Work Text:
“Hey, Maarten, are you closing up?”
Jolting, Maarten blinked at the voice coming from behind him. He turned on his saddle chair to find Søren raising his dark eyebrows, leaning against the doorway of Maarten’s designated workspace in the art studio.
“What?” he asked the man.
“I’m going home. Can you lock up here?”
“Oh, sure,” Maarten replied absently.
Søren shook his head while he looked up at the painting behind him. It took up almost the whole wall of the small space and was taller than Maarten himself.
“Your girlfriend’s almost finished, huh?”
Maarten glared at him, and Søren grinned before lifting a hand and ducking out, calling a goodbye.
He was right, in that the painting was nearing completion. A life-sized portrait of a woman that the other artists at the studio had taken to jokingly calling Maarten’s girlfriend, he had been chipping away at the piece for months between other, commissioned, works. It was an unusual passion project, for him; he tended to gravitate towards landscapes and still lives, and when he did portraiture for fun, the subjects were most often men, seeing as Maarten had no real interest in women at all.
But this painting, of this tall woman with her turquoise dress and dimpled cheeks, had demanded to be painted.
Today, finally, Maarten could finish it. He’d spent almost all afternoon trying to mix the perfect shade of green, creating swatch after swatch with his oil paints and never getting what he wanted. Though the differences were minute, he knew the exact shade this woman’s eyes needed to be. Now, with the right hue of deep, mossy green on his brush, Maarten bent forward and filled it in.
With the paint still wet, the woman’s eyes glinted in the bright lights, as if she were alive.
“Perfect,” Maarten breathed. Taking a step back, he looked at the whole piece.
He’d painted a vague background for the woman; gentle hills and a field of red flowers, the same color as her lips. Many, many shades of brown had gone into her hair, from copper to dark chocolate, and Maarten had spent some time studying photographs of stars from the fifties to get the swooping curls just right where they emerged from a green headband. He’d almost been tempted to try the style himself, if just to get a laugh out of the other guys.
“What am I going to do with you now?” he wondered aloud.
For now, he just set to cleaning up his green paint and tidying his workspace. He left the painting in the shared studio when he locked up, and biked home through the warm summer evening. It’d still be there tomorrow; he had plenty of time to figure it out.
Although Maarten had strange dreams full of green eyes and red flowers, he was in a good mood when he arrived at the studio the next morning. Just on the outskirts of the old city center, it was a small but open space above a bakery, where he picked up a cinnamon roll. He held it in his mouth as he unlocked the door. First one in, then.
There were some half-finished projects out in the main space; one of Simão’s mosaiced installations, and a model of something that Søren had built out of Lego, as he was wont to. Trying not to get crumbs anywhere as he shoved his roll into his mouth, Maarten checked his phone while he crossed the room to his workspace and pulled open the door.
He looked up, and froze.
“What…”
Behind him, the main door opened, and Maarten whirled around to find Søren and Simão both entering, chatting amicably.
“Hey, Maarten,” Søren greeted. “Good morning!”
“Is it?” Maarten asked through clenched teeth. Søren shrugged, while Simão narrowed his eyes.
“What’s going on?”
“What’s going—look!” Throwing the door open, Maarten gestured frantically at his painting of the mysterious woman—or, rather, at the lack of it.
Not the whole painting. The canvas was still there, the hills and flowers, but the woman was gone, as if he hadn’t spent months getting the details just right. As if she’d just wandered off.
“Did you paint over your girlfriend?” Simão asked, perplexed. He knew how much time Maarten had spent on this piece. All the guys did. Although they had only met because they happened to share this studio space, Maarten would count all three other artists as his closest friends, now. They were an eclectic, international group, all from different countries, and he had tried to be a guide for their life in the Netherlands.
“She was here yesterday,” Søren said, now also squinting over. And, when Maarten glared at both of them, “Wait, you don’t think we did anything? I might be an asshole, but I’d never touch anyone else’s work, Maarten!”
Simão was nodding vigorously, long hair flying around his face.
