Work Text:
It doesn’t take long for Aline to realize something is wrong.
Her first two days after exiting the Canvas are spent almost entirely in bed. But she sees it in Renoir’s shadowed eyes when he bring her meals. She sees it in Clea’s frigid coolness, even as her daughter delivers a blistering lecture on what fools they had been.
Alicia doesn’t visit her. Aline doesn’t expect her to.
But even as she regains the strength to hobble around the manor, she doesn’t see a trace of her daughter anywhere. No soft bootsteps, no books left carelessly around, no sign of her at all. Her bed lies neatly made, her typewriters untouched. Dust is gathering on her desk.
On the fourth day, she confronts her husband. “How long?” She rasps, “How long will you let Alicia remain in the Canvas? She’s been there far too long already.”
Renoir is silent for a long moment. “She promised to return in a little while,” he admits slowly, “And I promised to trust her.”
Fear threatens to rip apart her already fragile heart. Each day that passes is a year in Verso’s Canvas; if Alicia had intended to return soon, she would’ve done so already. “You let her? After everything you did to force me out, you’d let Alicia stay?”
“You think I wanted to?” He snaps, “You think I love her so little? I couldn’t! I had nothing left in me! I couldn’t fight off both her and you!”
“I was only in there to save the last piece of our son from you!”
“Yes,” he says softly, “And you and she are so very much alike.”
She can’t help but flinch. Her youngest has always been her mirror, as much as Clea has been Renoir’s. In recent years, it’s driven a wedge between them, similar personalities grating harshly against one another, both of them prone to impatience and avoidance alike.
Perhaps this was inevitable.
“Let me see her.” she breathes.
The room is exactly how Aline remembers it, dim and lit only by candles. She doesn’t know who’s been coming down here and replacing them as they burn down, but she can guess. The Canvas is still propped against the far wall, still alive and swirling with Chroma. And directly in front of it stands Alicia.
Aline stumbles to her side. Her daughter is as still as death; arm outstretched towards the Canvas. Blue-grey paint spills down her face in a ghastly mockery of tears, but it doesn’t hide the gaping hollow of her missing eye, nor the twisted mass of scars below. With a trembling hand, Aline reaches up to caress her daughter’s hair. It’s thin and lank, a far cry from the rich red waves her daughter was once so proud of. How long hasn’t she been taking care of it?
“Alicia,” she whispers faintly, “Ma fée. Come back. Please, come back.”
No response. Her daughter cannot hear her.
Aline turns towards the Canvas, ready to fling herself after her daughter, but Renoir suddenly grips her shoulder. She turns on him, eyes wild. “Let go!”
“You’ll die, Aline!”
“I don’t care!” She attempts to twist free, but she stumbles, her body still weak and unresponsive. Her husband pulls her into a tight embrace even as she continues to struggle. “Please,” she begs, “Please. I can’t – I can’t…”
The dam crumbles, the hollow inside her filling with a flood of rage-pain-shame-grief-guilt, overwhelming her. Burying her face in Renoir’s shoulder, she sobs helplessly. Not again, she thinks, I can’t go through this again.
After she has recovered some of her wits, she seeks out Clea in one of her rare moments home. “Why haven’t you gone in there to retrieve her?” She asks pointedly.
“I can’t.” Clea says bluntly, “I tried to go in there and talk to her. I bounced off before I could even fully materialize.”
“How – ”
“You don’t even realize how much Chroma you and Renoir poured out in there, do you?” Her eldest scowls. “Far too much. You can’t even reasonably call it ‘Verso’s Canvas’ anymore, not with how much was dumped into it during your little spat. And now Alicia’s the only Paintress in that Canvas and she has complete control over all of it. She may not be as skilled as us, but with that amount of Chroma, it doesn’t matter. It would take all three of us at full strength to push through to her.”
“Then we send word to the Council and get aid. Surely, they can spare a few skilled Painters to help.”
“The Council?” Clea barks out a single, humorless laugh. “It took everything I had just to keep our name on the council, Maman.” The once-affectionate moniker was now laced with bitter scorn. “In case you’ve forgotten, we’re fighting a war. They can’t spare a single Painter, not of the caliber needed, not for a disgraced family like us.”
“They must,” hisses Aline in return, “After everything we’ve done for them – ”
“Did you leave your hearing behind in the Canvas, Aline? Or just your wits?” Clea’s face is stony and cold. “We’re fighting a war for our survival, and a family unwilling to contribute is not one worth anything to them. Any favors or good will I didn’t spend over the past few months is gone. The Council won’t help you, Aline, not for a situation that you and Renoir are ultimately responsible for.”
