter, waking up wet from the rain, or tuck himself away in caves, or with the Gestrals. He never returns to the manor—Aline’s manor—these days. Renoir wonders if he’s welcome.
Send him away, the eminently reasonable voice in his head demands.
“One night,” Verso murmurs, dropping his eyes.
It would be such a simple thing, submitting to this illusion. This is their son, their Verso.
He isn’t.
The Curator steps aside, sweeping an arm towards the stairs. True to his word, Verso is gone by morning.
~~~~~~~~~~
For a time, it feels like going mad.
He wanders the manor’s empty halls, hating the silence. There’s no warmth in this place. All he feels is the absence of his family. No Verso or Aline at the piano. No Clea in the ateliers or at her harp. No Alicia curled up on the sofa in the library. Or making a racket at one of her typewriters. No Monoco. No Noco.
Just silence.
The Monolith ticks down another year. Thirty-three, it says.
Thirty-three more years feels insurmountable.
~~~~~~~~~~
There is a break in the monotony.
It comes in the form of a familiar little body, cradled against her brother’s chest. The image is so strikingly familiar that Renoir suffers a wash of deja vu—the morning Alicia had fallen, his industrious girl. Verso had fetched her from the gardens, hadn’t he? It’d taken months for her arm to heal, and she’d never been comfortable climbing after that.
Alicia.
“Your Clea told me to look after her,” Verso says, accusatively. The Curator recovers from his shock quickly enough to shrug. Clea had not come to visit him on her last sojourn to the Canvas. “Renoir was feeling enthusiastic this year. Between him and the noirs, I’m uncertain there’s anyone else left of the Expedition this year.”
Renoir sweeps an arm towards the children’s wing of the manor. He leads the way to Alicia’s bedroom. The room remains darker than her sibling’s quarters. Try as he might, Renoir cannot seem to restore things to the way they were. The paneling and the wood remain blackened from the flame and smoke. Verso brushes past him. He sets the young woman on the bed with delicate care. Aline’s creation spares her a second glance, reaching out as if to brush the hair from Alicia’s face before catching himself.
He clears his throat. “If there’s anyone left, they’ll come looking.”
Renoir nods.
He waits for the painted copy to leave before returning to his daughter’s bedside. Her lovely face—unblemished, unscarred—is smeared with dirt and blood. Renoir swallows past the lump in his throat, reaching out to feather the tips of his fingers across her eyes. Alicia stirs in her sleep, groaning, turning her face into the pillow. He searches her chroma for any major injuries; the vast majority are superficial. She’s turned her right ankle; the swelling in her wrist suggests a break. The rest are minor scrapes.
Renoir curls his hand over Alicia’s wrist first. His talents have always proven more suited to destruction than creation—that had always been Aline’s domain—, but setting the bones is a simple task. He feeds his chroma into hers, reshaping and repairing the lines of Alicia’s form. She sighs, a softer smile turns her lips as she slips into a deeper, more comfortable sleep.
The Curator brushes errant strands of flame colored hair away from her face. Seeing her after sixty-seven years tears at him. The satisfaction, the urge to take her in his arms, wars against the need to offer correction. He’d told her to trust him, to stay home.
Renoir allows himself to sit by her bedside for a time. Alicia’s presence is a reminder: this is what he’s fighting for—their family, as whole as it can be after the fire.
Alicia blinks awake later, staring at him with wide eyes. She moves back towards the headboard, creating distance, reaching for something at her hip. A rapier flickers to life, chroma made manifest by her desire. It is more skill with Painting than she’s ever shown before. Renoir cocks his head to the side. Amusingly, Alicia mirrors the movement.
“What—” she asks, haltingly, and the sound of her voice after so long leaves him clutching the arm of his chair, the wood splintering under his grip. Her gaze flicks to the damage briefly, mouth thinning. “ —are you?”
The Curator shrugs.
To his surprise, Alicia only rolls her eyes, sighs, and swings her legs over the side of the bed. She presses the flat of her palm to her temple. “Well, that’s helpful.” A warble of apology. Alicia’s lips curl up in a small smile. “Don’t apologize. I don’t know how I’d respond if someone asked what I was.”