“I know.” Maarten’s shoulders sagged. Although a stupid prank would be the easiest explanation—and Søren was certainly prone to those—it didn’t make sense. He knew this was the exact background he’d painted. He recognized every brush stroke and shade of paint. The empty spot where the woman had been looked as though he had painted it himself, and there was nothing to indicate there was more paint underneath. But it couldn’t be, because the subject couldn’t just have walked off the canvas.
“Something’s over here.”
All three men looked over at the other side of the room, where Matthew was standing by the emergency exit. None of them had heard him enter, as often happened, and he rolled his eyes when they jumped. They still hadn’t figured out if he did it on purpose.
Maarten hurried over, and the man pointed at several drops of paint on the ground that looked fresh and led to the door. They were turquoise, the same vivid shade as the woman’s dress. Which hadn’t been wet for weeks. Maarten frowned at Matthew, who shrugged.
Still frowning, he pushed open the emergency door.
The way that the studio was built meant that Maarten exited out onto the low roof of a neighboring building, looking out over the city. He peered around, ignoring the typical jumble of accents emerging behind him, and immediately spotted her.
Her hair really was all those shades of brown, glinting gold in the sunlight and moving in the gentle summer breeze. The turquoise dress rippled around her knees. She turned to Maarten, who had frozen again in shock.
“You said you didn’t have a model!” Søren said accusingly behind him, only to be sharply shushed by Matthew. The voices retreated.
“Who… Are you?” Maarten asked, slowly stepping forward. His heart was beating in his throat.
The woman, the woman he had painted and who was now real, smiled with those red lips, and one cheek dimpled just as in the painting. She had freckles. Maarten feared he knew the position of every single one of them by heart. They were very annoying to render in oil paint.
“Hello,” she breathed. “It’s good to see you.”
“W-what—why are you Belgian?” Maarten blurted. The accent was unmistakable.
The woman pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips, which immediately made Maarten feel like a little boy getting scolded.
“I mean—” He didn’t believe he’d been thinking she was Belgian when he painted her, so why should she be? It seemed oddly specific.
That wasn’t actually the most pertinent question, of course, but it was easier to address than the fact that his painting had come alive.
“I’m Maarten,” he offered, unsure what else to say.
“Maarten? Yes, that’s possible.” She shook her head but continued, “I’m Manon, then.”
“You are.” He’d never told anyone, but she’d been Manon from the first brushstroke. “I think… I might have created you.”
“Perhaps.” Manon stepped forward and touched his shoulder. She felt sun-warmed and real, and smelled sweet. Like baked goods, or chocolate. Faintly, Maarten wondered at the fact that it wasn’t paint. Her eyes were just as green as he’d painted them last night. Eyes that green were rare. In fact, the only time he’d come across that exact shade was… On himself. He hadn’t realized.
“Or, maybe,” she continued, red lips curling up, “I should have already been here, Netherlands.”
That might be even scarier—and was she really calling him Netherlands because he wasn’t Belgian? Rude.
Maarten quickly touched the hand clasping his shoulder and met her eye.
“I guess we’ll find out,” he said, because whoever, whatever she was, she was definitely his responsibility. They would have to figure it out. It was a good thing that painting hadn’t been commissioned, or he’d be losing out on a lot of money. It’d be hard to explain why a Belgian woman had emerged from the canvas.
Why was she Belgian, though?
There was, of course, no guide for what to do when your artwork came alive.
Simão had Googled something and was telling Søren and Matthew about some kind of ancient myth on the topic when Maarten took the living artwork in question back into the studio. Manon blinked at three men as if trying to remember who they were beyond sharing the studio with Maarten, which made him wonder if she’d been aware of things while she was being painted. That seemed like it would be impossible, but so was everything else about this, of course.
“Check this out!” Simão said, holding his phone towards both of them.
“What’s this?” Manon asked, reaching out towards the screen with caution. The Wikipedia page was, predictably, in Portuguese, but that didn’t seem to be her issue with it. “Oh, it’s like a little TV! And there’s an encyclopedia inside? How clever!”
She mouthed the Portuguese words while Maarten exchanged a baffled look with Simão. He had so many questions, but he started with, “Do you speak Portuguese?”