Black despair curls around her heart before curdling to bitter anger. “A situation we’re responsible for?” Aline clenches her hands. “If you hadn’t sent her in there…!”
Clea’s eyes flash. “Don’t. Don’t lay this at my feet. You couldn’t even look her in the face! I tended her burns, changed her bandages, and you couldn’t even bear to enter the room! You were so caught up in your own pain that you refused to see how your rejection broke her down, day after day! You ran away rather than face her!”
Aline recoils. Clea’s harsh words are salt in her wounded heart, bringing unhealed regrets and shame back to the surface. I couldn’t, she wants to say, I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt me. I would’ve found the strength eventually, when the pain wasn’t so near –
But the words die before reaching her throat. Excuses, all of them, empty words in the face of reality. She had fled from her daughter, and so Alicia had fled from her in turn. With grim horror, Aline recalls the twisted, grey flesh of the daughter she had created, the pale mask she had given her to hide behind. To acclimate myself she had told herself, again and again, even as the years turned and her body crumbled and the pain burrowed deeper.
If her daughter didn’t hate her before, surely she must’ve after seeing that cruel reflection of her mother’s.
“If things remained unchanged? She would’ve died either way.” Clea’s voice is frigid, the tone she reserves for when she is well and truly furious at whomever she’s speaking to. “Her spirit was crumbling; every day you were gone was another day she convinced herself that you no longer loved her! If I hadn’t done something, despair would’ve claimed her life one way or another.” Her jaw clenches for a long moment, the cold mask cracking. For an instant, Aline glimpses a flicker of pain in Clea’s eyes before her daughter speaks again, “At least this way, she gets to enjoy a happy life first.”
Clea locks the Canvas away in a separate room and refuses to let either of them have the key. “If you care so much to try and save her? Don’t unravel yourselves doing it while you’re so weak.” She says harshly, “Recover your strength first, and perhaps we might, might have a chance.”
Day after day, Aline visits the room where her daughter wastes away. She begs, cajoles, pleads, until her throat is hoarse and her tears run dry. In a moment of desperation, she tries pinching her daughter’s scarred cheek, hoping the shock of pain will turn Alicia’s attention towards her body and her mother’s voice.
Nothing works. Alicia never twitches so much as an eyelash.
She brings a hairbrush down with her one day. As she runs it through her daughter’s tangled hair, it becomes obvious just how little Alicia had been caring for it. The locks are oily and thin, the ends fraying. It sends a pang through what little is left of her heart.
Her hair is not the only thing she’s been neglecting. Just touching her shoulders reveals how skinny, how bony she’s become; far too much to be blamed on the time spent in Canvas. Alicia had been withering away even before entering it and she had been too blind to see. Bitter regret coils through Aline as she recalls all the times she had looked away from her daughter, too overcome by pain and grief. Resentment had turned her heart sour and she’d turned away, time and again, rather than risk voicing the poison that curdled inside her.
(You disobeyed me. You didn’t listen. If it weren’t for you, he’d still be alive.)
She’d been weak, so weak. If she’d been a better mother, if she’d loved her daughter more, surely she would’ve been able to move past everything. But she was weak and foolish and she’d failed Alicia three times over now. She’d failed to teach her Painting. She’d failed to encourage her away from the Writers. And now, she’d failed to love her daughter when Alicia needed her most.
She’d run away instead.
Her traitorous mind conjures up thoughts of Alicia sitting alone in her bedroom, wasting away from grief and guilt as her parents tear themselves to pieces over a Canvas. The image drives her to tears again, falling to her knees with her desperate sobs. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, “Please. I’ll do anything. You don’t have to forgive me, ma chérie. I just want you to live.”
Alicia doesn’t respond. She never does.
Renoir visits her just as much as Aline does. The two of them don’t stay in the room together long, one of them leaving when the other enters. The chasm between them is deep and long, filled with bitter years of imprisonment, now forced wider by the fate of their little girl.
“You let her come?!”
“You only care when things are right in front of you.”
She doesn’t think she can ever forgive her husband for his choices. She doesn’t know if she can forgive any of them for what happened, herself most of all.
Their strength recovers agonizingly slowly, measured in weeks, not days. Grief had sapped their vigor even before the Canvas, and neither are in the prime of their life anymore. It is a race against time, a race to see if they will recover enough before Alicia’s life burns out. The trips down to the basement instead of resting in bed likely don’t help. But Aline cannot bring herself to stop, and neither does Renoir.
