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Maelle walks through the portal with the taste of her brother’s ashes in her mouth.
It’s fine. It’s fine. This time is different. Third time’s the charm, and her hands are already wet with paint.
Sciel rises from her cross-legged rest upon seeing her. Lune’s already standing, already staring.
“I can bring Gustave back now,” Maelle says, and it rings with a glass-like triumph, vibrating delicately.
“Really?” Lune looks staggered. She’s not going to be at ease until she sees him in color. That’s all right. Maelle is more than ready.
She walks towards the gardens, feeling half in a dream, but it isn’t. It won’t be. Sciel catches up to her.
“Where’s Verso?” she asks, as Maelle knew she would. It hurts like a cut you see coming. She draws a measured breath, remains in control of herself.
“He’ll be right back. I just—need a moment, first. With Gustave.”
Over her shoulder, she smiles at them both.
“All of us do, I think.”
Within the gates of the gardens, she pauses by the first flowerbed she sees. It’s not a perfect spot, but… there’ll be time for perfection later. Right now her body stings with cuts, carved into her as gently as may be, but the weight of this world rests upon her shoulders.
“Are you up for it?” Sciel asks kindly, stepping up beside her. Maelle nods, and begins painting. Petals come to her eagerly.
“This is how you brought us back?” Lune says, leaning close to peer at them. “A… reversed gommage?”
“Yes,” Maelle whispers. “Verso said to remember. That’s the trick. I just need to remember him, and… make him real.”
She pricks the air with her finger, like tapping a still lake. Ripples of memory move the air, like how Gustave would move those around him, and it’s from that afterimage she pulls him.
She paints him with every hue of comfort and care. She puts love into his weirdness, and is careful around the edges of his naivety. When the petals stop falling, and the world has recalled him, he stumbles—falls to a knee right there on the grass, panting and uniformed and utterly bewildered.
“Maelle—?”
Gustave is looking up at her, a smear through her blurring vision. She blinks, gasps. Perhaps that’s why he reaches for her. The touch takes her to her knees, too, and she sobs against his very real-smelling shoulder.
She’s never felt more like Maelle. They stay like this for a moment that could last forever.
“What’s happened to you?” His voice breaks slightly from disuse. It’s not been heard anywhere in the world for weeks.
She pulls back just far enough to wipe her face, which makes her aware of his hand hovering by her color-leached hair.
“So much,” she laughs, “oh, Gustave.“
“I’m here,” he says faintly, and hot tears spill down her cheeks.
“I don’t know where to start, I have so much to tell you. Listen, this world—you were always so curious about it. We had no idea!”
Wide-eyed, he shakes his head.
“Wh— yes, please tell me, but—“ He looks around, at the familiar splintered sky, the foreign ruins of his city. “We’re back in Lumière?”
She nods, still caught between sobs and strange giggles, but his attention is drawn by the others.
“Sciel, you’re alive!”
He laughs, and it sounds like raw relief.
“Strangely enough,” she smiles, head tilted. She looks filled to the brim with feelings, somehow unspilled. Gustave looks further, eyes red-rimmed and shining.
“Lune. You can explain, I know.” A different kind of relief crackles his voice. But Lune frowns, drawn taut with enigmatic emotion, and shakes her head.
“I can’t.”
“It’s okay,” Maelle steps in, helping him to his feet. “We did it, Gustave. Look.”
Giddy and damn it, proud, even though every line of perspective has shifted since then, she points towards the monolith on the horizon: the looming symbol of their life together. Gustave stares, looking struck in the face. She waits for his shock to spill over into triumph.
“What?” he inhales, “what is that?”
She chokes a little laugh into her hand. The monolith is, of course, no longer empty.
“Papa finally left. We’re safe here, now.”
Confusion is so foreign on his face. He coughs, shaking his head.
“No, I don’t understand. We were out there. The white-haired man. He, he—“ Gustave grabs at his chest, staring hard at something beyond her.
“You’re fine,” she tries to soothe him, “Gustave, you’re okay now.”
“Breathe,” Sciel says low, stepping closer.
He’s choking. Fear spills through her like ink on wet paper, a sudden bloom. It’s not supposed to be like this. Her family is hurting, and it’s her fault again. But it’s fine, she’s grown, she has the power to save people, this time.
