Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sciel closes a chapter of her life on a sunny day at the harbour.

The waves lap gently against the stone, a mockery of the storm in her chest. In the distance, children laugh as they chase each other down Lumière’s revitalized streets, the cry of gulls overhead as they try to steal fresh pastries.

Somewhere behind her, Pierre is teary-eyed while walking back to their apartment— his apartment, really. She’d given it up to him, a gift for all her folly.

They’re still living together—that hasn’t changed.

It’s just everything else that has.

She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t want to see his retreating back. She only breathes—deeply, carefully, as if her ribs might collapse if she doesn’t. Her fingers twitch at her sides, restless without her scythe, without purpose.

The salty air somehow tastes too still.

Verso stands beside her, having materialized the moment she’d been left alone. He says nothing at first, only watches her with that maddeningly perceptive gaze of his—like he’s reading the ink off pages she’s trying to burn.

“It just felt different,” she finally says, feeling pathetic about it all.

“Different how?” Verso prods. When she doesn't respond immediately, he nudges a bit further. “As in, he’d changed since Maelle—”

“Not him,” Sciel blurts out, hands balling into the fabric of her skirt, and it’s strange, but it still feels so foreign—wearing a skirt again, on the daily, after all this time. Clean, flowy fabric. Impractical to run in, jump in, fight in. “He’s—He’s exactly as I remember him.”

“Then…?”

“It’s me,” Sciel breathes. “I’m the one who’s different.”

Because she had reunited with Pierre, and he was gentle in ways that she no longer knew how to respond to. And at some point, her heart began to break a little more every time the realization hit, stunning her into an abrupt silence without fail.

But perhaps the most damning thing of all was that he did not question it. Any of it. And why would he? Why would any of them? Trapped for so long on Lumière, surrounded by sea. The furthest any of them had went—the furthest her husband had ever ventured—had been to the small islands off the coast, and even then, they had always returned.

Until Pierre hadn’t. His accident occurred long before he ever had the chance to set sail to the Continent. And that had eaten at Sciel away for years, mourning the time they were promised but never had.

But the truth was, she’d already lived that missing time—just not with him.

She’d crossed mountains and oceans, battled monsters and watched gods die. She’d bled under foreign skies, held grieving friends in the aftermath of chaos, and fallen asleep beside someone who saw her not as a memory, but as she was—raw, reckless, real.

Yet—

“You don’t have to be anyone but who you are,” Pierre had told her once, after she’d welcomed him back into the realm of the living.

And she’d kissed him for it.

But later that night, lying in bed with his arm over her waist, she’d stared at the ceiling. That’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t know who I am anymore.

No longer just a widow. No longer just a farmer. No longer just a teacher. No longer just someone’s partner.

Sciel of Expedition 33. A weapon, a lover, a dreamer, a contradiction.

And there was no room for that woman in the life Pierre had so sweetly waited to welcome her back into.

“Hey, what’s wrong with being different?” Verso nudges her out of her reverie, his smile roguish and charming, and Sciel chokes out a laugh. But then she's thinking back to that night, when she'd spotted Verso leaving the woods all spent, directing that charming smile towards— “You were part of the Disaster Expedition, the greatest band of misfits this world had ever seen. And they saved Lumière—that band of misfits did.”

Sciel chuckles at his attempt to make her feel better. “I appreciate the sentiment, but you know I don't mean different in that way.”

“Yeah.” Verso grows solemn. “I do.”

“You would know best, wouldn't you?”

“I bet you can't even fathom how much a person can change over the course of a century.” Verso grins again, but it doesn't reach his eyes this time. Sciel both loves and hates him for it—a young and old man stuck in the same body, a glimpse into the exhaustion beneath his attempts at being casual.

At least Maelle had restored his ability to age, although the signs of maturity hadn't settled in yet. As far as Sciel could tell, their Verso still looked exactly as he always had.

“I'm only a third of the way there and I hardly recognize myself,” Sciel murmurs.

Verso says nothing.

But then a familiar tune wafts out to the docks, a melody that Sciel had become well-acquainted with.

On their expedition. The Greatest Expedition, as the papers had touted.

Sciel draws in a breath, holds it. Immediately, she's looking around, trying to find the familiar melody's source.

She feels Verso’s knowing gaze more than sees it.

“The radios seem to love Lune’s stuff recently,” he comments. “It's a bit surreal, knowing she worked on it during late nights while we were camping.”

Didn't you compose with her? Sit side-by-side at the fire with her? Sciel doesn't dare ask him. And that night I saw the two of you after—

“It's beautiful,” she agrees aloud, her heart squeezing something awful at the sound of Lune's name.

Verso nods slowly. “The two of you haven't spoken recently, have you?”

“...We haven't.” Sciel keeps her eyes fixated on the waves below. She no longer feels dread at the sight of water, no longer goes still at the prospect of being near it. Instead, her gut churns for completely different reasons—one of which being: “I think she's avoiding me.”

“She might just be giving you space.”

“I dunno… She's avoided me before.”

“You won't know for sure unless you ask.”

The prospect is mortifying.

But then she thinks about those late nights during Expedition 33. A mere three months ago, their nights had been spent curled up together under the stars, because they'd snuggled one single time and Sciel had realized she slept best with Lune's arms around her.

She'd never asked for Lune's thoughts on the arrangement. Just knew that at some point, it had become their new normal—Sciel tucked beneath Lune's chin, Lune's fingers drumming silent melodies at the swell of Sciel’s hip. It hadn’t mattered where they were or what tomorrow would bring—only that constant companionship bleeding into something dangerously personal.

Three months later, and Sciel had instead grown used to falling asleep with guilt every night Pierre would toss an arm over her waist. She'd lie still and pretend to fall asleep until the early hours of the morning, when she'd be too exhausted to pretend anymore.

“You miss her,” Verso concludes, having intently watched the myriad of emotions cross her face.

“I do,” Sciel admits.

“You need to talk to her.”

“I know. I’m going to look for her today, but I'm not sure she'll let herself be found.”

“When I was a child and I'd lost my favorite Esquie stuffed toy around the manor, I'd distract myself until I'd completely forgotten I'd lost it. Before I knew it, Esquie would be in my arms again.”

“Pardon?”

“I'm just saying.” Verso chuckles. “Sometimes, you find what you want the most when you're no longer looking for it.”

Sciel takes that advice and pockets it for later.

///

The wind at this height tastes familiar.

Sciel hadn’t meant to climb so far—just to walk, to think, to escape the ache that had settled behind her ribcage after an entire day spent combing the city for someone who apparently refused to be found.

She’d checked the cafés Lune used to frequent, the square where she’d play her music, even the boulangerie whose pastries Lune used to reminisce on during the expedition. But there’d been no sign of her—no familiar silhouette beneath the archways, no shimmer of gold chroma tattoos, no glimmer of raven-dark hair in the crowd.

Eventually, the weight of it—of not finding her, of not knowing what she’d say even if she did—grew too heavy to carry. And so, without realizing where her feet were taking her, she’d found herself at the base of the Crooked Tower.

The climb is steeper than she remembers. The metal groans softly beneath her as she ascends the final ladder. Her hand ghosts along rusted beams warped by time and ink, passing the old scratched initials—lovers used to come up here, the letterings long since faded into oxidation.

She almost laughs at herself. What was she hoping for? That the room might still feel the same? That she might feel the same?

Then she steps inside.

There’s someone already there, seated cross-legged in the warped crescent of windowlight, half in shadow.

And the moment her eyes adjust—

“Sciel,” Lune says in a breath caught somewhere in between. Her guitar disappears in a flurry of chroma particles. “Of course you’d run into me up here.”

Sciel swallows. “Figures I’d stumble upon you the moment I decide to give up for the day.”

Just like Verso said.

When she’s the furthest from being mentally prepared. Because there’s no easy way to say Hi, Lune! I’ve been sleeping poorly ever since we settled back in, and I think it’s because I became too used to your arms without causing some degree of emotional whiplash.

Lune tilts her head, catlike. “You were looking for me?”

Sciel laughs hoarsely. “When am I not? You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I was giving you space,” Lune says defensively. “After we defeated Renoir, things were moving so fast. Suddenly your husband was back, and your parents were back, and then almost everyone was back. You were going through so much. I didn’t want to make things harder.”

“I needed you,” Sciel says quietly. Not accusatory. Just a fact, bare and aching. “I didn’t even realize how much until you weren’t there.”

Lune’s eyes flicker at that—something complicated and guarded curling at the edges of her mouth. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to be.”

Sciel shifts her gaze to the floor, to the rust-framed window, to anywhere but Lune’s face. The dying sunlight slants in like it’s trying to draw a line between them.

A long silence stretches—until Sciel finally breaks it.

“I broke things off with Pierre today,” she blurts out.

“You— what?” Lune gapes.

Sciel nods, rubbing at her barren ring finger with her thumb. “He’s no longer my husband. And I’m no longer his wife.”

“That’s—Sciel, I don’t even know what to—” Lune’s mouth opens and closes, her voice catching on the weight of it.

“You don’t need to say anything,” Sciel murmurs, wrapping her arms around herself. “I just… needed you to know.”

Lune watches her for a moment, eyes softening.

“Can I… Can I ask why?” she says carefully. “Only if you want to share.”

“I—just,” Sciel exhales, dragging a hand through her hair. She hasn’t been wearing it up recently—she misses it. She can’t quite remember why she ever stopped. “Pierre would talk of the dreams of the future we planned. Of gardens, and children, and quiet dinners. I knew that something was wrong the day I realized that I could no longer see myself in those images.”

Lune doesn’t respond right away, simply listening.

Sciel’s voice hitches on a laugh. “We tried, you know. To make it work. But I was already drifting. Thinking about everything I couldn’t tell him. Everything I couldn’t explain. How could I, when he’s never set foot on the Continent? When he doesn’t know what it’s like to be absolutely helpless, watching from the bottom of a cliff and then suddenly, someone’s just… gone.”

She looks up, tears brimming—not quite falling.

“I didn’t want to lie to him, and I didn’t want to keep pretending. That I wasn’t… That I’m not exhausted.”

Lune’s gaze lowers, her lashes dark against her cheek. “And now?”

“I don’t know,” Sciel admits. “But I’m trying to figure it out. I want to learn to be happy again.”

The silence that follows is gentler than before. Less like a chasm, more like a breath. Relief.

Then Sciel shifts, rubbing the back of her neck. “We’re still living in the same apartment for the time being. It’s a two-bedroom, thankfully, so it’ll have to do while I look for—”

Lune looks at her, alarmed.

“Sciel,” she says hesitantly. “Two-bedroom or not, are you sure that’s healthy?”  

Sciel winces. “No, most definitely not. But with the population spiking back up again, Lumière’s pressed enough for space as is.” Feeling that familiar anxiety welling up again, she rises to her feet, pacing from one side of the room to the other. “The alternative is moving back in with my parents, but they live out on the farms, and I need to be near the school for my students, so—”

“Move in with me.”

Sciel stumbles backwards, her pacing abruptly interrupted.

“What?”

“Move in with me,” Lune repeats, casual. Like it's the easiest thing in the world. “Just like you, I was given my choice of residence after we restored Lumière. I ended up reclaiming my parents’ old place, and truthfully, it’s too big for just me.”

“Your siblings aren’t living with you?”

Stella and Sol had been amongst those returned by Maelle, having been Gommaged rather than dying as expeditioners to the Nevrons.

“They have their own lives,” Lune says dismissively. “And I have mine.”

Sciel stares at her. “You’re serious.”

Lune shrugs, but it’s the kind that’s anything but flippant. “You need a place. I have a place. We’ve lived together before—in open fields, by rivers, in Nevron-haunted ruins. What’s one roof compared to that?”

“But this wouldn’t be temporary,” Sciel says. “This wouldn’t be survival.”

“No,” Lune agrees, voice low. “It wouldn’t.”

Something in her eyes glimmers, soft but unflinching.

Sciel doesn’t answer right away. She presses a hand to the rust-warped wall beside her, grounding herself against the sudden flood of emotions. The thought of living with Lune again—of waking up in her arms, to that music, to the rhythm of two lives slowly syncing—feels dangerous.

It feels like home.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Lune says, gentler this time. “But the offer’s real.”

And then, more tentative: “I missed you, too.”

Sciel closes her eyes.

Lets the weight of the day slide off her shoulders, just for a moment.

She opens them again.

“...What’s the address?”

And Lune smiles. It’s a small thing, but bright enough to light the metal beams gold.

///

Sciel loves Lune’s apartment from the very moment she steps foot in it.

It’s not particularly large, nor small. But it’s more than spacious enough and it feels lived in—sunlight pooling in wide panes across the hardwood, Lune’s sheet music and research notes scattered across the dining table, potted plants climbing stubbornly up the walls like they’ve made a pact to bloom no matter what. A short hallway leads to the bedrooms, and there’s a study that Lune undoubtedly grew up in, learning how to take notes under her parents’ strict eye.

There’s also a piano tucked away in the corner—a battered old thing that Lune insists still plays beautifully.

“I saved it from an old couple before their Gommage,” Lune explains almost reverently. “My mother hated it. Said I was wasting space, and I never truly learned how to play, not as well as my guitar, but… I loved it. I could never bring myself to give it up, and I’m glad it stayed here, even after all that happened.”

Sciel nods, too full of emotion to speak. She crosses the room slowly, trailing her fingers across the instrument’s edge, then across the back of the worn-in couch—no doubt it had been passed from family to family, one Gommage and then another. 

“You can still say no,” Lune offers, leaning against the doorframe.

Sciel turns to her, smiling. “I’d rather not sleep in the guest room at my ex-husband’s place.”

That earns a small laugh.

The very next morning, Pierre sets out with his Outdome team, bound for the outer islands to resurvey some of the shorelines. He doesn’t ask where she’s going, and Sciel doesn’t volunteer it. They part with a mutual, quiet understanding—and that’s the last she thinks of him all day.

Because then she’s busy. Very busy.

It doesn’t take long for the apartment to fill with sound—boxes sliding across hardwood, the dull thud of books being reshelved, Emma muttering about alphabetization while Sophie flits between rooms, helping unpack and decorate Sciel’s new room with her belongings.

“Leave that one closed,” Sciel says, waving Sophie away from one box marked with a dark ‘X’. “The stuff in there is basically unwearable.”

“Basically?” Sophie raises an eyebrow.

“Clothes gifted to me by the Gestrals,” Sciel clarifies, thinking back to the comical straw Gestral outfit she’d shoved in there against her own behest. She’d been ready to throw the thing away, only for Lune to spot it while helping her pack. The raven-haired woman had taken one look at the garment before barking out a loud laugh, demanding that Sciel take it with her. “Some are very talented while others… Let’s just say they have a more interesting fashion sense.”

Sophie laughs, and not for the first time, Sciel is glad that she has more time with her old friend.

“I’d like to meet them one day—the Gestrals. Well, other than Monoco, that is.”

“We’ll take you sometime,” Sciel promises. “I’m sure Esquie would love the trip.”