Manon frowned. “I mostly understand this, but it’s definitely not easy. Maybe something related?” She exclaimed in delight when Simão quickly selected a different language. “Tiens, I can definitely understand this.”
“Spanish,” Simão relayed. “Maarten, why did you paint a Belgian woman who speaks Spanish?”
“I didn’t know she was Belgian or that she spoke Spanish! I don’t even speak Spanish!”
“As well you shouldn’t, stupid language,” the man muttered.
Manon had discovered that the page scrolled and had read the whole article, in Spanish.
“I hope you’re not planning on falling in love with me like in the myth, Maarten.” She grimaced. Søren snorted.
“Shut up,” Maarten told him. “Don’t worry, you’re not my type.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Then, why did you paint me?”
He could only shrug.
Instead of lingering on that, Maarten and Manon went over to where her painting was. She touched it, ghosting her fingers over the bumps of paint strokes.
“Do you remember being… There?” Maarten asked.
“Not exactly. But there’s definitely something.” She wrapped her arms around herself, staring into the middle distance. “I remember you. I remember…” A long silence. “It’s hard to put in order. But somehow, you’ve always been there, I think.”
Did that mean she’d already existed somewhere and Maarten had summoned her here? Was there a hole in a reality where she had been? And why? How? If he had been there too, what did that mean? He hadn’t anticipated this, going into art.
“I would have liked to see the painting, I’m sure it was beautiful. You’re a professional artist?”
“I am. Spent a long time working in sales, but I make enough from painting now.”
“Tiens, who would have guessed that, after you immediately started selling weapons to Spain during the Twelve Years’ Truce!”
“I needed money!” Maarten replied, feeling a well-worn irritation wash over him, as though they’d had this exchange many times. Manon’s green eyes widened while he blinked in confusion. For a moment, he saw her not in the turquoise swing dress and intricate curls but in the many layers of a Golden Age noblewoman’s getup, headpiece covering her hair, as if he’d painted her that way, and he swore he could smell the ingredients he would have used to make his oil paints back then. He probably would have inadvertently used something toxic in his search for the right green pigment for her eyes.
“You’re still here,” she said now. “And I’m here too. And I think we need to figure out why.”
“Matt, do you believe in reincarnation?”
Matthew tilted his head at Maarten’s question, both of them watching Simão and Søren explain their projects in mosaics and sculpting, respectively, to Manon, who seemed genuinely interested or was really great at faking it. Even without Wikipedia pages to help her, she had immediately guessed where the other men were from as well. Søren, Maarten could understand—his Danish accent was very distinctive, so if she’d heard it before, in a different life… But Matthew’s Dutch was nearly unaccented, and even so, most people guessed American before they arrived at Canadian.
“I don’t think so,” Matthew eventually said. “But, you know, I also didn’t believe that paintings could come to life, so…”
Maarten huffed. “Yeah, that’s true. I thought…” He shook his head. Nothing made sense.
“What will you do with her?”
“No idea. She can stay with me for a while, but beyond that, I really don’t know.”
“Maybe she wants to go to Belgium?” Matthew suggested. And, chuckling, “I think you’ll need to paint some extra clothes for her, Maarten.”
Maarten ended up bringing Manon home, taking her through Delft’s city center on the back of his bike, luckily without getting her dress or petticoat stuck in the spokes. He didn’t think he’d been considering the logistics of petticoats when he painted her, either. He just thought it looked nice. She was silent as they went, with one arm wrapped around Maarten’s middle.
“Are you alright?” he asked her when they arrived on the bank of the canal in front of his houseboat. Hauling his bike down the gangway, he locked it while Manon shrugged.
“It’s different,” she said, “but I feel like it’s been more different before.” Then, not elaborating on that rather cryptic statement, she seemed to notice where they were. “Maarten, how fitting! You’ve always been fond of sailing.”
“Have I?” He had been, but she couldn’t know that.
She smiled, saying, “Yes, I’m sure of that.”
“Well, this boat isn’t going anywhere.” He gestured her in. “You can stay here, if you want.”
“For free?” she asked, jokingly.
“You’re my responsibility.”