“I’m sorry, it’s so much to take in. I should have— just hold on a moment.”
Paint flecks build around him.
“What’s this?” He sounds frightened, but does not back out of her embrace. Shaking her head, she holds him closer.
“It’s like—my memories. Of what’s happened since you— Gustave, I can help you remember. It’ll be easier. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” Gustave says, more helpless than she’s ever heard him.
“You will,” Maelle smiles, though she feels like porcelain, cracking open. She’s scared of what’s beneath. “Just… let me help you. Please.”
The slightest nod, or bow of the head, and she raises her hand in relief. It’s so obvious now, her mistake: recalling him from the very last moment she saw him. She must’ve painted him wrong, because panic like this was never part of him.
There are wounds to patch, cracks to smooth over. She does so with love. Behind her, someone is shakily exhaling, but she’s busy seeing Gustave’s eyes finally smile at her again.
“There.” Maelle swallows, keeping her chin high. “That’s better.”
“Yeah.” Gustave chuckles, head low in disbelief before he glances up. “I’m proud of you, you know.”
“Oh,” she exhales, caught off guard.
He hums, pulling her close again. “Yeah. You’ve done it. Tomorrow comes, because of us.”
His words tickle her hair. She half-sobs, half-laughs. “Today’s pretty nice, too.”
“This is… even stranger than before, somehow,” Sciel says in that warmly wry voice of hers. When Maelle looks over, she sees unexpected hesitation on her.
“What?” Gustave smiles at Sciel, “you didn’t have faith in us?”
“Hm. I’ve had hope.”
“Well, look where a bit of hope and a lot of stubbornness got us. To the Monolith and back.”
He raises his hand in a gesture of joy; the same hand that rests beneath a tree somewhere. Maelle will have to ask about that, if he’d prefer it to be flesh and blood once more.
“But you weren’t there,” Lune says. Her gloved hands grasp her own elbows. Gustave frowns.
“Lune, please,” Maelle says quickly, ”it’s easier for him like this. It’s the best way to bridge the gaps.”
“What, pretending he was by our side all along?”
Shaking her head, Maelle tries to smile again.
“No, I’m making it like it should’ve been. Like it was meant to be. Just— us, against erasure.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Gustave mutters. “Did I hit my head?”
Lune strides over to him, upset enough to put her feet on the ground.
“You were slain. That’s what happened.”
“No,” he huffs, “no, I, I didn’t. The blade missed me and—“
“It didn’t miss.” Lune thumps her fist against his chest, right where he was struck through. She’d been the one to check his body one last time, of course, bloodying her hands on hopelessness. “We lost you, and we want you back, fuck, I want you back. But not unconditionally.”
“I don’t understand,” Gustave whispers. “Anything.”
“Stop it, Lune, stop, please.”
She doesn’t realize she’s raised her hand before Lune grabs her wrist. There are fresh petals at her fingertips. Lune’s nostrils flare, her lips tremble.
“Would you repaint me, too?”
“No,” Maelle gasps, horrified. “No, I wouldn’t. That’s not what I want.”
“I don’t think what you want,” Lune says, staring her down with a look both darkly scrutinizing and deeply empathetic, “is achievable.”
“Maelle,” Sciel says, a warning.
Gustave has grown short of breath again, hunched over himself. She reaches for him, Lune’s fingers still around his wrist.
“I’m going to make him sleep,” she whispers. “Just sleep. For a moment.”
Pale gold flutters around him, he staggers and sways. Sciel is there to catch him; lay him gently down. Lune refuses to look.
“I’ll figure it out,” Maelle promises, as Lune releases her arm. “I should go even further back, to his memories from before the Expedition. I’ll repaint the city, so it’s all familiar. Everyone would be back. That would be—better, right?”
Lune doesn't answer. Maelle turns to Sciel.
“It might be easier with your husband. He doesn’t need to know about the Canvas and everything, right? You want—to see him again. Right?”
A smile like a complex of emotions twists across Sciel’s mouth.
“Ah. In a little while, yes?”
“I’ll go get Verso, then,” Maelle whispers, walking away from them on weak legs.