They fall into a comfortable silence after that, Sciel grabbing one end of a linen sheet while Sophie grabs the other.

But then from the hallway, Maelle’s cough cuts through the quiet.

Sciel turns instantly, leaving the bedroom with Sophie by her side. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Maelle answers a little too fast. She straightens up, arms crossed. “You try lugging boxes up four flights of stairs and see how perky you sound.”

“You only carried one,” Emma calls from the kitchen. She exits a moment later, a pitcher of water and several glasses balanced on the tray she holds. Placing it atop a small table in the living room, she begins pouring water for the others.

Maelle ignores her. She’s standing in the center of the living room now, surveying the space like she owns it.

“So…” Her eyes flick towards the short hallway. “You’re not sharing a room with her?”

Sciel, caught mid-sip of water, pauses. “What?”

“You and Lune,” Maelle repeats, frowning like this is a logical oversight. “You’re not sharing a room?”

“...No,” Sciel says slowly, setting her cup down. “We’re not.”

Maelle pouts. “And why not?” 

Sciel blinks at her, startled by the sheer audacity of the question.

“Well—because,” she starts, then falters. She glances towards Sophie and Emma for support, only to find Emma very suddenly engrossed in setting down the pitcher just so and Sophie trying to look like she hasn’t been desperately wondering the same.

“It just didn’t come up,” Sciel finally says.

Maelle snorts. “That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard.”

“We both have our own rooms,” Sciel tries again, carefully. She tries to think like Lune. “It’s practical.”

“Oh yes,” Maelle deadpans. “Very practical. Nothing says platonic like sleeping a hallway apart after spending several months straight wrapped around each other under the stars.”

Sciel’s face goes crimson.

“Maelle—” Emma warns, but it’s already too late.

“So,” Maelle barrels on, hands on her hips like she’s delivering a thesis. “Why don’t you two just date each other already?”

Sciel promptly breaks into a fit of coughs, doubling over and pounding on her chest with a fist.

“Maelle!” Emma hisses, smacking her arm.

“What?” Maelle exclaims defensively. “We were all thinking it! The two of you used to sleep next to each other every night.”

“Maelle, Sciel just separated from—” Emma clamps her mouth shut, shooting her friend a heavily apologetic look.

Sciel simply chuckles, her lungs burning but it's impossible not to see the irony here—Maelle, a whole teenager, slicing through the unspoken questions as swiftly as she slices with her rapier, and the rest of the adults who love to dance around every topic until they find a convenient opening.

It's why she loves working with children—there's much to learn from the youth. Too much, really.

“It's alright, Emma. I—”

“What happened here?” Lune chooses this exact moment to walk back into the living room, Gustave in tow. 

Sciel straightens so fast it makes her cough again. “Nothing.”

“Absolutely nothing,” Sophie says quickly.

“Just Maelle being Maelle,” Emma says with a sigh.

The corner of Lune’s mouth quirks upwards, amused but suspicious. She sets down a bag by the door and dusts off her hands. “If Maelle was just being Maelle, then I’m guessing at least one scandalous comment was made?”

Maelle doesn’t miss a beat. “Oh, I was just asking Sciel why she isn’t sharing a room with you.”

Lune’s expression doesn’t waver, but Gustave nearly drops the box he’s holding.

“Oh,” Gustave says, blinking as his gaze flits from Lune to Sciel. He bends to set the box down. “Bold of you.”

“You’re not helping,” Sciel mutters under her breath, heat rising to her ears.

“I mean, I’m not disagreeing,” Gustave says cheerfully, nudging the box into position by the wall. “But I know better than to voice things like that around Lune.”

“You have voiced things like that around me,” Lune says, dry as ever.

“Yes,” Gustave says, turning to grin at her, Sophie now at his side. “And I’m still apologizing.”

They share a look so exasperated and familiar, so effortlessly synced that Sciel feels something sharp tug in her chest before she can tamp it down. She knows it’s stupid—Gustave’s soulmate is literally on his arm, Sophie laughing at the way Lune rolls her eyes while leaning into Gustave’s touch. But Lune’s been quiet lately. Withdrawn, at least from Sciel. And if she talks to anyone at length, it’s usually Gustave. They’re both researchers speaking the same language—half data, half instinct, full of references that Sciel can’t always follow.

Half of Expedition 33 had placed bets on them, too.

Not that she’s bitter about that. Not really.

She doesn’t notice Lune watching her until their eyes meet, and something in Lune’s gaze grows tender.

“We’re almost done unpacking,” Lune says casually, but her voice has a warmth to it that makes the ache in Sciel’s chest ease a little. “After that, I figured we could all grab something to eat. The restaurant near the plaza’s opened back up again. Why not relive the pre-expedition days and see if they’re still as good as we remember?”

Sciel nods, grateful for the outstretched hand. An anchor.

“That sounds great.”

“Good,” Lune replies, before turning to help Gustave again.

Maelle mouths told you so from across the room.

Sciel pretends not to see her.

/// 

The morning after the move-in is gentle, almost suspiciously so.

Sunlight filters in through sheer curtains, painting golden lines across Sciel’s new bedroom floor. She sits on the edge of the bed, fastening her boots, and hesitates for a moment before tying her hair up.

Her muscles ache from all the lifting the day before, but it’s a good ache. The kind that promises a new chapter.

She’d taken Monday off to move, but today, she returns to teaching.

Outside, Lumière’s streets are alive with chatter. Gulls wheel overhead, cawing at children already skipping out of their homes in mismatched uniforms. In the months since the end of the Gommage, since the final battle, the city has swelled with life—every schoolhouse stretched thin, every scheduled revised again and again to make room for the teenagers who had been given up to apprenticeships far too early.

The old classrooms weren’t built for this—they were made for quiet, dwindling numbers.

Not for this new kind of life.

The building that houses Sciel’s class is technically a repurposed city hall office, the paint still flaking off the crown molding. The room is cramped, with tall windows and scuffed floors and desks that had to be repaired when they cracked under the weight of teenaged limbs. She’s never minded, though. There’s a kind of poetry to it.

She’s already at the door when she hears soft footsteps trailing behind her.

“You forgot your satchel,” Lune says, holding it out. She’s barefoot in the doorway, hair still damp from her morning rinse, and Sciel has to resist the sudden, overwhelming urge to pull her in by the waist and kiss her square on the mouth.

She snuffs out that dream immediately, dousing it in water with a reminder to return to reality.

“Thanks,” Sciel says instead, shouldering the satchel. “Don’t wait up for me—Tuesdays are always busy.”

“I never do,” Lune replies, but there’s fondness in her voice, like a promise.

Sciel makes it to the schoolhouse twenty minutes before the first bell.

She steps through the front gates, the worn metal creaking behind her, and is immediately greeted by a blur of children—some as young as six, some well into adolescence.

“Maîtresse, bonjour!” one of the younger ones shouts, throwing their arms around her in greeting.

“Good morning, Mira,” Sciel says, ruffling her hair.

It had taken a miracle—or perhaps just Emma’s sheer persistence—for the school to reopen at all. Officially, it’s a “blended cohort” —ages ten to sixteen, grouped more by emotional maturity and general learning needs than anything else. It had been Gustave’s request to send all the apprentices back to formal schooling, though. Without the Gommage and expeditions, there was no need to send the children to work so early.

Sciel simply does her best to teach them all.

Inside, the classroom is already half-full. A cluster of younger kids crowd around the back window, trying to catch a glimpse of the bakery cart across the street, while two older boys argue in hushed voices about whether or not their desk counts as “reserved” if one of them leaves a hat on it before recess.

At the front of the room, Amélie is already sorting the lesson packets—each stack perfectly aligned, divided by reading level, and color-coded in the corner. She doesn’t glance up as Sciel enters.

“Welcome back,” she says instead, in her usual dry tone that somehow still sounds amused. “I had the younger ones do warm-up exercises in your absence. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Only if you made them practice handwriting again.” Sciel stares at the dark waves cascading down Amélie’s back.

“I did,” Amélie replies, unfazed. “We nearly lost Julien to a meltdown about lowercase ‘g.’ But otherwise, no casualties.”

Sciel snorts as she shrugs off her coat and sets her satchel down. “I’ll take it.”

She starts weaving through the room—adjusting chairs, greeting students, intercepting a paper ball midair with one hand and a practiced, playful glare. Her classroom may be small and overfull, but it hums with the children.

And Amélie—cool, unreadable Amélie—moves through it all with a quiet ease.

Sciel’s always had a feeling about her.

The way she never stumbled when learning new names. The way she handled disruptions with swift precision, like someone who’d commanded attention in far more dire settings. The way she’d share the vast knowledge she seemed to have about the Continent to the children, a captive audience. The way she never seemed surprised by anything.

Amélie wore a ponytail most days.

She has her hair down today, a familiar black hairband keeping her bangs tidily in place.

///

Sciel finally confronts her at lunchtime, when the children are outside and it’s finally just the two of them, alone.

“You’re Clea,” Sciel says, standing over the other woman’s desk. “The real one.”

From where she’d been unwrapping a sandwich from one of the newly reopened food stalls, Amélie blinks.

Then, slowly, a smile makes its way across her face. Silver eyes gleam. The same silver eyes Sciel had stared into time and time again—Maelle’s eyes.

Alicia Dessendre’s eyes.

“My,” Clea Dessendre says, humored. “Honestly, it took you long enough.”

“I had a hunch the first week you joined my classroom,” Sciel confesses, chewing on her lower lip. “I’ve seen your family portrait before, and… Well, we once paid a visit to the Flying Manor.”

“Maman got the eyes wrong,” Clea remarks, pulling out the lettuce in her lunch. “And the posture. She made me look so meek.”

Sciel frowns. “The… Painted version?”

“Mm.” Clea hums. “I couldn’t bear to look at her for more than five minutes, the utter sob story. So I fixed her.”

“You repainted her.”

“Well, someone had to.” Clea picks up her sandwich again, inspecting the crust. “And I’m not sorry about it. Instead of helping me in our own world, she ran away to Verso’s Canvas to hide in her delusion. That Painted mockery of me was just a slap in the face to my own sacrifices.”

Sciel doesn’t know what to say to that.

Clea shrugs, unbothered. “She served her purpose, preventing the chroma from returning to Maman.”

The Nevrons.

There’s a quiet moment as Clea bites and chews, unhurried. Then—

“Was it hard?” Sciel questions. She sits down, pushes her chair towards Clea’s desk and pulls out her own lunch. “Being out there alone?”

“Oh, terribly.” Clea tips her head, considering. “And it’s not over yet, either.”

“And yet, you’re here in the Canvas?”

“Well, with both Aline and Renoir finally out of the Canvas, I had some time for myself for once. Why not pay a visit to the last remnant of my beloved brother?”

She takes another bite of her sandwich, chews slowly.

“I didn’t expect to linger,” she adds, tone almost wry. “I thought I’d stay a week. Maybe two. But then I saw you teaching.”

Sciel blinks, the forkful of pasta Lune had made this morning halfway to her mouth.

“Me?”

“You were always fascinating to watch,” Clea admits, crossing her arms and sighing. Sciel’s fingers curl slightly around her fork. She’s not sure if it’s praise, or just another line in whatever game this woman plays. “Even just from my brief glimpses at your expedition from outside the Canvas. One of Maman’s best creations, I’d say. How she managed to birth such an emotionally intelligent being while simultaneously drowning in her own grief, I have no idea. And yet.” Clea looks her up and down. “Here you are.”

“Here I am,” Sciel echoes. Then, belatedly, the strange woman’s words finally register. Her brow furrows. “Emotionally intelligent?”

“Your acceptance of what does and does not matter. Your ability to continue onwards. Your relationship with death—well, at least, back when death still rang true in this place. The foolish girl—” Clea waves her hand dismissively. “No matter. If I hadn't had more important things to do, maybe I would've paid you a visit sooner.”

Frowning, Sciel shifts her weight to her other leg, crossing her arms in turn. Suddenly, despite only being back at their apartment, she misses Lune terribly.

Lune, and her steadfast presence, and constant intrigue. Lune, who absolutely would've jumped at the opportunity to bombard Clea with questions about this world and the large one beyond.

Meanwhile, she’s not even sure if she’s being admired or assessed—and either way, it’s exhausting.

“If you'd come sooner, would you have even helped us?” Sciel asks instead.

The corner of Clea’s mouth twitches upward. “I’m not sure you or your friends would've considered it ‘help,’ but perhaps in my own way.”

“That's fair.”

“Is it?” Clea clicks her tongue. “Has any of this been fair to you?”

The shriek of recess laughter filters in through the open windows, distant and unbothered.

“Perhaps not,” Sciel relents, then shrugs. “Yet, what can we do but make the most of the hand we were dealt?”

And in an abrupt change of pace, Clea barks out a laugh.

“That,” the eldest Dessendre daughter says, smiling, “is the emotional intelligence I spoke of earlier. Fascinating.” Then, under her breath, “Maman’s powers are something else.”

Sciel eyes her warily. “You would get along horrifically well with Lune.”

Well, after she'd curse you for the Nevrons, probably.

Sciel doesn’t reply immediately. She shifts her gaze to the classroom windows, where dust float in slanted light. A student’s hat goes flying past outside, chased by laughter and footfalls.

Clea follows her gaze but says nothing.

The moment feels almost normal, despite a Paintress seated across from her. But there’s a quiet dissonance about it, a familiar melody being played just slightly off-key.

She clears her throat.

“So,” Sciel says cautiously, feeling very much like prey observing their predator, “you’re really not here to force Maelle out of the Canvas?”

“Truthfully, I don't care if she stays or leaves.” Clea stares out the window at the empty Monolith, looking thoroughly uninterested, and Sciel knows she is telling the truth. “A prolonged stay will have its consequences, but Alicia will be pushed out on her own accord eventually. Else, she’ll have to actually deal with the consequences of her own actions.”

Clea’s words ring like fact, clinical and unsurprised.

Sciel watches her carefully. The glint in her eyes isn’t cruel—just distant. The eyes of someone who cannot afford to rest. Not heartless, no. Just… resigned.

She shifts forward, the remains of her lunch forgotten.

“You say one thing,” Sciel says quietly, deciding to push her luck one final time, “but all I'm hearing is a tired eldest daughter, with the weight of worlds on her shoulders, who just wants the best for her baby sister.”

And for a heartbeat, Clea stiffens. Then, her shoulders relax and she laughs—a hollow, resonant sound.

“Merde. Too smart for your own good.”

///

Clea had asked her not to tell anyone.

So Sciel doesn’t.

But she thinks about it, at the door. Thinks about the silver eyes, the glint of something sharp beneath them. Thinks about the weight in Clea’s voice— I don’t care if she stays or leaves.

Lune is on the floor in her study, half-swallowed by old notebooks, small orbs of light hovering around the room in lieu of the oldened lights from the building—Lune’s wondrous elemental pictos at work yet again.

So Sciel decides that the truth can sit for just one more day.

She steps inside.

“If I say you look like a mad scientist, will you be flattered or offended?”