Maarten watched her walk around the small living room, water gently lapping at the walls of the boat. She looked at his knickknacks, souvenirs and books and flowers, and he wondered if she somehow recognized any of the stuff. When he heard her mutter under her breath, he was certain parts of it were in French. He decided he needed coffee to deal with this. Luckily, he had some coffee milk in the pantry to put in the cup he made for Manon.
He didn’t question his decision to do this until she told him, again in Dutch, “Oh, I would like milk in mine, please!” after he’d already added it. He stared at the cup.
“Ah, perfect!” Manon said, taking it without seeming to notice his distraction. “Merci.”
Had he even painted her coffee preferences? Had it been in the back of his mind? Surely not. God, this was making his head hurt. Good thing he had coffee now.
“Ça va?” she asked, eyeing him over her cup.
“Who are you?” he repeated slowly.
“Who are you?” she countered. He shrugged helplessly. Manon’s eyebrows quirked, and she went back to scrutinizing his belongings without another word.
“Do you think you want to go to Belgium?” he asked her, as she was inspecting his small collection of guidebooks. He didn’t have one for anywhere in Belgium; it always seemed a little unnecessary.
Manon looked up, and slowly nodded.
“Okay. We can take the train down to Antwerp, I guess?” Part of Maarten balked at the thought of spending what was sure to be quite some money on an unnecessary train ride, but it might help them figure out who Manon was—and who she seemed to think he was. He took out his phone to check the times and prices, opting for the day after tomorrow. He felt like he’d need some time to think tomorrow.
Manon sat down on the couch next to him and watched curiously as he scrolled through the website.
“56 euros…” Maarten muttered despondently. “Times two.” He should have painted some money for her. Sure, he could afford that. That didn’t mean he had to like it. Manon elbowed him teasingly.
“Money must roll,” she said, in an exaggerated Dutch accent and deep voice, and Maarten was startled into laughter.
He had to put in their names, and could only hope no one would ask for Manon’s passport on the way. He used his own surname for her; they looked like they could be related, after all. As long as no one spoke to them. Maybe he could do a Flemish accent.
“Maarten Koopman,” she read from the screen. “Merchant? Oh, I’m sure I’ve told you that that’s too on the nose a surname, Maarten.”
“I can’t help what my dad’s surname was,” he muttered.
“You have parents!” Manon exclaimed.
“Everyone has those—”
“Any siblings?”
“I—” He looked at her. “No.”
“Well, I think that might have changed.”
“That’s not how that works.”
“That’s not how that works? I’ve come out of a painting, apparently. If I say I’m your sister, then I’m your sister.”
“Can I at least be the elder sibling?” he asked her, and she bopped him on the head.
Later, they ate dinner together, and Manon had to borrow some of Maarten’s clothes to sleep in. He had to promise her to take her into the city the next day for actual clothes, and he drifted to sleep trying to figure out what the budget was for things like that. He had more strange dreams.
The next day seemed to consist mostly of shopping, and of Manon charming people with her accent and her dress and her easy smiles. She insisted on buying more red lipstick, although she seemed overwhelmed by all the choices in the store. Maarten tried to leave her to get undergarments alone, but she seemed to delight in teasing him about his awkwardness so he stubbornly stuck by her. It did feel like being pestered by a sibling, at least if Matthew’s tales about his brother were to be believed. She was confused by euros but shrugged and went with it.
All three men texted to ask for updates, but Maarten didn’t have much to say, other than that they were going to Antwerp tomorrow. In fact, he picked up a little guidebook to the city at the tourist shop and absently looked through it while Manon tried on clothes. It was hard to find something that matched the style of her swing dress and he was not introducing her to online shopping anytime soon, but she eventually got a skirt and a blouse that she liked, and a shawl in case it got cold in the evening.
Maarten thought they were done at that point, but then she got into what she needed to get her hair to do what she liked, which he knew because he’d done all that research before he’d painted her. If only he’d just given her a pixie cut; she could have used his hair gel instead.
Well, he couldn’t have, of course, even if he’d known she’d come alive. The image was too specific for that and had been from the beginning.
“You’re going to sink my house with all that,” he told her, carrying some of her shopping bags.