She is everything she was before the fire. Renoir stares at his little one, heart aching.
“It’s rude to stare,” she grumbles. Alicia climbs to her feet. She sways badly. Renoir reaches out to steady her, fingers curling over her shoulder. It earns him another smile. “Come on. You can still help me figure out where I am.”
She doesn’t wait for him to step aside. This Alicia brushes past him, bold and brilliant, the red tail of her hair trailing behind her like fire.
~~~~~~~~~~
For a handful of days, things feel right. A sense of normalcy and sanity descends upon Renoir.
Alicia does not know him. She introduces herself as Maelle, pulling a face when he offers his hand.
(“You can’t stand on formality out here,” she groans. Deep below the Monolith, Renoir laughs.)
He surveys his daughter’s equipment, finding himself impressed by the ingenuity of Aline’s creations. Renoir traces the picto’s fine lines. Without the means to Paint themselves and access chroma, they’ve created conduits. It’s a solution he has considered.
One morning, he finds her training in the foyer. Alicia’s face twists in concentration, leaving her looking older. Almost identical to her mother. He motions to her for the sword. His daughter’s eyes narrow. She holds the blade nearer to her chest. “Why?”
He gestures again, warbling.
“I don’t see why you need it. You have one of your own.”
But she relents. Renoir channels chroma into the rapier, reinforcing its flimsy form. The metal glitters in the soft golden light. He offers the weapon back to Alicia.
His daughter’s eyes are pale, lovely, and purely pleased. Alicia performs a quick series of jabs with the rapier before testing its weight. Her smile widens. “How—I don’t understand. It looks the same. It feels—” she pauses, searching for the word. “ —better.” She holds the sword up, expression fond. His heart clenches again.
Go home, he wants to say. Alicia, go home.
But he is tired. And there is a coldness to his mind that he has never been able to lock away. That voice whispers to let Alicia stay. He has won; Aline will be driven from the Canvas. Clea has seen to it.
But that day is thirty-three years away—thirty-three insurmountable years.
And here is Alicia.
She swings the blade again, returning to her training.
Send her home, Renoir snarls at himself.
He steps back, watching Maelle practice. He lets her stay.
~~~~~~~~~~
Renoir trains her. Hones her like the rapier she favors.
Maelle slips from the manor when she thinks he isn’t looking. She hunts Nevrons, stronger than any member of an Expedition could hope to become.
One night, she returns cradling her shattered arm against her chest.
“Are you going to lecture me?” Maelle asks.
(And he hears something like Alicia—or is it Aline?--- in the undercurrent. Something like a request. Lecture her. Stop this.)
Renoir restores her arm. He motions for her to draw her blade.
Maelle is still too weak for what he needs.
~~~~~~~~~~
What remains of the Expedition comes for her. Renoir watches as another man pulls his daughter into his arms, embracing her as if she were family. Maelle laughs, purely easy with this stranger. Gustave, she calls him. Renoir reads his chroma and sees an unsettling echo—an amalgamation of father and brother. The Curator looks away.
They will go on their way. They will kill the Paintress.
Maelle surprises him. She stops, cocking her head to the side, looking for all the world like she intends to take the Curator’s hand. “You could come with us, you know?”
Travelling with them will only make things more difficult.
(He’s there, already waiting, before the Expedition makes camp.)
~~~~~~~~~~
After that, it all happens quickly.
Aline’s portrait of him kills Maelle’s guardian (this, he allows).
Aline’s portrait attempts to drive Maelle from the Canvas (this, he prevents).
Alic—Maelle drifts in the Void, careening towards the Canvas’s exit. Renoir catches her.
You know she’s too weak to be here, Aline chides, anger and fear in her voice. He ignores both.
(She’s right).
It doesn’t matter. This is temporary; this will pass. Maelle will return to the Canvas. Maelle will kill the Paintress.
In the end? They will all go home together.