Lune looks up from a sea of parchment and leather-bound volumes. Her hair is swept back in a low ponytail this time, the tattoo running down the right side of her face completely unobscured. There’s ink smudged at the corner of her mouth, and she tilts her head all feline when she finally notices Sciel’s arrival.

It’s perfect, so incredibly Lune. Sciel tramples down on the fluttering in her stomach.

“Depends on your tone,” the raven-haired woman replies dryly. “But I’d assume flattered for now.”

Sciel smiles and sinks into one of the cushions Lune had laid out on the floor. “Need help?”

“I’m trying to put my notes in order before I begin transcribing them.” Lune motions to the mountains of notebooks—Sciel recognizes them all. Lune had been the most meticulous with her record-keeping, and most nights had ended with Sciel crawling wearily up to Lune’s side, poking her incessantly until the other woman agreed to end her writing for the day. “I know the expeditions to the Monolith aren’t needed anymore, but—”

“For those who come after, right?” Sciel murmurs, poking at Lune’s shoulder for old time’s sake. Then she cracks a small smile. “Even if we’re still around to see them.”

Lune nods. “You get it.”

“I do.”

“I thought I’d finally sort through the ones I kept from our expedition… but also the ones my parents left behind.”

Lune gestures to a smaller, dust-covered stack near the fireplace, the spines cracked and frayed. “These are the notebooks they didn’t bring with them on Expedition 46.”

Sciel nods and picks one up, letting the scent of paper and old ink curl in her nose.

“Do you want them grouped by decade, field site, level of emotional trauma, or paper thickness?”

Lune huffs out a laugh. “Chronologically, if we can manage. I’ve been… putting it off.”

And so they get to work.

The study remains quiet except for the occasional rustle of pages. Outside, a clock tower bell tolls the hour—soft and low.

Sciel thumbs through an older notebook, expecting neat, clinical entries.

Instead, she finds a page filled top to bottom with music.

Scored treble lines curve through the margins, notes stitched between topographical diagrams. A melodic theme trails off into a survey of rock strata. In one volume, a folk melody has been written around a list of sedimentary compositions, and in another, a lullaby scribbled into the negative space of a weather chart.

Sciel holds it up.

“You composed these during fieldwork?”

Lune glances over. “Mhm. My parents disapproved—said it cluttered my focus.” She rolls her eyes. “We were just out on one of the surrounding islands, and yet they were still so strict.”

She flips a page in another book before casually plucking a ribbon-marked one from the pile. “They used to mark my margins with red ink, but I was dedicated to my little hobby. Eventually, they gave up—I was still the best apprentice they’d ever had, so there was nothing they could say about my music.”

Picking up another notebook, Sciel lingers on a page where a chord progression weaves between descriptions of Nevron crystal samples—a recent journal, from their time as Expedition 33. The notes aren’t just decoration, but a part of the entry.

Lune’s world, unseparated.

“You let them live on the same page.”

Lune chuckles quietly. “Do you see why I have to transcribe my notes now? These are borderline unreadable.”

“I feel like it would be a shame,” Sciel breathes, fingers skimming across worn pages. “This is an artform in of itself.”

“Tell that to the Outdome and Exploration teams who want to visit the Continent,” Lune says wryly.

They share a laugh at that.

“God, Lune… If all this is what you were journaling about, what does that make mine?” Sciel grins, teasing. “My journal is absolutely worthless in comparison.”

“Nonsense,” Lune shushes her. “There’s no true way to quantify art, just as there is no true way to quantify the weight of a life.” Then she smiles. “I’m sure your journal is full of wondrous insights into your mind, Sciel. And that’s something not even I could ever hope to capture in its entirety.”

The next notebook she sorts is marked Monolith Year 37, Winter. Sciel places it next to the notebook labeled Monolith Year 37, Fall.

Lune exhales, content. “Almost halfway.”

“And then what?”

Lune hums, brushing dust from a cover. “Then, I keep going.”

Sciel presses her thumb into a water-stained page, feels the ghost of Lune’s handwriting beneath her skin.

“Good,” she says. “I’d like to see what comes next.”

///

Maelle’s cough gets worse.

It’s a disservice to call it a cough anymore, actually—it’s a deep, rattling thing that lingers for whole minutes, leaving her breathless and pale-lipped. Still worried, Sciel had begrudgingly chalked it up to fatigue that first day, heavy boxes and flights of stairs coupled with Maelle’s stubborn refusal to rest. Painting is taxing, and the young girl had been using her powers to help rebuild entire parts of the city.

But Lune had noticed too. And if Lune was worried—really worried—then so was Sciel, triplefold.

“You should see a doctor,” Sciel had gently told her the other day.

“I’ve seen worse,” Maelle had insisted with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’ve all seen worse.”

And the topic had been dropped. Who was she, Sciel had wondered, to order around someone like a Paintress?

But she’d let herself worry a bit more, the topic never truly being let down—not in Sciel’s mind.

Not when Maelle showed up a few days later looking worse for wear, her smile sharp around the edges, her voice hoarse.

And not now, as they sit on a bench at the edge of the main plaza, waiting for Lune and Gustave to return with pastries, the sun warm on stone and Maelle’s breathing a little too shallow for comfort.

“Sciel,” Maelle eventually says, breaking the silence.

“What is it, darling?”

“Can you talk to me?” The question comes in between deep breaths. “Just ask me things. Anything.” Just not about Alicia, comes the unspoken caveat. “To take my mind off it all.”

“Sure, love. How is it, living with Gustave and Emma again?”

“Really great.” Maelle bobs her head left and right. “It’s really nice, having such a busy house. Gustave’s apprentices are always around, and Sophie visits every single day. I’ve never seen him so happy, honestly.”

“That’s good. Really good.”

“Verso stops by sometimes, too,” she continues. “When he’s not at the conservatory, that is. He and Gustave get along—Gustave was too quick to forgive him, in my opinion, but I’m glad they get along. They’re both my brothers, in a way.”

Maelle seems to stop herself there, as if it hit a bit too close to Alicia territory. She shakes her head, and keeps speaking, Sciel nodding encouragingly.

The silver-haired girl clears her throat. “I even get to see Lune a fair bit. Sometimes she’s at the house with Gustave. Other times, we go to her apartment to hang out. I’m glad you moved in with her, Sciel—it’s easier to see the both of you more.”

“Do… Lune and Gustave hang out often?” Sciel asks hesitantly.

“A good amount,” Maelle relays, appearing to have regained her bearings. “They're both scholars, after all, and Gustave trusts Lune’s observations more than his own. He likes comparing notes, so he's always dragging me over to her place during the day—though, he’s toned it down recently. I wonder why that could be?”

Sciel picks up on the teasing tone instantly, and she laughs nervously, opting wisely not to rise to the bait. Although she'd kept to herself for most of her childhood, Maelle had always been far too perceptive.

“I wonder, indeed,” Sciel says, purposely keeping her tone distant.

“He's been thinking of joining one of Lune’s outings to the Continent one of these days,” Maelle tells her, very clearly feeling better as she nudges Sciel’s arm with a grin. “She's been going with Verso, Monoco, and Esquie every so often for proper surveying efforts and to collect samples.”

“Gustave is?” Sciel says, surprised. “With Lune and Verso?”

“It's in the talks,” Maelle explains, straightening in her seat. “Sophie wants to come with, but Gustave thinks it might be too dangerous.”

“Like a double date, huh?”

Her attempt at a joke comes out more bitter than Sciel would've liked. Thankfully, the tone either flies over Maelle's head, or the young girl simply ignores it.

It's most likely the latter.

“What, Gustave and Sophie, and Lune with who? Verso?” Maelle scrunches her nose, sticking out her tongue in distaste. “I doubt Lune’s actually interested.”

But you don't understand, Maelle. You didn't see them that night, their smiles, the glow on Lune’s face—

“If Lune was to be interested in anyone out of that group,” Maelle contemplates, “it would probably be Gustave. Nearly everyone on the expedition had been silently rooting for them, although with Sophie back in the picture, that's clearly not happening.”

“Maelle!” Sciel immediately scolds, her face aflame at how openly the younger girl was talking about their friends. “You can't just say that!”

Maelle’s lips twist in amusement, but she doesn’t press further. Not yet, at least. Instead, she leans back on the bench, tipping her face toward the sunlight like a cat indulging in a moment of warmth.

Sciel tries not to let anything show on her face.

“She doesn’t mind talking about it, by the way,” Maelle adds, eyes still closed. “She knows people wondered. About her and Gustave, I mean. But that’s not how it turned out.”

Sciel hums, noncommittal.

“And you?” Maelle says lightly. “Do you ever talk about it?”

 Sciel keeps her expression neutral. “Talk about what?”

Maelle’s grin turns sly—but before she can say another word, a voice cuts cleanly through the air.

“Talk about what, indeed?”

Sciel shoots up from her seat the same moment Maelle shrieks, topples over completely startled.

“Lune!” Maelle cries from where she’d landed on the ground. “How did we not hear you?”

Lune arches her brow, chuckling as she passes over a paper bag from the boulangerie as Maelle brushes herself off, standing. “I can float, remember?”

As Maelle brightens, eagerly turning her attention to her newly acquired macarons, Sciel’s heart does a little leap at the sight of her—Lune’s dark hair, sea breeze-tousled, dyed a stunningly deep wine red in the bright afternoon sunlight.

“How long were you standing there?” Sciel asks, trying to sound unperturbed.

“Long enough,” Lune says, entirely too amused. She offers Sciel the second bag—this one heavier, warm at the bottom. “I got you the berry galette you like.”

“Thanks.” Sciel takes it, fingers brushing briefly, accidentally, against Lune’s.

Maelle groans theatrically. “I look away for ten seconds…”

“You’re the one who asked me to fetch us afternoon snacks,” Lune points out, nudging her lightly with a knee.

“Yeah, yeah.” Maelle beams, fixing her collar around her neck. “I’m always the responsible one.”

“You’re the one who fell off the bench.”

“I was startled!”

And then—

Maelle stiffens.

A sharp sound cuts through the air like a crack of flint. One cough, then another—violent, unrelenting, the sound scraping up her throat as if clawing to get free.

“Maelle!”

Sciel is beside her in an instant, one hand on the silver-haired girl's back while the other grips her shoulder. Lune, too, hovers protectively, ushering them towards a quiet alleyway as Maelle doubles over from her coughing fit.

She bends nearly in half, a sleeve pressed to her mouth. Her whole frame trembles with effort.

Sciel feels her gut twist. This isn’t normal. This isn’t a tired teenager pushing herself too far anymore—this is something else entirely.

“Breathe, Maelle,” Lune says firmly, not panicked but close. “Slowly, with me. In—out.”

For a long moment, the only sound is the echo of Maelle’s breath struggling to stabilize.

Eventually, the fit fades. Maelle pulls back, blinking as if dazed, face gone ashen under her freckles.

“Sorry,” she rasps, forcing a smile. “That one caught me off-guard.”

“That’s enough for you today,” Lune says, already helping her upright. Her voice is clipped. Final. “We’re bringing you home to rest, and then we're going to get you to a doctor tomorrow. No more arguments.”

Maelle opens her mouth—probably to argue.

Sciel glares at her before she can. “Lune’s right.”

And Maelle deflates on the spot. For once, she doesn’t push back.

///

Maelle is fine the very next day.

They don’t see a doctor, the silver-haired teenager insisting that bedrest had been more than enough.

Lune and Sciel exchange worried glances but back off, Gustave, Emma, and Sophie promising to keep a close eye on her for the next few days.

Maelle is fine the day after that. And the day after that. And the day after that.

And between it all, Sciel can’t help but wonder if she’d hallucinated that coughing fit on that sunny afternoon. If, maybe, it had been a mirage from the bright, bright sun.

///

“The children here are strange.” Clea rests her cheek on a propped hand, leaning leisurely against a wooden desk. “Especially the youngest ones.”

Sciel, in the middle of wiping down her blackboard, raises an eyebrow.

“How so?”

“They lack passion.”

“Clea, they're children.”

“For anything,” Clea emphasizes, scrunching her nose. “They’re happy to be alive, sure. But they’re complacent. I'm not asking for great ambition, but you'd at least think they'd have some kind of dream. Even childish ones.”

“Wow,” Sciel marvels, and she’s actually impressed. “You’re taking this temporary teaching stint pretty seriously.”

“If I have to see these children every day,” Clea scoffs, “I can't just stay idle.”

“You could’ve stuck to only teaching lessons,” Sciel points out gently. “I’m glad you didn't.”

Clea makes a face. “I‘ve just… never been the type to remain still. I suppose that’s why I find these students so discerning. Even while I’m here, away from the conflict outside the Canvas, there’s this need to feel useful.”

Sciel studies her for a moment, unsure if she’s talking about the children or herself.

“You know…” Sciel says slowly, “there’s someone else in this city who’s also been refusing to rest.” Until recently, that is.

Clea’s gaze sharpens, but she doesn’t ask. She doesn’t have to.

“Maelle’s health has been worsening,” Sciel continues, voice low. “Even if she tries not to let us see it.”

“Has it, now?”

“You hardly sound surprised.”

“Because I'm not.” Clea sighs, reaching up to massage her temple with two fingers. “She's been in the Canvas for too long, and now she's reaching her limit. While it's true that time passes differently here, my handful of in-Canvas months are nothing compared to Alicia’s years.”

“Your mother also deteriorated, right?” Sciel asks hesitantly, unsure whether she wants to hear it despite already knowing the answer. “Because she stayed for too long as the Paintress?”

“Correct.”

“So this is what you meant by how she’d be pushed out one way or another.”

“At least, she'll let herself get pushed out if she’s smart enough,” Clea mutters. Then she pauses. “You'd get infinitely more time, though. If she stayed.”

“Infinitely is pushing it, isn't it? We can't be immortal if Maelle is on a time limit.”

Clea offers a shrug. “There's an infinite amount of numbers between zero and one. Even a single additional day is an infinite amount more than you would have received otherwise.”

Sciel grows quiet at that. Yet another possibility to work through.

“Do you think it's worth it?” Clea finally asks. “Infinitely more days for Lumièrans at the cost of one girl’s livelihood?”

Sciel picks at her sleeve, frowning. “Lune told me that there's no true way to quantify the weight of a life. Sometimes I wish there was, though.”

For when the lines blur and the water is too murky to see anything with crystal clarity. For when the answers conceal themselves behind layers of introspection, when the only key is the willingness to sit in silence and think.

“It sure would be easier.”

“It would be. But I doubt Lune would like that much.”

///

The kitchen smells faintly of garlic and basil, the kind that clings to your clothes long after you’ve left. Outside, the streets of Lumière hum with the muted bustle of the evening—snippets of a song from the café across the way (they’ve been loving Lune’s recordings), the rattle of cart wheels over cobblestone.

Sciel sits opposite Lune at the small round table by the window, steam curling up from their bowls.

She tries to focus on the meal in front of her, on the way Lune stirs absentmindedly before taking a bite, but Clea’s voice lingers in her head like a half-finished thought.