“If your big head hasn’t sunk it, nothing will!” she said cheerily. Maarten sent a mental apology to Matthew for every time he dismissed his complaining about his brother’s teasing.
“What do you think you are?” he asked Manon over dinner. She had helped him cook, and somehow managed to not get underfoot but still annoy him with suggestions on how to cut his potatoes.
“What do I think I am?” she echoed, looking outraged for all of a second before frowning thoughtfully, resting her chin in her hand. She poked a green bean with her fork as she stared out of the window at the canal outside. “I’m… Belgian.”
“Alright, but—”
“No, that’s…” Her shoulders jumped when she huffed. “That’s the answer. More than anything, I’m Belgian. I think you will understand.” She picked up the bean, and continued softly, “I hope so, at least.”
The train ride to Antwerp went smoothly enough; no one asked for Manon’s ID and the trains all ran on time. The only odd thing was her suddenly sitting up straight and declaring, “We’re in Belgium now,” which was, as far as Google Maps was concerned, correct, but there was no way she could have known. Maarten decided to just accept it.
This continued in Antwerp, where she seemed much more at home than she’d been in Delft. It was as if she knew where she was going immediately, even though they had no particular destination in mind. Maarten followed her from the grand station through all kinds of back alleys and side streets with messy pavement until they suddenly emerged onto a large, busy square bordered by tall, narrow houses; the whole thing looked extremely, indefinably, Belgian to Maarten.
“It’s different,” Manon said once more, “but it’s also the same.” She looked up at the huge building on the other side of the square, where many flags were colorfully swaying in the summer breeze. The wind carried the faint smell of the harbor.
Maarten rifled through his little guidebook to find out what they were looking at, but he needn’t have bothered.
“City hall,” Manon told him. “It was quite new, really, when you were first here.”
There was another flash before Maarten’s eyes, showing him a memory that couldn’t be his. The flags and the statue on the square weren’t there, and he felt so exhausted. Manon was wearing that Golden Age dress and standing next to a man who looked a lot like Simão and was calling Maarten the wrong thing with a malicious twist to his tone.
“It’s not Holland anymore,” Maarten muttered, squinting against the sun.
“He never did learn,” Manon said brightly. She linked her arm through his.
Maarten, viciously, thought that he, whoever he was, absolutely learned, he just couldn’t be bothered, but the memory had faded again, and he had no idea what to make of it. It all felt frustratingly close yet just out of reach, like a sketch that just wouldn’t come out right.
“Do you think we can go inside?” Manon was asking, tugging him closer to the city hall.
They couldn’t, and maybe that was for the best. Maarten felt overwhelmed already. With every step, he kept getting flashes of memories, contextless and not all of them lining up with the seventeenth-century image of the first. He read in his guidebook that the Twelve Years’ Truce was signed in this building. Some version of him had been there, apparently, but had also been here centuries before and after, with Manon, quite often. He remembered sailing over the Scheldt on several ships at different times, meeting Manon alongside people who seemed very important. They wandered slower now, Manon evidently lost in thought as well.
Eventually, they made it to the river, next to part of an old fortress that was crawling with tourists. She gazed at it.
On some instinct, Maarten wrapped an arm around Manon’s shoulders. She leaned into him, and he imagined that was part of being her brother too.
“I still don’t understand,” he said.
A large ship passed by. Maarten had the distinct impression that it shouldn’t have fit, but the Scheldt was wider than he thought it was. He’d actually been to Antwerp before, but that was quite some time ago, so he had no idea why he thought that. Well, except…
“Are these… Past lives, or something?”
“No,” Manon said softly. “No, it was all one, although I’ve had many names.” She glanced up with a mischievous smile on those red lips that somehow reminded Maarten of a cat. “You’ve only had two, and yet everyone still got it wrong, Holland.”
“Flanders,” he immediately shot back. She stuck her tongue out. He watched her for a moment, trying to overlay all of those versions of her flitting through his mind onto this tall woman with her sparkling eyes and red lipstick. If he had painted her in a Renaissance dress, would she have stepped out of the painting speaking some kind of archaic Dutch and calling him Holland? Or would she just have been the same person in a cumbersome dress? He didn’t create her, he thought. She’d been somewhere.