Her sleep is fitful, full of broken dreams and memories. They run together like overthinned paint, blurring into a confusing mess of images. She sees Verso cradling her as his dying cries echo around them; the ash-gray Alicia standing unmoving in the burning manor even as the flames catch her hair and clothes. She sees an unburnt Alicia, flanked by strangers, reaching out towards her, only to fall back screaming as her face ignites.
That one is the most common, and it always leaves Aline wide awake and gasping for breath. It didn’t happen, she tells herself over and over. It’s impossible. I would never – I would never…
But the dream is too clear, too familiar for her to cast it aside so easily.
Another fact impossible to ignore is Alicia’s health. Under the dark Chroma and pitted scars, her cheeks are becoming gaunt. Her pale skin has turned waxen, almost colorless, and her hair hangs limp and lifeless. And yet, even as her physical body wanes, her control over the Canvas remains tight-fisted. Clea makes a few more attempts to enter, but is repelled just as thoroughly each time.
Over a month after Aline was forced from the Canvas, Clea finally, finally brings good news. “I’ve managed to get a Painter who will help us.”
Aline sucks in a breath, a flicker of hope dancing in her chest. “Who – ”
“The Beaumont family. New to the Council, but their son has some talent. Enough, perhaps, when combined with what strength we can muster.”
She has not been separated from politics so long that she has forgotten the way of things. Nothing comes for free in their society. “And in return?”
“Our support and guidance, along with a favor to be called in at their discretion.”
An unconditional favor owed is a powerful thing, but Aline finds that she cannot bring herself to care. For the first time, she lets herself think that maybe, maybe, they can have Alicia back. “How soon can he be here?”
“Tomorrow.”
One more day. Alicia only has to survive one more day.
Hope lulls Aline to blessedly dreamless sleep; the first she’s had in months.
She is awoken in the early morning by her husband’s hands on her shoulders. Not once in the past month has he come up to wake her like this. The Painter must’ve arrived, she assumes, and the thought banishes the fog of sleep over her brain. Pushing herself upright, she turns to face him and her heart abruptly plummets.
Renoir’s face shines with tears. The look in his eyes tells her all she needs to know.
“When?” She whispers.
“Some time in the night,” he croaks, “She was – she was already cold when we…”
Her heart shatters. It scatters into countless shards like a carelessly dropped glass. She imagines her fragile girl crumpled in a lifeless heap on the floor, a far cry from the vibrant life her little robin had once been, and she – she can’t. She can’t.
“No,” she rasps, “No, no – we were so close! She can’t be – not now! Not now!”
Renoir gathers her close, wrapping her in his shaking arms, and she breaks. Sobs tear through her chest as she clutches at him, desperate for any sort of comfort. The sweet taste of hope being snatched from her lips only makes the grief more bitter and hard to bear.
It would’ve been kinder, she thinks, to never have hoped at all.
Renoir half-leads, half-carries her to Alicia’s bedroom. Clea has tucked her sister in bed beneath the blankets, closing her eyes and wiping the dark paint from her face. For a second, Aline can almost pretend that her daughter is merely sleeping. But no – she cannot. She cannot ignore Alicia’s sunken eyes and pallid skin; the way she lies unnaturally still with no breath to stir her chest.
Clea stands at her sister’s bedside, quiet and unmoving, as a statue stands watch over a grave. Noco whines softly from his place at her heel, aware that something is terribly wrong and unsure what to do. The moment her parents enter the room, she turns to leave, summoning Noco to follow her with a soft click of her tongue.
Her face never meets theirs, hidden by her long hair. Silent grief and judgement in equal measure.
Aline falls to her knees at her daughter’s bedside. Distantly, she hears Renoir leave, closing the door behind him. “Why?” She whispers faintly, “Why couldn’t you have waited just one more day, my little girl? We were so close…” With a trembling hand, she brushes her fingers across Alicia’s cold, cold skin.
Memories flicker behind her eyes – Alicia as a little girl, following her through the gardens. Alicia spinning around to one of Verso’s songs until she falls over, dizzy. Alicia’s first messy paintings. Alicia picking a fight with one of her siblings and running to her father to pout. Alicia, once so vibrant and full of life, now faded to crumbling ash.