“My coworker, Amélie,” Sciel starts, jabbing her fork into one particularly testy piece of pasta, “told me that she thought the youngest children are strange.”

“Oh?” Lune chews slowly, cocking her head. “How so?”

“She called them complacent.” Sciel’s brow furrows, remembering the world Clea had used. “Happy, but without ambition. The teenagers, they're at that age where they're experiencing their first existential crisis.” They share a laugh at that. “So I get their distracted natures. But the youngest children…”

She twirls her fork, gaze drifting past Lune. “They don’t talk about what they want to be when they grow up. No far-fetched dreams of repainting the Monolith, or finding the Gestral arenas, or exploring the sea with the Esquie. Just… acceptance. They’re content to stay where they are. It’s not bad, exactly, just…”

Lune waits, watching her. Then, seeing the other woman at a loss for words, chimes in. “Weirdly stagnant, right? Like the world already feels small to them.”

“That’s what Clea basically said, yes.”

Lune pauses the very same moment Sciel realizes her mistake.

She freezes mid-bite, pasta sliding off her fork.

Fuck, fuck, fuck—

“Clea?”

Sciel winces. “Amélie. I meant Amélie.”

Lune sets down her fork, slow and deliberate. “You slipped.”

“Just a little—”

“Sciel.”

“I’m not trying to keep secrets,” Sciel finally says, soft. “She’s just… she asked me not to say anything. To anyone.”

Lune’s gaze sharpens. “Does Maelle know?”

Sciel hesitates. “No. When Clea said ‘anyone,’ she really meant anyone. ”

Lune leans back in her chair, lips pressing into a thin line. “You do realize this is Maelle’s sister, right? A Dessendre. And if she’s walking around Lumière pretending to be someone else—”

“She’s not a threat.”

“I didn’t say that she was.”

But her tone suggests otherwise—not because Lune suspects Clea of doing harm, but because this isn’t something she can just file away. She’s Lune. She catalogs the world. She builds theories. She confronts said theories head on. Sciel loves her endlessly for it.

“I don’t know what she’s here for,” Sciel admits, quieter now. “Not really. She told me she just wanted to visit the Canvas and understand her mother’s creations. But she’s… she’s not passive, Lune. She’s trying. I’ve seen it. She teaches the kids, she helps me grade, she’s worried about them even though she doesn’t want to admit it.”

Lune’s expression softens. “And you care about her.”

Sciel glances down. “I care about all of us.”

And there’s silence again. Thoughtful this time.

“I want to meet her,” Lune says eventually, tone even. “So I can judge for myself.”

Sciel exhales a slow breath, smiling tiredly. “You might want to spring a surprise visit. I get the feeling she’d magically be out if she caught wind of you coming.”

“Noted.” Then, quieter: “I understand what she means, though. About the kids. I’m seeing it in our own comrades. All those former expeditioners, content to laze around all day, drinking and having merriment.” Lune pokes at her food contemplatively. “I understand wanting to celebrate being alive but… It’s been months. Months used to mean something to us.”

“I know.” Sciel thinks back to her old apartment with Pierre, thinks back to those nights when she’d look out the window, out at the Monolith with Papa Va t'en! still etched in gold. Thinks about how she’d pretended her skin hadn’t itched to leap out into the moonlight. “I know.”

///

(“Lune, was it?”

“So you’re the real Clea.”

Out of all the times she'd expected to come into contact with a certain raven-haired expeditioner, Clea hadn't exactly anticipated a random Tuesday during the middle of the school day.

She glances around her quickly, catching a glimpse of Sciel out the window. The other woman was out in the schoolyard with the children, corralling them to the garden in the far corner to deliver an interactive lesson on flora and fauna.

And apparently completely unaware of the interaction about to transpire within her own emptied classroom.

Clea rises from her own desk in the back, setting down the book she’d been reading to slowly make her way to the front of the classroom.

“Was it Sciel?” she asks, the rhythm of her steps deliberate.

“She let your name slip by accident.”

Clea smothers down a low groan, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Of course she did.”

“I was surprised,” Lune continues, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorframe. “She’s usually pretty good at keeping secrets.”

“You seem to be her exception.”

“What gave you that impression?”

Clea hums, gingerly pushing in a chair one of the students had left out.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Alright, first real question then.” Lune’s eyes narrow. “What do you want with Sciel?”

Clea’s brow shoots up. “Seriously? That’s your first question?”

“What,” Lune emphasizes, voice dropping low and threatening, “are your intentions with Sciel?”

“I have none.” And it’s true. Clea allows a smirk to pull at the corner of her mouth. Might as well have a bit of fun. “She’s not my type, so you don’t have to worry.”

Also not a lie.

“That’s—” Lune sputters, her mask of neutrality successfully shattered. She pushes off the doorframe, her mouth opening and closing like a fish for a moment before finding her words again. “That’s not what I meant and you know it!”

Clea shrugs. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Please.” Lune sighs, shoulders sagging. “Just answer the question.”

“I really am just visiting.” Clea wrings out her hands in front of her, her eyes straying towards Sciel and the children outside once more. From the corner of her gaze, she sees Lune do the same. “I finally had some time for myself outside the Canvases. With nothing better to do, I figured I might as well check out my mother’s creations with my own eyes.”

“Your creations killed my parents,” Lune says, mouth set in a thin line.

Clea meets her stare evenly. “You had your mission, and I had mine. If you were in my shoes and had my powers, you'd choose an efficient strategy, too.”

A pause. Neither looks away.

Then Lune sighs, nods once.

“I hate how that’s fair.”

Another beat.

“I don't forgive you,” she adds.

“I'm not asking you to,” Clea replies immediately.

“And you’re not going away any time soon, are you?”

“The length of my stay has no definitive end. But you don’t have to worry. I have no wish to meddle in the state of this Canvas any further.” Then she pauses. “Or bring any trouble to Sciel.”

“You better not.”

“Is this why you came today?” Clea gestures between the two of them before putting her hands on her hips. “So you could interrogate me?”

“Partially. It was a good opportunity, I will admit.”

And then Lune’s summoning chroma to her fingertips with a wave of a hand. Clea watches her in interest—it’s always fascinated her, how her mother’s creations had picked up the usage of chroma so rapidly.

“Sciel left her lunch,” Lune explains with a shrug of her own, gingerly placing a paper bag down on the corner of Sciel’s well-worn wooden desk. “I had some free time, so I decided to bring it to her.”

“You two live near each other?” Clea asks, trying for polite.

“Together,” Lune corrects, some shade of a protective edge coating the singular word. “She moved in with me recently.”

Clea nods, slow and processing. “Right. I noticed she no longer wears her wedding ring.”

Outside, Sciel has begun to steer the children back towards the schoolhouse. 

Lune grows tense, a tint of yearning shining at the farsight of her gaze. “Whatever it is that you're thinking, we're not.”

“Right,” Clea says again, scoffing incredulously. “For now, maybe. But anyway,” she shoves a stack of papers into Lune’s hands. “Help me distribute these across all the desks, would you? If you’re going to wait around like a lovesick puppy for Sciel, might as well make yourself useful.”)

Chapter Text

Lune had told her not to wait up—that there was some fancy dinner happening at one of the waterfront restaurants. A bunch of city officials, young and old, were asked to be in attendance, as well as the high contributing members of Lumière’s population. Maelle, Gustave, and Lune were all to attend, Emma present as Chief Councilor and Sophie as Gustave’s plus one.

It wasn’t the first dinner of this kind.

Sciel’s been receiving invitations from the city for the past three months. Up until a few days ago, she’d been throwing every single envelope away, convincing herself that the last thing she wanted to do was get involved with Lumière’s politics; with the politics of their world.

Yesterday was the first time she'd debated attending, though she'd ultimately decided against it.

“I bet the food isn't even that good.”

Sciel barks out a laugh. “Yeah?”

Verso nods solemnly. “Yeah. Snuck in once just to try it. I've had way better, so I decided it wasn't worth staying and left.”

She's not the only one that's been ignoring the invitations.

It's also far from the first time she’s found herself at the harbour with Verso on these types of nights. What started as an accidental meeting had turned into somewhat of a tradition, neither of them overly keen on the crowd. That, and Sciel was certain Verso had his own reasons for deliberately keeping towards the outskirts of Lumiére.

“Damn. Didn't even say hi?”

“I see our friends enough during the day. Gustave’s even heading to the Continent with us sometime.”

“Maelle was telling me about that. I didn't know you and Lune were making more trips to the Continent.”

She tries not to think about how many times she's sat with Verso like this—how many times they'd spoken. How many times he'd failed to mention anything about either the Continent or Lune.

“We've gone back and forth three times now,” Verso reveals. “Lune and I, I mean. I've gone back even more by myself or with Monoco.”

Sciel does her best to ease the sudden tension in her jaw. “Did she ask you to go with her?”

“No, but Esquie did.” Verso chuckles, raising one shoulder. “Told me that I can't let a lady adventure out alone.”

“How chivalrous of you.”

“Hardly!” Verso guffaws. “She's all yours now, the crazy woman. As her new roommate, it's your responsibility to tail after her all over the wilderness and get her those Nevron samples.”

Against her will, Sciel feels her face grow hot, and she wills for the sea breeze to cool it down.

“I would, if she asked me,” she says.

“I know you would,” Verso agrees, gentle.

“She visited my classroom earlier today,” Sciel confesses. “All by herself. Because she wanted to. I brought the kids in from an outdoor lesson, and she’d shown up with the lunch I’d accidentally forgotten. She was perched on the edge of my desk when I walked in, and she smiled at me like she does when she welcomes me home, and—”

“Was it overwhelming?” Verso prods.

“I couldn’t believe it was real.” Sciel shakes her head, laughing in disbelief. “It was one thing, seeing her in our apartment. Seeing her in the mornings and evenings, and with our friends. In familiar places. It was another to see her in my school building—It… It felt more real. That she’s really back in my life now.”

That this isn’t some prolonged dream.

“Have you asked her why?”

“She already told me she’d been trying to give me space.”

“Not that—I’m talking about why she let herself be found that day.”

Sciel grows still. “I… I haven’t.”

The thought had crossed her mind, it had. Several times, in fact. The Crooked Tower’s hinges and ladders creaked and squeaked the further up you climbed—Lune could have left that room long before Sciel ever reached it. She could’ve heard Sciel on the way up and fled.

But she hadn’t.

And what did that mean?

Did Verso know what it meant?

“You know what's stupid?” Sciel stares up at the stars, wonders what they would say if they could truly talk back. “I was jealous of you during the expedition.”

Verso raises an impeccably arched brow. “Oh?”

“You and Lune are both musicians.” At his look of disbelief, Sciel throws back her head and laughs. “Stupid, I know! But she…” Her heart tightening at the memory, Sciel heaves a shaky breath. Her hands tremble, and she balls them into fists to stop the jitters. “When you'd play music together, you on your piano and Lune on her guitar… She'd get this look, all wide-eyed and excited. And I wanted to be on the receiving end so badly.”

Verso nods. “I know.”

“You know what?”

“That you wanted her attention. That you liked how excited she'd get.” He makes a helpless motion with his hands, shoulders shrugging before he exhales. “And I get it, I do. I was always trying to impress her to get that same reaction.”

“You succeeded, though.”

The corner of Verso’s mouth quirks up. “I don't know about that.”

“Did anything more ever… happen?” Sciel can't help herself. Can't help but finally ask. “Between the two of you?”

“Well, after her and I worked through the whole betrayal incident? Shouldn't you already know the answer?” Verso chuckles, nudging her with an elbow. “You saw us after the sole time something did happen.”

“That was it?”

“That was it.”

It's impossible for Sciel to wrap her head around. The idea of having someone like Lune, and then the idea of having Lune and not—

“I don't get it,” she says. “How… How could you have her, and not keep her?”

Verso looks up at the sky. “Wanna know something equally stupid?”

Sciel gives an imperceptible nod.

“I wanted to keep her. I did.” And he chuckles then, self-deprecating. “Because I wanted something for myself for once. And for a little, I thought I might've even been able to. She kissed my cheek once, and it meant even more to me than the sex did.”

Sciel closes her eyes, palms shaking as she drops her head to her hands.

“What happened?” She almost doesn't want to know. Her voice grows small. “Why didn't it… go anywhere?”

“Because there were these little moments when I'd catch her staring at you.”

“Don't kid with me,” Sciel begs.

“As if I could!” Verso laughs, jostling her with his shoulder, and she's forced to look up, meeting his earnest, knowing smile with her own expression of disbelief. “I wouldn't mess with you about this, Sciel. She'd look at you without even realizing she was looking. And they weren't those wide-eyed, excited looks, but something softer. Like she couldn't believe you were real.”

Silently, Sciel shakes her head. She wants to believe so badly that it hurts. Still, Verso continues, knocking his fist against her shoulder with no real force, his voice growing quiet.

“Lune would look at you like a mystery to be solved, like some sort of unwritten song, and that was how I knew that I stood absolutely no chance.”

“Verso?”

“What's up?”

“Why didn't you tell me about your trips to the Continent with Lune?”

“Because you would've felt hurt, and you would've still tried so hard to pretend that you were okay with it. Because you're too kind for your own good.” Verso smiles. “And because I knew I couldn't keep her.”

///

They sit together a bit longer—her and Verso. Their conversation eventually shifts to lighter topics: Monoco’s ever-expanding Nevron feet collection, Esquie trading secrets with the rock Sciel had gifted him, Verso’s return to the conservatory—to his beloved piano.

The tide laps lazily against the harbour wall, carrying the scent of salt and far-off smoke from the vendor stalls. Sciel's in the middle of snorting at Verso's uncanny impression of Esquie when a shadow slips in behind them.

There's no warning—only the sudden presence of someone moving with a quiet precision, followed by a sharp shove at Verso's back.

He flinches hard, teetering forward over the edge at the same time Sciel yelps in shock.

"Fuck—!" He whirls around, clutching his chest like a madman.

Lune stands there, grinning like she's just pulled off the prank of the century.

"Never gets old."

“Lune—” Verso glares at her, but it's half-hearted, his indignation already cracking under the sound of her laughter. "I could've fallen in!"

Verso is still sputtering about the near-dunking, but Sciel's attention has already drifted. Her eyes catch on Lune— really catch on her—and the noise of the harbour fades into a low hum. The lamplight glances off smooth fabric and turns it into liquid starlight, pooling and rippling with each subtle shift of Lune's weight.

It's enough to steal the breath from Sciel's lungs.

“Where did—” Sciel gapes. How did Lune get that dress? With its thin, dark navy fabric, Lune wears the entire night sky pooling off her body like a waterfall, ending just above her ankles to reveal a pair of silver heels—neither of which Sciel knew she owned.

She knows she's slack-jawed like a beached fish when Lune actually smirks and twists, teasingly cards her hair over one shoulder to show off the expanse of her back, how deep the cut dipped.

“Cat got your tongue, Sciel?”

“So this is what you'd been missing at these parties,” Verso mutters from somewhere behind her.

Sciel pays him no attention.