In a way, that was reassuring. Maarten had no idea what he’d do given the power to create whole human beings, although he could imagine the guys’ crude suggestions.
The man in those memories really looked a lot like Simão. He didn’t have siblings, but they looked as if they could be brothers, if Simão dressed up in a doublet. What did that mean? Had the other artists been… Like them, whatever they were? Why were they all in Delft? Maybe Maarten should paint that man, although the thought immediately made him feel vaguely uncomfortable in the way that thinking of his least favorite teacher from high school did.
“Netherlands!” Manon snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Maarten. Sorry.”
“Netherlands is… Also fine.” It didn’t make sense, but it felt that way. “As long as it’s not Holland.”
Suddenly, Manon wrapped her arms around him. He slowly embraced her, and for a long moment, they just stood there in the sun.
“You’ve said that thing before,” Maarten mumbled. “That if you say you’re my sister, then you are.”
“It’s still true.”
“Yes.” It was true. “Hm, that’ll be hard to explain to my mother.”
She hiccupped a laugh, then suddenly disentangled herself and said, “Well, we should go and eat some fries! Or is it time for a waffle?”
“What?” Maarten laughed.
“I’m Belgian, aren’t I?”
“Belgium,” he corrected.
“And don’t forget it!”
They had fries for lunch, and Manon had many opinions about them. Although she was definitely trying to make him laugh, Maarten could tell she was being sincere in her opinions. He persuaded her to leave the waffle review for another time.
This time, when they crossed the border, Maarten felt something too. A frisson at the back of his mind, chattering and buzzing like a living thing. Like the Netherlands, maybe, its way-too-many people all doing their thing, living their lives.
It felt right.
“How was your excursion?” Søren asked when Maarten entered the studio. “And where’s your girlfriend?”
“Sister.”
“That is not how that works, dude.”
“Turns out it does. Very informative excursion. Manon will be by later.”
Delft, Maarten thought, wasn’t a hugely important city when it came to history with Belgium, but she might have been here in that other life, and something might stir in her memory. Maybe something that could tell her if they should be those people again, somehow. If there were others. He looked at Søren, who grinned, leaning his chin in his hand.
“If she’s your sister, can I ask her on a date, then?” he joked—and a flash of memory jumped into Maarten’s head. He smirked.
“I’ve said before, you’re free to ask her, but if she laughs in your face, that’s on you.”
“Have you said that before?” Søren asked faintly as Maarten turned to his studio space, where the empty canvas was still up. “Matthew, has he said that before?”
“Could be, sounds familiar,” Matthew replied. “I think she’s out of your league, anyway.”
“Hey, now!”
Leaving the painting be, Maarten started doing some sketches for a commission he’d received, but with his other hand, he idly doodled on another notepad, as he sometimes did. It usually turned out to be just scribbles, simple little drawings. Although he could use both hands equally well, it took a lot of concentration to actually draw with both.
When Manon did come in, it startled him. Or… Belgium? It felt weird to call a person that, as much as he felt in his soul that Netherlands suited him just as much as Maarten did.
“Why did Søren just ask if I like chocolate? Just because I’m—oh, that’s eerie!”
Maarten looked down at his notepad, which was now filled with… Eyes. He lifted the pencil and picked up the pad. Manon tilted her head. Some of the eyes were partially obscured by the thin lines of sketched hair. It was a little eerie, but…
Swiveling his seat, Maarten grabbed the final swatch he’d done for Manon’s eye color, and held it next to the sketch.
“Oh,” Manon breathed.
With his hands shaking slightly, Maarten picked the pencil back up and flipped the page over.
The eyes belonged to a young man, he quickly decided—or already knew—with the same upturned nose as Manon and the same arched eyebrows as Maarten himself, one hidden behind wavy hair.
“I’m never going to make any money if this continues,” he sighed, because he could also feel in his soul that he would have to paint this man and his waistcoat and his green eyes.
“That’s never happened, Maarten.”
They both stared at the sketch as if willing the man to just step out.
“Well,” Manon said, “I guess I do feel more like a middle child.”