“I’m sorry.” She’s said these two words a hundred times over the past weeks. And just like each time before, Alicia cannot hear her. Will never hear her again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry.” Gently, she caresses her daughter’s paper-thin skin as her voices catches. “I’m sorry I was so angry at you the night before your birthday. I’m sorry I didn’t pay attention. I’m sorry that you felt the need to choose this.” Choking on a sob, she buries her face in Alicia’s unmoving shoulder. “Oh, ma fille. Please, please – if I could take it all back, I would. I’d trade my life, my voice, my everything for just one more day. Alicia…” Her voice finally gives out and she surrenders to her tears.
Words mean nothing in the face of reality. She has lost two of her children; was forced to hear the agonized screams of one and watch the other wither away, day by day. If there is a God somewhere, she thinks that He must hate her like He has hated no other.
When her tears finally exhaust themselves, she manages to collect what pieces of herself remain and stumble out of the room. Below, she hears her husband and Clea arguing.
“Destroying it would accomplish nothing!”
“That is besides the point. You promised it away without even consulting us!”
“I managed without consulting you for two months, Papa.”
“Clea – ”
“She wouldn’t want you to. Would you really go against her final wish like that?”
That effectively shuts him up. Aline glimpses his jaw working back and forth for a moment before he turns and stalks into the atelier.
Clea glances up at her. “I promised the Canvas to the Beaumont boy,” she says flatly, “Payment for coming all this way. It’ll be up to them to decide whether it’ll ever see the light of day again. For all the harm the cursed thing has done to us, I’ll not see my sister’s final wish disrespected.”
Her tone is sharp and leaves no room for argument. Aline has no desire to enter that Canvas ever again – in her grief and madness, she’d tear it and herself to pieces until nothing remained. Let another Painter study it all they liked.
They bury Alicia in the garden next to Verso, surrounded by the flowers she so loved. The sun is warm and bright, casting everything in shades of gold. Aline hates it, hates that the world dares to be so beautiful on such a day. Two of her children lie forever entombed in cold, dark stone, and the world dares to be happy.
As she turns to leave, Clea grips her wrist tightly, her gaze piercing Aline like a collector pierces butterflies with a pin. “I know what you plan to do,” she says quietly, “And we both know that he’ll follow you, no matter how much you argue.” Aline flinches, but cannot bring herself to deny it. Clea’s expression softens, raw vulnerability showing through for the first time in months. “All I ask you is this. Could you promise to live instead if I stayed home and gave up my vengeance for your sake?”
It should be an easy answer. Live, and her last remaining daughter sheathes her blade and returns home. Live with the weight of her sins on her back. Live an unknowable amount of years, waking up every day with an empty hollow where her heart used to be. Live in an house full of memories and ghosts.
She cannot bring herself to say it. Even one more day seems like an eternity of torment.
Clea’s eyes harden into brittle shards of ice. “Go, then.” She says brusquely, “I’ve wasted enough of my time trying to save those who refuse to be saved.” She releases Aline’s wrist and stalks away, cold and lethal.
She wants to care. She wants to. But there is nothing left of her heart to do so, only an empty longing to be free of her pain, her grief.
Better this way, perhaps. She’s failed two children; Clea will thrive without her foolish parents to weigh her down.
The name Dessendre is infamous for decades after. They say the streets ran thick with blood on the day that Clea rampaged through the Writers, unhindered by morals or reputation.
Her name disappears from the history books thereafter. Some say she was locked away forever for her crimes. Others say she died taking her vengeance and that her spirit still haunts the streets at night. Still others say she fled.
The parents were found dead in their bedroom, the husband cradling the body of his wife. Post-mortem examinations determined opioid overdose as the cause of death for both. Whether they died together or he followed her after? None can say.
The Writers succeeded in wiping out one of the most powerful and influential Painter families, but their victory was pyrrhic indeed. It is estimated that their numbers were reduced by almost half, perpetrators and innocent slaughtered alike.
The Dessendre estate was claimed by the Painters’ Council, their most striking works put on display as warning and memorial alike. Of note was a particular Canvas donated by the up-and-coming Beaumont family. Unusually, the Canvas itself displays no image, so loaded with Chroma that it appears as a swirling mass of ink. No Painter has managed to enter the Canvas to see what lies inside. An odd barrier prevents entry; despite the fact that no living Painter or Paintress should be within to sustain one.
Many theories have arisen in the decades after. Perhaps the Dessendres found a way to abandon their bodies fully and lock their spirits away in that Canvas. Perhaps there is some terrible secret hidden in that Canvas that they felt they must hide before their deaths. Regardless, until a way to pass through without risking the destruction of the Canvas is found, the mystery will remain ever a mystery.