“Lune,” she finally musters in a hushed breath, “you're so beautiful.”

The playful look in Lune's eyes softens.

“Thank you, Sciel.”

Sciel doesn't know why, but she nods eagerly. Something warm floods through her at the way her name leaves Lune’s lips—she wants to hear it again, and again, and again.

“So, why'd you leave early?” Verso asks, standing up and dusting himself off.

Lune shrugs, nonchalant. “Food wasn't that good. It's never been that good, actually. I finally had enough and was just going to pick something up on the walk home.”

He whirls on Sciel, winking. “See? I told you!”

Sciel keeps her eyes on Lune, ethereal in the moonlight. “I don't remember saying otherwise, but consider me told.”

“I've had better meals,” Lune says casually, and she strides forward, tucking midnight hair behind her ear as she comes to stand in front of Sciel, eyes lazily looking the other woman up and down.

Feeling incredibly underdressed all of a sudden—despite not even attending—Sciel swallows.

“Yeah?” she breathes.

“So you admit that my roasted duck is better than anything a restaurant could ever produce,” Verso drawls from somewhere to the side.

Lune rolls her eyes. “I was talking about Sciel’s cooking, you self-obsessed—”

“Let's go home?” Sciel interjects, suddenly incredibly keen on getting Lune all to herself. She'd been thinking about it since lunch, when Lune had been an angel, letting curious children run their little hands down her gold chroma tattoos during recess. But all that had been on Sciel’s mind was the idea of Lune, in their kitchen, fixing up the lunch Sciel had so idiotically forgotten this morning.

Lune, who had dismantled the sandwich she had hastily thrown together, only to carefully remake it with fresh basil, cilantro, and parsley. Because one of the things Sciel used to secretly complain about was how they wouldn't often have fresh herbs during the expedition. Lune, who had added a small container of blueberries, because she'd been there when Sciel had gotten addicted to the wild blueberries they'd pick while traveling.

Stupidly, quietly domestic.

Incredibly, unfathomably Lune.

“There are ingredients I was going to use for a quiche tomorrow morning,” Sciel tells her, trying not to sound too hopeful. “If you're okay with a late dinner and having quiche for two meals in a row, I can make it tonight instead.”

Lune's responding smile is enough to put the glow of the moon to shame.

“Sounds perfect.”

“Wow guys, thanks for inviting me,” Verso chimes in, dry.

She and Lune share an amused look.

“You're free to join us, Verso,” Sciel tells him genuinely. Wants and desires aside, she'd never leave a friend out alone.

“No, no, I was just kidding.” He waves them off dismissively, chuckling, and for a moment, the formerly immortal man meets Sciel’s eye, winking once more. “I don't want to third wheel—” Sciel stutters indignantly as he presses on. “And besides, Maelle’s gonna feed me. We always get late night pizza after these things.”

“Huh.” Sciel furrows her brow. “So the food really isn't that good.”

///

They say their goodbyes to Verso just as the clock tower tolls in the distance, and Sciel keeps pace with Lune as they turn around to start heading back.

“Tell Emma to pick a better venue and maybe I'll show up!” Verso shouts at their backs.

“Emma isn't in charge of the venue, idiot!” Lune retorts over her shoulder. “Maybe if you attended properly instead of sneaking in to steal food, you would know that already!”

“Wait, you knew? How did you—”

“Goodnight, Verso!” Lune calls. Then, quietly so that only Sciel can hear: “He's not nearly as sneaky as he thinks he is.”

Sciel suppresses a smile, slowing down to trail slightly behind the taller woman. “Well, he was pretty sneaky back when we first met him. Or, before we first met him, I suppose.”

“Only because we didn't know he was following us to begin with.” Her dress shimmering about her, Lune steps lightly, as if her feet want to leave the ground but she reins herself in. Instead, Lune reaches behind her, loosely grabs Sciel's wrist and leads her through lamp lit streets, the midday crowds long having dispersed in the evening quiet. “It's hard to ignore someone once you're fully aware of them.”

Sciel stares at the hand around her wrist with enough fervor that she wonders if she'll burn.

“You think so?”

Lune nods. “That's why I go to the parties. Because it's hard to ignore them. And that's why you don't.”

Sciel halts in place, lips parting in shock.

“You—”

“I know you were invited,” Lune tells her truthfully, and when Sciel blinks rapidly in surprise, still at a loss from being called out so blatantly, Lune just chuckles. “You left your invitation out on the living room side table. It was unopened, though, so I knew you weren’t going to attend.”

“Wow. I can’t believe I forgot to throw it away.”

“I didn’t even know you were receiving invites this whole time,” Lune admits. “At the first gathering, Emma told me you never RSVP’d. And you never went to any of the others, so I thought she’d just accepted that you never wanted to come and gave up. It’s also part of why I—”

She cuts herself off, shaking her head.

“Never mind.”

But Sciel latches on, desperately pushes forward.

“No, no—What is it?” She’s near begging for Lune to speak her mind. To tell her what she’d thought, when Sciel had been so eager to return to her idea of normalcy.

Lune sighs, looking away. “Your refusal to go to those parties—It’s why I initially thought you didn’t want to see us anymore. That you wanted to return to life like the expedition never happened. And a part of me was afraid that if you saw me, it would just be a reminder of all that hardship. But then Gustave or Verso or Maelle would tell me about something you'd do together during the day, and, well.”

“Oh…”

Not for the first time, Sciel finds herself at a loss for words.

“And you were happy like that,” Lune continues, smiling wearily. Even so, she looks tragically beautiful in the late night lamplight, her dark blue dress shimmering in the evening. “At least, I thought you were, from the glimpses I caught when I’d spot you around the city.”

“You saw me?” Sciel blurts.

Lune laughs. “I always saw you. From a distance, through a window, walking down the street with Pierre while I was walking up on the other side. I saw you all the time.”

“How did I—” How could I never notice?

“But if I’m being completely honest, I couldn’t… I wouldn’t bear it.” Lune frowns to herself, as if fighting to find the proper words. “The larger part of me was… jealous? Envious? Some strange mixture of being happy for you, that you had your life back, but envious, too. You… That night you found me in the Crooked Tower, you said you’d needed me. But every time I saw you since Maelle began bringing people back… It never looked like you needed me.”

Oh.

“Oh, Lune, that’s not—”

“I know that’s not true now,” Lune rushes to say, and then she laughs quietly. “Sorry, this just reminds me of that conversation we had before, during the expedition.”

Sciel remembers instantly—

“ ‘Friends are not distractions,’” she recites, recalling that conversation under the stars vividly. Her own laugh that follows is hollow, self-deprecating. “I’m such a fucking hypocrite.”

“You were trying to remember a life you’d forgotten against your will,” Lune rationalizes. “And it’s not like you were actively avoiding us in general.”

Just the parties. Just anything that reminded me that I couldn’t go back to the way things were before. Anything that reminded me that I had moved on.

“I was trying to return to a life I’d grown out of,” Sciel corrects, digging her hands into the fabric of her pants in frustration. “God, I’m so sorry, Lune. This—” She gestures back towards the waterfront, back to where the party was certainly still in full swing. “Pretending that this didn’t exist… It wasn’t the solution.”

“To what?” Lune asks quietly.

“I think… I think that when Pierre was brought back, I felt guilty.” Sciel stares up at the stars yet again, a strange reminder that her parents and Pierre were no longer up there. “Guilty that I had moved on without him.” And guilty about a huge sum of other things, too. Namely, that I missed you with something so fierce, it would nearly force me to tears. “I thought that if I slipped back into my old ways—my old job, old clothes, old hairstyles, old smiles—” Old quiet dinners, old bedside habits, old ways to love him, “I thought that I could crawl my way back and meet him where he was. But I was wrong. That’s not reality. And the only thing I managed to do was suffocate myself.”

Lune bites her lip, and Sciel stares, unabashed. She looks like a vision here in the empty streets.

“And now?”

“I can breathe much easier. All thanks to you.” Sciel’s heart aches. “I needed you this whole time. I’m just sorry I didn’t show it more.”

“And I’m sorry for avoiding you.”

“Aha! So you do admit you were avoiding me!”

“I was giving you space, you dolt!”

They share a laugh, and there's a wide grin on Sciel’s face as she stumbles into Lune, buries her face in the taller woman’s shoulder.

Then Verso’s question from before hits.

She holds her breath.

“Hey, can I ask you something? Another something.”

“What is it?”

“That day, a few weeks ago. The second time we’ve met at the Crooked Tower. Why did you let yourself be found?”

Lune stills, her hands hovering just over Sciel’s waist.

And for a moment, silence.

Then—

“That day,” Lune says, stepping away, deliberately taking her time so she can look Sciel in the eye. “Everywhere I went, people were telling me that you were looking for me. ‘Sciel was just here asking about you,’ they’d say when I walked in. That’s how I knew… I knew something had happened. In your life. I didn’t know what, but it must have been something major.”

“Bet you never anticipated opening your home to a new divorcee that night,” Sciel says, dry.

“No, I didn’t,” Lune concedes, “but I’d also told myself that if I was ever presented with the opportunity to do something for you, to make things right for you—that I would. Without hesitation.” She takes a deep breath, fidgeting with the skirt of her beautiful, starry dress. “Because I could feel us slipping back into that unknown place, and I didn’t want to awkwardly avoid you for the next decade again.”

Sciel feels herself soften. “It would be a shame, wouldn’t it? If we’d dodged death for that long together, traveled and saw so much together,” slept under the stars wrapped around each other, “all to just slip back into what we were before.”

“A shame, indeed.”

They lapse into a momentary silence—just a brief pause where Sciel feels Lune’s mind swirl, then settle.

“I think,” Sciel eventually announces, clapping her hands, “that after all that, I need some wine!”

And Lune laughs. It’s her who moves first, linking their arms together and ushering Sciel down the street.

“Let’s go home, then?”

“Yes,” Sciel agrees instantly. “Home.”

///

They change into comfier clothes and Sciel makes the quiche with Lune’s assistance, working in tandem with each other around the kitchen space to prep the ingredients swiftly. Then, Lune hovers over her shoulder, watching in interest as Sciel combines everything together and sets it in the oven to bake.

“Want that wine now?” Lune eventually asks, already opening her wine cabinet, two glasses already set out.

Sciel, having finished washing her hands, nods enthusiastically.

“Yes, please!”

“I'll bring it to the sofa. Just wait for me.”

It takes a minute for Sciel to settle, and perhaps it's the longest minute of her life, but when Lune emerges from the kitchen with wine in hand, Sciel looks to her like she's a savior.

“You know, I forgot to say, but Clea was telling me about the talks you two have,” Lune mentions, handing Sciel a glass. “Sounds like she’s been asking you some hard questions.”

Sciel makes a noise from the back of her throat, and she opts to drink from her glass before answering.

“She asks me questions aloud that I think have been circling around in my head. Questions I didn’t want to touch before because I was afraid of them and I didn't have answers. And then she’ll bring in some new angle, and I’m back to square one again.”

Lune settles on the other side of the couch, tucking her feet beneath her as she cradles her own wine glass.

“She told me about her questions, but I think I’m more curious about what goes on in that pretty head of yours.”

Sciel flushes. “I don’t know how much you’d like my thoughts.”

Given everything we’ve been through.

Lune simply smirks. “You think you can outthink the most chronic overthinker on the island? Try me.”

She has a point.

“Alright, well—”

Setting down her half-empty glass, Sciel pauses for a moment, reaches into the recesses of her mind, searching for those late night thoughts she had never once dared to voice.

“Sometimes,” she starts hesitantly, “I wonder why I think the way I do. Why did I initially think Verso was wrong? When did I stop thinking of death as death? And… Do I think this way because it's who I am? Or, do I behave as such because—”

“Because Maelle painted you that way?” Lune finishes. Sciel’s tired smile is all the response she can manage, and Lune laughs quietly. “I figured. I was having the same thoughts, actually.”

“Wonderful.” Sciel flops back on the couch, closing her eyes and reminding herself to take deep breaths as Lune carefully transfers her head to rest in her lap. “We can be tortured souls together.”

When Sciel looks up, all she can see is Lune’s face. How warm she looks in the yellow glow of their apartment, the curve of her lip as she gently blows at Sciel’s face, scattering the unruly strands of hair there. Her eyes seem to sparkle, celestial and grounding all at once, and then she's grinning, excited, and teasing, and affectionate, and—

“It's not so bad, is it?” Lune says softly. “Being tortured souls together.”

Oh, that's the look, Sciel realizes belatedly. The look she'd been longing for this whole time. Except she's not wide-eyed—Lune’s eyes instead crinkle into perfect crescent moons, and it's everything and more, how she can smile like this despite everything. In light of everything.

“It’s not so bad at all.” Sciel’s eyes flutter back shut the moment Lune’s fingertips brush over her cheeks. She clears her throat. “So, what’s been plaguing your thoughts?”

“Oh, is this what we're doing?” Lune jokes.

“Humor me.” I want to hear your voice.

“Well, did Aline create us?” Lune muses. “Or are we considered Maelle’s creations now, since she brought us back?”

“Clea seemed to think we were still Aline’s. Besides, if we were truly just Maelle’s recreations,” Sciel considers, “she wouldn't instill these kinds of thoughts within us herself, would she?”

Lune chuckles, tucking a strand of hair behind Sciel’s ear. “Perhaps. But who's to say that there isn't a small part of Maelle’s soul that urges her to go home, living on through us?”

“Do you think it matters?” Sciel wonders. “How ‘real’ we are, by whatever metric?”

“That’s a good question. I think if you asked me right after our Gommage, right after Maelle’s hair turned silver, I would've thought it mattered more,” Lune ponders. “These days, I've been reconsidering other possibilities. Sometimes I wonder if the fact that I'm alive and having these debates is enough—‘I think, therefore I am,’ if that makes sense.”

“Is that enough to establish that we're alive?” Sciel asks.

“Does it matter when there's no true way to quantify the weight of a life?” Lune shoots back.

“If I say that it matters, is that enough?”

Lune pinches her cheek. “You're getting the hang of this.”

Sciel groans. “How do you ever sleep at night?”

“Hmm.” Lune giggles, a musical sound in itself. “Shockingly well these days, now that I have the time to consider it all.”

“I'm glad one of us is,” Sciel mutters, deflating into Lune’s comfort. “Are you never afraid of the answers you'll find? Or the ones you never will?”

“Sometimes I am. But I think I'd rather be informed than unaware. I’d rather ask questions, because that means I have that freedom for myself. To think, to ponder, to get frustrated. On the days I start to feel less human, it comforts me. As strange as that sounds.” Lune draws her thumb over Sciel’s cheek tenderly. “I hope you're able to find comfort in it, too.”

Sciel nods slowly. “So, I should keep asking questions?”

“You're doing a wonderful job already.”

And it feels amazing, being on the other side of Lune’s praise. Sciel lets it wash over her, the feeling of a warm bath after a long day. 

I want to hear it again.

“We haven’t seen Maelle create a human from scratch, have we?”

“Look at you,” Lune commends, eyes glimmering with her smile, “the most human out of all of us!”

///

They eat quiche at midnight. It's the best damn thing Sciel's ever had.

///

The café is awash in golden lamplight and the low murmur of evening chatter, clinking glassware underscored by the slow sway of a string quartet in the corner. Sciel is halfway through peeling her scarf off when someone barrels into her.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” Maelle exclaims in one breath, latching herself to Sciel’s arm and hugging tight. “Lune’s my usual company at these things, and when she told me she couldn't make it, I panicked because I thought that meant you couldn't come either. Seriously, I’m about to die from all the ridiculous tension!”

“Whoa,” Sciel laughs, placing a hand on Maelle’s shoulder to steady them both. “What’s going on?”

Maelle simply juts her thumb over her shoulder, and Sciel cranes her head to follow the motion.

At the other side of the café, tucked away in the corner, Gustave and Sophie are engrossed in their own world, close enough that they might as well be sharing a chair, knees brushing, hands on each other's laps, low voices and secret smiles.

It's sickeningly sweet, and the sight brings a smile to Sciel’s face.

It's the exact type of thing that would have Maelle grimacing.

Sciel chuckles, leading the disgruntled Maelle over to their friends. “Weren’t you the one who kept telling Gustave they shouldn't have ever broken up?”

Maelle rolls her eyes. “You'd think they'd keep their flirting away from the eyes of children.”

“Hey!” Gustave interjects, turning away from a laughing Sophie to point at Maelle accusingly. “You did this! You're the one who kept telling me to get a move on, and you wouldn't give it a rest until I—”

“Give it a rest, Gustave,” Sophie chides gently, laying a pacifying hand on his arm.

“Yeah, Gustave,” Maelle parrots, triumphant. “Listen to your girlfriend.”

Gustave sighs in defeat.

“Hi Sciel,” Sophie finally says, grinning as she meets the gaze of her best friend. “Pleasure of you to join us. I ordered you your usual, by the way.”

“Oh, no, the pleasure’s all mine.” Sciel throws a casual arm around Maelle, humming when the teenager leans into her, a head of silvery hair moving to rest on her shoulder. Then she picks up the mug Sophie had nudged her way, taking a quick sip. “How've you all been the past week?”

“Well,” Gustave says, raising an accusing eyebrow at Maelle, who pointedly looks away, hiding her expression behind her own mug. “A certain someone overexerted herself while practicing Painting again.”

“What?!”

Maelle shrinks under the ferocity in Sciel’s eyes.

“It was an accident—”

“She had to stay in bed for two days straight.”

“You said she was practicing. What—” Sciel swallows, licks her lips as she remembers her conversation with Lune last night. “What were you practicing that caused such a burnout?”

Maelle seems to grow even smaller.

She says nothing, and Sciel shakes her head.

Around them, the café continues to buzz, its other patrons carrying on with no worries.

“Maelle, don't make me ask again—”

“Clea.”

Sciel freezes, straining to make sure she'd heard her right.

“...Say that again?”

Maelle sighs, crossing her arms defensively. “I was trying to see if I could paint Clea. Not—Not my mother's Painted Clea. But my own Clea. A new Clea, as I remember her. I thought… I thought that maybe Verso could be less lonely. I didn't do it,” she adds hastily. “Nothing even formed, I promise. And it took too much out of me to even start to try, and I—” Maelle sighs again, this time in frustration. “I don't think I'm even strong enough for that kind of creation, just as I am. I've always been the weakest Painter out of my family.”

It… makes a lot of sense, Sciel rationalizes. Aline had been the strongest Dessendre, and she had been the only one to create human life. Clea was definitely a close second—her creation of the Nevrons and her repainting of her Painted version speaking volumes. Renoir, similarly, had enacted the Gommage and created the Axons, skilled in his own right. Meanwhile, Maelle had needed the Painted Verso’s guidance to bring herself and Lune back, and her worsening physical state had to be some byproduct of her lack of training compared to her siblings.

The fact that she'd brought back so many people… It must have been a miracle in itself.

It's a lot to unpack, if Sciel’s being honest. She makes a mental note to sort through everything with Lune later.

But for now, she heaves out a breath, hugging Maelle just a bit tighter.

“Well, I'm glad that it didn't work out.” One real Clea in this world is more than enough trouble. Then, gentler, “I know you had good intentions, but doubt our Verso would want another person in a spot similar to him.”

Maelle looks miserable. “You're probably right. It's just that I also—”

She cuts herself off, frowning.

“Do you miss Clea?” It's Sophie who speaks up this time, kind and understanding. “She's your biological sister, right?”

Maelle nods. “I don't… I don't know why I miss her so much.” She makes a face, scrunching her nose. “I used to think she hated me."

“She doesn't,” Sciel says instantly.

“I know she doesn't.” Maelle exhales, and the saddened look in her eye seems to lighten, just a bit. “Remember when we visited the Endless Tower?” At Sciel’s nod, Maelle's smiles, small and honest. “I don't know how she did it, but I was able to talk to her—my real sister. She… she was the only one who didn't chastise me for staying. She told me lots of things when we were there, actually. She's always been… harsh. But she's never been untruthful. Out of everyone, it's her opinion that I value the most.”

Gustave hums, reaching across the table to muss with his ward’s hair. “She sounds a lot like Emma.”

Maelle nods again, brightening significantly at just the opportunity to talk about her sister.

“They're similar! But Emma is more proper. Even when she's mad, Emma stays composed. Clea… she'll let you know exactly how she feels, colorful language and all.” Maelle giggles. “Especially if it's negative. Kind of like Lune.”

“Oh, speaking of Lune,” Sciel chimes in, picking up a fork to dig into the cake at the center of the table. “Apparently the reason she's unavailable is because Stella wanted to go shopping.”

“Ah.” Gustave nods sagely. “So she was dragged. Looks like things never change.” At the questioning looks he receives from his female companions, Gustave shrugs helplessly. “She used to bug Tristan and I for excuses to get out of her sister's plans. Frankly, Stella always scared me more than Lune, but Tristan’s crush won out over that fear—he helped her every time.”

Sciel, Sophie, and Maelle freeze simultaneously, Sciel’s fork clattering to the table.

“Tristan had a crush on Lune?!” Maelle squeaks.

“They…” Sciel blinks rapidly, ears ringing. “They were both her parents’ apprentices, right?”

“Yeah, they were.” Gustave looks confused. “Tristan confessed and she politely turned him down. I thought this was common knowledge? All the guys at the Expedition Academy knew.”

Sophie rolls her eyes. “Men never talk about their feelings with us unless they're romantically interested.”

“Can we go back to the part where Tristan confessed,” Maelle cuts in.

“Do we need to?” Sciel asks weakly, not sure if she wants to dig further into this hole or live in ignorant bliss.

“I mean, there's not much to say.” Gustave rubs the back of his head. “It happened two years before the expedition. He confessed. She turned him down. They both told me separately that it happened—”

“She told you?” Sophie gasps. “Voluntarily?”

“I—” Gustave nods, stunned at the reaction. “I mean, yeah, why wouldn't she? We're friends, and she said that she and Tristan would still be friends, too. Well, she didn't say that exactly—Lune would never admit to us being ‘friends’—but you know what I mean. Said she wanted to warn me in case things occasionally got awkward since the three of us did a bunch of work together.”

Sophie chews her bottom lip, clearly trying to figure something out. Then—

“How did you feel when that happened, Gustave?”

He stares at her. “Are you asking if I was jealous?”

Sophie nods.

Sciel wonders why it feels like she's about to be sick.

But then Gustave snorts, throws his head back and laughs. Laughs, and laughs, and laughs. And his laughter goes on for a good thirty seconds before he wipes a tear from his eye with his prosthetic.

“Oh, god, from my own girlfriend!” He nearly wheezes, reaching out to pull a befuddled Sophie into his side. “Lune's gonna have a blast hearing this one.”

“Gustave?” Sophie asks softly.

“You're right, Sophie, I was a bit jealous,” Gustave tells her, growing tender. He touches her chin, their eyes meeting, and Sciel holds her breath—feels like she's intruding on something personal—and turns away. She can still hear him, though: “But not in the way you thought. I was jealous of Tristan because, at that point in our lives, he was still capable of thinking about things like love and romance. Because by that point, I didn't feel that I could. Everything I had was going towards either trying to stop the Paintress or being the best parent for Maelle. Trying to create a world where you didn't have to fear having children.”

“Gustave…”

He leans in, plants a kiss on her temple, murmurs something quiet that gets Sophie smiling again. And for once, Maelle says nothing—the silver-haired teenager only closes her eyes, presses herself even further into Sciel.

“Also if you're curious about if anything ever happened—” Gustave turns to Sciel now, smirking ever-so-slightly. “You should ask Lune yourself.”

Sciel’s jaw drops. “You’re really revealing nothing?”

“I'll tell Sophie. But I won't tell you.”

“And why not?”

“You wouldn't snitch on Sophie when I was pining and miserable.” Gustave grins broadly. “So whatever's going on there, you've got to work through it yourselves.”

“I— Pining?” Sciel sputters just as her friends erupt into laughter that's far too loud for a café setting.

///

“Wow,” Maelle remarks a minute later, still grinning widely. “It's such a good thing Lune isn't here.”

Sciel, who’s slumped her head onto the café table miserably, groans.

“You don't say.”

“For more reasons than one,” the younger girl adds, tsk ing. “I wonder if she and Stella know what their brother’s doing while they have a girls’ day.”

That gets Sciel straightening in her seat, confused.

“What?”

Maelle turns to Gustave and Sophie. “Did you two even stop to wonder where Emma was?”

Sophie’s eyes widen. “That's right—she was supposed to join us.”

“I figured she'd just gotten pulled into some Chief Councilor duties.” Gustave frowns, twisting in his seat. “Do you see her, Maelle?”

Maelle simply points across the cafe.

All three adults follow her gesture with their eyes.

“That's Lune’s brother, right?” Maelle asks. “They have the same mouth.”

Sciel gasps. “She's with Sol?”

Sophie winces. “Emma doesn't look very amused.”

Maelle’s smirk is wicked. “They ran into each other at the door ten minutes ago. I can't hear them clearly, but it looks like he's asking her to give them another shot, and she's not interested.”

Gustave sheepishly glances at the others, gauging Sophie’s expression in particular. “I don't remember them ending on bad terms before his Gommage but…” He winces as Emma’s gaze turns particularly sharp. “Yikes.”

“Emma has changed.” Sophie looks like she almost feels bad for him. “It… It just happens.”

Sciel glances her way, some familiar feeling rising protectively in her chest. She recognizes that look, that awkward dynamic—the same one she'd been so close to living within.

“Well?” she says, already halfway out of her chair. “Do we save her?”

Gustave is moving across the café in an instant, and Sciel bounds right after him, Sophie and Maelle hot on their heels.

///

There’s something buzzing beneath her skin by the time Sciel returns home—to their home. After they'd rescued Emma from that increasingly awkward conversation, she’d been noticing it all afternoon, the casual touches between her two friends. How Gustave would place his hand at the small of Sophie’s back. The way Sophie would linger in his space, running a hand down his arm or letting their fingertips brush. Contact—just enough contact to leave Gustave constantly seeking for more.

Sciel picks up on it all, then thinks about the woman back at their apartment, and wants, and wants, and wants.

All prior thought of relaying her further revelations about Maelle subsequently fled.

And so, by the time Sciel is pushing open the door, there’s lightning sizzling, and she’s almost desperate as her eyes scour the living room, the object of her restlessness nowhere to be found.

But then she hears it—the strum of guitar chords, a voice lifting over in melody.

In a daze, Sciel allows her feet to lead her over to the open balcony.

Lune is there.

Outlined in moonlight, underscored by the stars. Facing out towards a clear view of the Monolith, she sits cross-legged on the stone floor, guitar in her lap, her beloved notebook open right next to her. She's in a lovely white dress, presumably from her shopping trip with Stella, and it sways with her when a warm breeze blows by. There’s a pencil tucked behind her ear, and when she catches wind of Sciel’s approach, she twists in place, grinning up at Sciel with that child-like excitement, stardust in her eyes.

“Welcome back,” Lune greets, the curve of her mouth almost a smirk. “How was your day spent third-wheeling Gustave and Sophie?”

“Torture,” Sciel admits roughly. Torture, in ways you’d never imagine. Not trusting herself to behave should she get closer, Sciel settles for leaning against the balcony doorframe, crossing her arms. “They’re back in full force, those two.”

“They never stopped loving each other,” Lune replies, chuckling, and she turns back to her guitar, idly twisting one of the tuning knobs.

Meanwhile, Sciel lets the silence that follows linger for a moment, trying to dissect Lune’s words in any way she can. She searches for something— anything— that could hint at—

“I think,” Lune suddenly says, sounding incredibly amused, “that everyone around me seems to be making a bigger deal out of my friendship with Gustave than either of us are.”

Sciel hates herself for it immediately.

“Lune, I’m so sorry—”

“No, no, it’s really fine!” Lune laughs, as if she can’t believe the ridiculousness of it all. “Honestly, it’s funnier more than anything. No, really. The amount of people who have come up to me with condolences over these past three months. I don’t know why they felt the need to do that—Gustave and I were never together. His soulmate has always been Sophie.”

Another chord segues into the next, and Sciel stares at deft hands.

“Sophie often said that the two of you would be a cute couple. I think she was genuine about that.”

Lune clicks her tongue. “Maybe. But in a way, I think that was evidence of Sophie’s love for him, too. She genuinely wanted his happiness, even if it was with another person.” A shrug rolls off her shoulders. “In the end, it never happened. We kissed once, though, if you were curious. Late one night, when we were both on the brink of exhaustion. Just to see what it would be like.”

Sciel lets out an indistinguishable squeak, and she watches Lune bite back another laugh.

“And?” She rasps out.

“And nothing.” Lune grins. “Really, Sciel. You’re not dumb—you would’ve known if something had happened.”

That was true.

“Like at camp with Verso—” Really, Sciel wants to smack herself. “Sorry! Sorry. I don’t… I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight.”

“You’re usually more sensible than this,” Lune teases, and when… When had this dynamic changed?

When everyone who was dead suddenly was not, the little voice at the back of Sciel’s head reminds her, sounding eerily like Monoco. When you returned to your husband and realized that you no longer fit in his world. When you realized you’d outgrown the life you’d once been so happy to live.

Ah… That’s right.

These past three months, when Sciel had been masquerading in her own home and trying to live out her ordinary citizen life, Lune had done no such thing. Lune had kept researching, kept studying, kept questioning. She’d made several trips back out to the Continent with Verso, Monoco, and Esquie. She’d carefully been observing Maelle every time she Painted, recording her observations and taking notes. She’d finally begun embracing music again—a hobby she’d loved, cast in a new light as her compositions began flooding the streets of Lumière.

While Lune had continued forward, Sciel had found herself stuck in the past.

That’s how Lune could afford to grin wildly in a world full of uncertainties. How she could effortlessly invite Sciel to share her home and laugh in the face of all the scrutiny.

And so she looks at Lune now—really, truly looks—and realizes how much she’s changed. Not just in the way the moonlight softens her face, or how her fingers now move over the strings with a newfound ease, an unspoken confidence—

But rather, in the way she sits with herself. Comfortable in her own skin. Whole.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she says, voice low.

“Do what?” Lune glances up from her guitar.

“How you keep moving forward. But also how you’re… still you.”

A pause. Lune tilts her head thoughtfully, gaze sharp but kind.

“You make it sound like it was easy,” she says. “Like I didn’t fall apart just as the pieces of our world were coming together.”

Their eyes meet, charged. Slowly, carefully, Sciel moves from her post at the doorframe, lowering herself as she joins Lune on the balcony’s stone floor.

“But you came back together again,” Sciel whispers.

Lune smiles, soft and sad. “Not all the way. Not yet.”

And she sets the guitar aside, the instrument disappearing into a shimmer of light as Lune shifts onto her knees, closes the distance between them in one easy, inevitable motion.

Sciel doesn’t dare draw even a single breath.

A dream. This could only be a dream—

“I've wanted you since the expedition,” Lune confesses, husky and quiet; perfectly Lune . She’s so close that their lips brush with every word, every exhale. “When we’d lie down together under a sky more open than this one, and we’d hold each other because we never knew if the next day would be our last.”

“What?” Sciel breathes.

“I wanted you with everything I had. I still do, with whatever I have to offer. And so I'm telling you for once,” Lune murmurs, closing her eyes while her lips upturn humorously, “Stop thinking so hard, Sciel.”

Sciel pulls her onto her lap without a second thought.

///

The moment Lune sighs into her mouth, Sciel knows that it's over—whatever race she'd been running, whatever tournament she'd been fighting. Whatever it was, it was over.

Because Lune sighs into her mouth, the sound achingly soft and her lips somehow even softer, and Sciel knows that she's a goner. She is nothing yet everything in the face of this, her existence thrown apart yet pulled together again; she could've Gommaged in that moment and ended her life perfectly fulfilled. And yet Sciel drinks her in, hungry for more—

Lune, Lune, Lune.

She doesn't realize she's saying her name aloud until Lune’s smile presses firmer against her lips, and it burns in her throat, fighting to break free once more— Lune, Lune, I want you, Lune.

Lune’s hands in her hair, Lune's fingers massaging her scalp, Lune’s weight on her lap, Lune’s breath in her lungs, Lune’s lips searing against hers.

“You’re starving,” Lune whispers when they break apart to breathe, two words glistening like starlight.

“Yes,” Sciel exhales, fingers trailing hungrily down Lune’s body, running over her ribcage, up to where Lune’s heart rests, flutters against her fingertips.

“Living with you is some kind of exquisite torture.”

“I know.”

Lune smiles. “But it doesn't have to be.”

“It doesn't,” Sciel agrees instantly.

Lune could tell her anything right now. Sciel would agree in less than a heartbeat.

“Do you want to know something else I've been holding onto, Sciel?”

Yes. Yes. Anything.

“What is it?”

“I’ve wanted you like this since the expedition,” Lune whispers, tracing the outline of Sciel’s jaw with her fingertips. “But I think I've loved you since the Crooked Tower.”

“Oh,” Sciel whispers, and suddenly she's blinking back tears. Oh, oh, oh. 

“I don't feel like I have much to call mine ,” Lune continues, starlight lining her eyes, her voice hoarse from exhaustion and it does things to the pounding organ in Sciel’s chest that, in any other scenario, might be a cause of concern. But not here, not like this. Not when Lune is smiling so softly, shyly, something celestial and sacred. “And I don't think I've ever called a person mine before either. You don't have to be the first, Sciel. Not if you don't want to. This can be whatever you want it to be. But… If you ever do want to—be mine, that is—I’ll be waiting. I think I'll always be waiting.”

“Why would I wait?” Sciel blurts out, and then she's surging forward, crashing their lips together as a laughing Lune loops her arms around Sciel’s shoulders, tugs her impossibly closer. “You silly woman, I already am! Knowingly and unknowingly, I've been yours.”

Sciel doesn't remember when she started crying, but she only registers her quiet sobbing when Lune starts wiping the tears streaking down her cheeks.

The guilt. Her jealousy. Every ounce of doubt she once had. It all fades away, swept away by Lune’s steady hands and nimble fingers. Kissed away by Lune's lips.

“You’ve had me,” Lune murmurs, and unable to find the words, Sciel nods vigorously, sniffling. “You still have me, and you always will.”

“My Lune,” Sciel says, finally finding it in herself to test out the words, how they dance on her tongue. She likes them—likes they way they send a jolt down her spine, the lightning beneath her skin singing its approval. “My beautiful, perfect Lune.”

And Lune grins, a wildfire. Beautiful and dangerous. Perfect in every sense of the word.

“So.” She pauses dramatically, like flames licking at Sciel's skin. “Your bedroom, or mine?”

And that's how Sciel finds herself splayed out amongst Lune’s linen sheets and plush pillows hours later, pried open and put back together again, stitched between her ribs with threads of gold chroma, Lune lying atop her, trailing kisses from Sciel’s naked shoulder to the underside of her jaw.

She is spent, blissful exhaustion sinking deep in her muscles.

Sciel has never felt more alive.

///

Lune kisses her awake the following morning, first on her lips and then the rest of her face, and Sciel drifts back to the surface from a blissful dream with some sort of overwhelming fullness—a type of happiness that's familiar yet new, all at once.

At some point during the night, Lune had rolled off her, and Sciel had latched to her immediately, tucking herself below Lune’s chin. She'd fallen back asleep to the feeling of fingers tapping melodies against her hip—and this was just the Sciel and Lune who had been wrapped together under the stars, Sciel had realized belatedly. She'd been too exhausted to say anything at the time, though.

This, though—the kisses being peppered on every inch of skin Lune can reach—is different.

They're still them. Just more.

Not bothering to open her eyes, Sciel makes a small noise of contentment.

“You’re like a cat,” she murmurs, unable to stop a wide, wide smile. “Who knew you were so affectionate?”

“You'd be the first,” Lune tells her. “I’ve never had a morning after before, so I'm winging it.”

“You’re doing an amazing job, by the way.” Sciel’s eyes flutter open, grinning. “So, you were the type to leave before they woke up?” 

“If I wanted to stay the night at all.”

“Wow, you really are a cat.” Lune only does as Lune pleases.

Lune laughs softly, tender as the morning sunlight—unfathomably beautiful even with her raven hair all mussed up, falling over her shoulders. Gently, she hoists herself up on an elbow and bumps their foreheads together, feline and playful.

“Want me to stop?”

“Never.” Then, as an after thought, “Please?”

“As much as I'd love that,” Lune flops back down to her pillow, “we do have work today, silly. It's Monday.”

Sciel slams her eyes shut, squeezes tight.

“Can't we skip?” she whines, childlike and not like the working professional she should be.

“The children will wonder where you are,” Lune chides, but Sciel can hear the smile in her voice, the twinkle of sunshine. “And I doubt Clea would be very excited about having to take over with no warning.”

Sciel groans, tossing an arm around Lune's waist and burying her face in the crook of her new lover’s neck.

“No offense, ma chérie,” she grumbles her words against Lune’s unfathomably soft skin, “but I don't really want to hear about Clea right now.”

It takes a bit more coaxing, but eventually, Lune manages to haul her out of bed, all but shoving a laughing Sciel towards her own bathroom in an effort to get her to wash and put on real clothes while Lune goes to the kitchen and turns on the stove.

When Sciel finally emerges, hair still damp, she finds Lune barefoot at the stove, humming that same melody Sciel had heard on the balcony last night. The sunlight catches in the gold lines of her tattoos, and for a moment, Sciel just... stands there, memorizing it.

And as if she's being called by some unseen force, Sciel can’t help but smile as she crosses the room, slipping her arms around Lune’s waist from behind. Maybe it was too early for the rest of the world, but for her, right now, it was already a perfect day.

///

By the time Sciel steps through the school gates that morning, she’s convinced the city is conspiring to keep her in a good mood. The air is crisp but not cold, the sky bright and clean, and every face she passes seems to smile back. She still feels the lingering warmth of Lune’s hands on hers when she’d passed over coffee—so much so that she almost misses the amused look Clea is giving her from the front steps.

“You’re glowing,” Clea remarks without preamble, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe. Her tone is dry, but the faint curve of her mouth betrays her.

Sciel blinks, startled. “I—uh—thank you?”

Clea clicks her tongue. “About time.”

Sciel decides not to ask what she means, brushing past with an embarrassed little huff. She busies herself with unlocking her classroom, letting the morning’s routine pull her forward—greeting students, sorting supplies, settling everyone into their lessons. The hours pass in an easy rhythm, her good mood cushioning the occasional burst of noise or scuffle over pencils.

By the time recess rolls around, Sciel is content, leaning against the doorway to watch the children tumble into the yard. The shouts and laughter are a welcome kind of chaos, filling the air with life. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Clea again—standing apart from the other teachers, gaze distant, fixed somewhere beyond the schoolyard fence.

Sciel steps down into the yard, crossing toward her. “You look like you’re a million miles away,” she calls over the din.

Clea’s eyes flick toward her. “Closer than you think.” She nods toward the empty stretch of grass near the wall. “Walk with me?”

Sciel falls into step beside her, the shouts and laughter of the children dimming as they put distance between themselves and the main yard. The air is clearer here, the smell of sun-warmed grass mixing with the faint tang of the sea. For a few moments, they walk in companionable silence, the kind where you can almost hear the weight of what’s unsaid.

When Clea finally speaks, her voice is quieter—not hesitant, but as if she’s peeling back a layer she doesn’t often let others see.

“My sister loved books,” Clea tells her. “And that was strange and wrong, because we aren't Writers—we’re a family of the most powerful Painters. At least, that's how our mother saw her. But regardless, Alicia wasn't here with us. She didn't play with Verso and I. She never entered this Canvas, and she never saw this world. Neither did mother, nor father. And yet, all three of them found their way here one way or another, when Verso died.”

There’s a pause where her eyes flit toward Sciel again, studying her expression, the ease in her step. “I used to envy that—how they could just disappear into something, even if it was a mere lie or distraction. For a moment this morning, I thought you’d done the same. But now…” She shakes her head faintly. “You look like someone who’s finally stopped hiding from herself.”

Sciel glances down, caught off-guard, but Clea is already moving on.

“While Alicia and Aline sought to hide themselves in his memories forever, I avoided this place.” She runs a hand across the tips of the iron fence, eyes flickering from the empty Monolith in the distance, to the children playing in the schoolyard, to back to Sciel. “I was harsh on Alicia, because making her feel guilty was easier than confronting my own feelings of helplessness. And I avoided Verso’s Canvas because I knew the moment I set foot here again, in our childhood playground, my heart would cave. That it would be harder for me to see it destroyed.”

“I didn't know you held such feelings for our world.” Sciel pauses. “Esquie would mention your name sometimes. That you used to go on adventures a long time ago with François. But… one day you left, and you never came back.”

Clea stares at her hands, picking at some nonexistent piece of lint. “It was easier to be busy in the outside world. Easier to distract myself if my intention to protect my family at least held truth.”

“Because you knew you’d care too much about this world otherwise.”

“I painted half of it, did you know? Not just François.” At Sciel’s stunned silence, Clea smiles sardonically, gesturing vaguely to the Continent across the sea. “You didn't think that piano prodigy of a boy would be able to paint all of that by himself, did you?”

“So your brother loved music,” Sciel muses, “and your sister loved books.”

“Between the three of us, I was the only one who truly loved painting.” Wistfully, Clea sighs. “But Verso, at the very least, had the talent and wild imagination for it. Alicia, on the other hand… Well, regardless, there's no telling what'll happen in her current state now.”

Sciel’s heart sinks. “Does she hate her world that much?”

“Yes, but you would, too, if you were her,” Clea says bluntly. She closes her eyes as an ocean breeze dances past. “Scarred, mute, and missing an eye… That's why I couldn't blame her for taking shelter here.”

“Do you still not care whether she stays or leaves?”

“I will accept whatever path she chooses,” Clea says slowly, “but I think we all know that there's only one path forward that leads her to healing.”

She has to let him go.

“I already told you,” Sciel murmurs. “but we've been noticing it with greater frequency now—Lune and I. How Maelle’s been coughing more. How the fatigue sets in quicker.”

Clea hums, a low note of consideration. “The Canvas’s effect on her body aside, living in a lie tends to do that to you.”

“Don't I know it.” Upon receiving Clea’s curious stare, Sciel shrugs helplessly. “These past few months, ever since Pierre, my… former husband—” She nearly chokes over the words. “When he was brought back, I tried convincing myself time and time again that nothing had changed. That we could pick up where we'd left off before his accident. But that wasn't the case.

“Somewhere along the way,” Sciel draws in a deep breath, “I’d forgotten that coming out on the other side of grief results in growth. My relationship with Pierre… It could never be the exact same, no matter how much I wanted it to. Because I had changed. And it was from that growth that I gained the courage to join Expedition 33 to begin with.”

The wind off the ocean catches in Sciel’s hair, and for a moment they just stand there, listening to the shouts of the children echoing across the yard. Clea doesn’t speak right away, and Sciel wonders if she’s said too much—until her voice cuts softly through the noise.

Clea’s words come hushed, just quiet enough for Sciel’s astute ears to pick up on.

“You aren't the lie.”

Sciel blinks. “I'm sorry?”

“The lie Alicia resides in. It was never about you, or your friends.” Clea sighs, running a hand through her hair. “You’re all so startlingly life-like, and… This means nothing to you, but I'm truly sorry that you were all caught up in it. And even more sorry about my role in all of the loss and bloodshed.”

The Nevrons. The repainted Clea. Expedition Zero.

“You were doing what you thought was right,” Sciel says quietly, and she's reminded of all the things she would've done for even a single night more with Pierre.

Then she thinks of Lune—of the way she had stood her ground against a world that would rather paint over its flaws, of the stubborn warmth in her smile, of how she’d taken Sciel’s hand as if to say this is real, we’re real. Clea’s apology sits heavy between them, but Sciel finds herself shaking her head.

“You’re not the only one who’s tried to protect someone by holding onto the wrong thing,” she says. “But… I think I’m learning there’s a difference between keeping someone safe and letting them stay still.”

And Clea nods once, but she doesn’t speak.

The sounds of recess swell between them—the thud of running feet, the bright shouts of a game in progress.

Across the schoolyard, a child trips and falls onto the sand. It hurts his knees, and he sniffles as other feet patter over. Encouraging hands grab at his shoulders and haul him to his feet, a reassuring smile shot his way.

He puts one foot in front of the other and begins to run again.

///

“What do you think it is?” Sciel whispers late that night, Lune cradled in her arms and tucked against the curve of her body. Their legs tangle together, naked bodies molded seamlessly. Silently, Sciel wonders where she ends and Lune begins. “The lie that Clea talked about.”

“The lie that Maelle resides in?” Lune drums her fingers against the bare skin of Sciel’s ribcage, drawing out a shudder as Sciel instinctively presses a kiss to Lune’s temple.

“Yeah.”

“Hm.”

Lune falls quiet for a moment, considering the question seriously. Sciel loves her endlessly for it—only Lune would be open to philosophical musings as some form of pillow talk.

And when Lune opens her mouth again, it's to pose a question—

“It really isn't about how real we are, is it? That's a question for us to tackle if we so please, yes, but we can talk about Maelle without having to touch on that just fine.”

Sciel remains silent, nuzzles her nose against the soft skin of Lune's tattooed cheek in response.

“I think her lie,” Lune continues slowly, “was—and continues to be—the belief that if she stays here, in our Lumière—”

“That the problems she left behind in her world will vanish,” Sciel finishes. “That she can just pretend that they don't exist.”

“Our Verso is not her Verso,” Lune whispers. “Her brother died, Sciel. Her real brother.”

Heaving a breath, Sciel pulls Lune in closer.

“In a world where death cannot be undone, at that.”

Lune nods. “But if she leaves the painting—”

Sciel sighs, closing her eyes. “Let's save that thought for tomorrow.”

And so Lune hums, a low, content sound, and presses a kiss just below Sciel's collarbone.

“Tomorrow, then.” Her fingers curl against Sciel's side, grounding her in the now. “We still have tonight.”

Chapter Text

There are a million ways you could ruin a morning.

Yet on this particular morning, Sciel can't find a single one of them.

The streets are washed clean from last night’s rain, sunlight pooling golden over cobblestones. The city hums with that particular kind of contented energy where everyone you pass seems to carry a smile, as if the air itself has conspired to make the day gentle.

It’s the kind of morning Sciel wishes she could bottle.

It’s also the kind of morning where, for once, she isn’t rushing.

Because it’s a teacher workshop day, and Sciel finds herself blissfully exempt—her children (and Clea’s) had tested exceptionally well on the last school-wide exam, earning them the day off while their coworkers dragged their feet back to the schoolhouse to chip away at their curriculum.

It meant a free morning, an unhurried breakfast, and the rare luxury of watching Lune get ready without the rush of separate schedules pulling them apart. Sciel had been content to linger at the apartment, maybe read or nap—until she spotted the neatly bound stack of notes sitting forgotten on the kitchen table.

Lune’s transcribed notes. The ones she’d spent the past few weeks poring over, eyes tired and fingers cramped from hours of transcription. And if they'd been left out in such an obvious place, then it meant that Lune had intended to bring them with her.

Sciel had stared at them for all of three seconds before deciding: if Lune was going to forget them, she’d just have to show up in person and hand-deliver them. A good deed, sure… but also an excuse to see her in the middle of her element.

Which is how Sciel ends up leaning against the doorway of the Expedition Academy’s training hall, watching from a short distance as Lune tears through her bag with mounting frustration.

She lets it go for thirty seconds—just long enough to be entertained—before stepping forward, unable to keep the grin off her face. She waves the notes through the air like a prize.

“Forgetting something?”

Lune’s gaze snaps towards her, and Sciel’s heart swells as she watches the prior frustration melt away in an instant—surprise flickers in brown eyes before giving way to sheer elation, Lune appearing to physically brighten at the sight of her.

“Sciel!”

It's not often that Lune opts to physically run—grass is green, water is wet, no one can glide as well as Lune—but this time, Sciel laughs as Lune actually bounds over to her, skidding to a halt just in time to avoid crashing.

Behind her, Gustave’s eyes are wide, and it quickly becomes apparent that the other expeditioners are equally shocked.

And what a sight they must be, Sciel realizes in the moment, standing in front of each other with equally large, equally stupidly grins on their faces. In the middle of the very building Sciel had inadvertently been dodging the past few months, no less.

Now, standing back in the familiar training hall, Sciel wonders how she could've ever avoided this place—her second home, where she had built up who she was.

“Hey,” Sciel eventually says, unable to stop smiling.

“Hey,” Lune breathes, ecstatic just the same.

“You forgot the notes you worked so hard to transcribe back at home.”

“I did.” Lune quirks an eyebrow, trying to look even a bit more serious. “Believe it or not, I was a bit preoccupied this morning. Whose fault was that, again?”

“Oh, who knows!”

If she closes her eyes, Sciel can still remember the sensation of dragging her fingers through soaking raven hair, the chill of tiles against her back as she'd been pressed against the wall, the steam clinging to their bodies even when they'd stumbled out. Accosting Lune in the shower this morning hadn't exactly been the original plan, but Sciel had enjoyed herself thoroughly, and as the saying goes, when life gives you lemons—

Lune crosses her arms, adoring and fond.

“Alright, you demon. Deny all accountability.”

“Hey, I’ve got the transcriptions right here!” Sciel bounces on the balls of her feet eagerly, inching slightly closer. “Surely that deserves something, right?”

She's well aware of all the eyes trained on them—she just can't find it in herself to care anymore. So what if she seeks Lune’s praise like a sunflower seeks the sun? So what if there are still countless questions to be answered?

She's in love, sue her.

“Hmm.” Lune studies her for a long, debating moment.

Settling down, Sciel tilts her head in confusion. “Something wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

And before Sciel can ask what she means, Lune leans in.

Quick, sure, like she’s just decided—no, remembered—that this is exactly what she wants to do. Her hands are warm where they catch Sciel’s elbow, grounding her in place just as soft lips brush her cheek. 

There’s a deliberateness to it, the press of a moment meant to linger—Sciel swears she feels it all the way to her spine, the world suspended in place for just this moment.

And when Lune finally pulls back, the training hall has gone… quiet. Too quiet. A weighty, collective stillness hangs in the air, broken only by the faint echo of boots on polished floor somewhere in the back. 

Dozens of faces are turned their way—wide-eyed, frozen mid-gesture, as if a room full of people just walked in on a private scene. Somewhere off to the left, a practice staff clatters to the floor. Elsewhere, another onlooker lets out a belated gasp, earning a quick elbow from their neighbor.

Even Gustave’s eyebrows have shot up into the realm of what the hell just happened?

For half a heartbeat, Sciel just stands there, blinking—processing the fact that yes, Lune just kissed her, and yes, it was in front of everyone. But then it blooms in her chest all at once—heat, joy, something almost feral—and she can’t stop the slow, dumb, utterly unrepentant grin that takes over her face.

“Well,” Lune says lightly, as if she hasn’t just detonated something in the middle of the training hall. “Now you’ve been properly thanked.”

“Is this how you usually thank people?” Sciel is still grinning like a fool when she offers the notes over, fingers brushing deliberately against Lune’s. “A girl could get used to this.”

///

Sophie’s kitchen smells like sugar and strong coffee, the kind of combination that has tempted Sciel many times into staying too long. A plate of still-warm pastries sits in the middle of the table, steam curling faintly in the morning light streaming through the curtains. It’s quieter here than any café, the only sounds the clink of spoons against mugs and the occasional muffled laugh.

Lune’s notebook has found its way onto the table beside her cup, half-filled with chord progressions and scrawls of script. Sciel sits close enough that she can nudge it out of the splash zone when Sophie reaches for the cream. Across from them, Emma stirs her tea with slow, even circles; Sophie herself has already claimed the seat with the best view of everyone, leaning back like a general surveying her troops.

Their conversation is normal for a while—weather, old academy gossip, the fact that Sophie’s neighbor still hasn’t fixed the loose shutter on their upstairs window—until Sophie finally leans forward, eyes glinting with something more pointed.

“Spill,” she says at last, stabbing her fork into her scone for emphasis.

Lune nearly spits out her coffee.

“So this is why we're meeting at your place and not a café,” Sciel remarks in lieu of an answer, absently pushing Lune’s notebook away such that its pages don't accidentally get sullied. Lune shoots her a grateful look, knocks their knees together under the table.

“Well,” Sophie says dryly, crossing her arms, “I've known you for years, my dear Sciel. We've had enough sleepover conversations for me to know what you can get up to when—”

Emma barks out a laugh, hiding her expression behind her mug.

“We’re not talking about that,” Sciel says quickly right as her new girlfriend, having schooled her expression back to that of neutrality, decides that this is the perfect time to finally speak up.

“She’s a demon,” Lune remarks, then pulls her notebook back to scribble something down in the margins.

“Are you complaining?” Sciel shoots back, suddenly emboldened.

She's not discreet, hasn't tried to be in a while—not since her initial relationship with Pierre, and certainly not when she’d received and offered non-string propositions afterwards. It was just another way she had changed, adapted. But this connection with Lune isn't something flimsy, nor is it a surface-level set-up. They'd never talked about how open they would be, and a cheek kiss in public isn't exactly the same as hinting at their sex lives with friends.

Which is why she'd initially tried to give Lune an out, just in case she'd wanted to keep things more private.

But now, in the present, Lune simply flashes her a knowing smirk that has the blood rushing to Sciel’s ears.

“Never.”

Beneath the table, Lune’s hand slips within her own, and Sciel feels her fingers get squeezed. The unspoken message is clear: You don't have to hold back. Not on my account.

Sciel squeezes back. You sure?

They're our friends. I can handle much worse than this.

It takes every ounce of self-control in Sciel’s body not to kiss her right there—though then again, she supposes that Lune probably wouldn't mind either way. Regardless, Sciel reins herself in, opts to roll her eyes playfully and direct her attention back to Sophie.

“Well, you heard her. Nothing you don't already know,” she jokes. “My reputation precedes me.”

“But it's serious, isn't it?” Sophie looks between her two friends. “This isn't just something out of convenience.”

“What was it Maelle said?” Flipping her notebook closed yet again, Lune tosses down her pencil and leans back in her seat, pretending to think. “‘Nothing says platonic like sleeping a hallway apart’—”

“Stop!” Sciel gasps, slapping her shoulder. “You heard that?!”

“Maelle wasn't exactly quiet.” Lune’s low chuckle stirs something in Sciel’s stomach. “And I’m glad I caught it—It's not often I get to see you squirm, Sciel.”

It's actually humiliating, how even the mere sound of her name sends a type of lightning racing up her veins.

“Still,” Sciel groans. “How embarrassing!”

“I thought it was cute,” Lune offers.

“That doesn't count—you should always think I'm cute.”

Sophie’s smile grows wider, having fallen silent at the start of their banter.

“Don't tell me this is what it's like watching Gustave and I.”

“Oh, the two of you are sickening,” Sciel tells her. “Sickeningly sweet.”

“Gustave,” Lune emphasizes pointedly, “is an exceedingly lucky man.”

Sophie hums. “He told me about the stunt you pulled yesterday morning. I didn't know you had it in you, Lune.”

Emma, who’d been quietly stirring her drink this whole time, glances between them with a small smile. “You know, some people wait until after they’ve left a room to cause a scandal.”

“That's boring,” Lune replies, bumping her shoulder against Sciel’s. “Besides, I do as I please.”

Sophie rolls her eyes in mock exasperation, but there’s an amused curve to her mouth. “And clearly with no shortage of witnesses.”

She takes another sip of coffee, then glances toward Emma with a curious look. “Speaking of witnesses… has anything happened since Sol tried cornering you last week?”

Emma snorts into her drink, setting it down with a soft clink. “If you mean has he made another attempt, no. And if you mean in general…” She tilts her head, considering, then shrugs. “Truthfully, I’m not interested in men these days. Haven’t been for a while, if I’m honest.”

Sophie’s brows shoot up. “Oh?”

Impressed, Sciel can't help but ask. “Not even a little?”

Emma sets her spoon down and folds her hands around her cup, her voice steady. “Some of the older Councilors think I should be with Sol. They’ve been dropping hints—subtle ones, not-so-subtle ones. ‘It would be good for the future of Lumière,’ ‘You’d balance each other,’ ‘You should enjoy your youth while you can.’” Her mouth twists faintly. “What they really mean is they want to steer the city’s direction by steering mine.” She rolls her eyes. “Didn't get enough time at the helm during their own years as Chief Councilor, I suppose.”

Lune clicks her tongue in disapproval. “And you’re not having it.”

“I’ve spent enough of my life carrying the weight of decisions other people didn’t want to make—or couldn’t face making themselves,” Emma says plainly. “And I’ve gone along with too many choices I never truly agreed to, because it was easier than fighting them. I won’t do that again. They can try to tell me what's ‘right’ or what's not all they want, but I won’t build a life on a foundation I didn’t choose.”

Something in that makes Sciel pause, her fingers curling around her mug.

“That’s a harder decision to make than it sounds,” Sciel says quietly.

Emma’s gaze flicks to hers. “Of course it is. But it’s better than pretending.”

Then she pauses.

“No offense to your brother,” Emma adds belatedly, flashing an apologetic smile at Lune. “It worked out years ago, but…”

Lune only shrugs. “A good brother is different from a good lover. People can change. I think we're all testament to that.” Then she smiles, wry. “You wouldn't have been the worst sister-in-law, though. A shame I’ll be missing out.”

///

The week crawls by, and Maelle eventually visits her at the end of one school day, Verso and Lune in tow.

Thankfully, the awed chatter of the students at the sight of Lumière’s silver-haired savior is enough of a warning, and Sciel shoves a startled Clea off to hide in the staff kitchen before Maelle (or Verso, for that matter) can get anywhere near their shared classroom.

Lune, wisely, says nothing about the lack of her teaching assistant when Maelle bursts through the threshold to throw herself into a hug, of which Sciel reciprocates with a light laugh.

“Sciel!” Maelle’s gaze flickers across the now vacant desks, then to the rowdy children outside in the yard, playing before heading home. “I’ve never attended a school like this before—I was home schooled in the world outside the Canvas as well. So… this is where you work.”

“It is, indeed,” Sciel says, smiling fondly, giving the teenager a squeeze. “Now, what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

Verso, standing in the doorway and looking hilariously out of place, casts Sciel a pleading look.

“The rascal wants to practice Painting. As in, real creation,” he explains gruffly, an exasperated but unspoken yeah, I know flickering in his eyes at the panic he must see on Sciel’s face. “At the very least, she decided to actually tell me this time, but I informed her that she couldn't practice unless Lune was also present.”

“And I,” Lune drawls with a wave of her hand, “told her that I wouldn't sign off on this unless you were there.”

Sciel's stomach twists, though she forces her smile to hold. Of course Maelle had come here with more than a visit in mind-of course this was where the day would end.

She meets Lune’s knowing gaze. At the very least, she's thankful for the consideration—Lune wouldn't let this go on without her knowledge.

And so she heaves a deep breath, tucks a strand of silver hair behind Maelle’s ear, and then squeezes her shoulder.

“Let's go, then.”

The clearing Verso steers them to is quiet in a way the city never is—no muffled market chatter, no clanging of tools from the docks—just the rustle of leaves and the slow drift of petals.

Maelle stands in the center, sleeves pushed back, fingers flexing at her sides like she’s testing her reach. There’s no canvas, no brush—just the still air in front of her and whatever chroma she intends to pull from it.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Sciel asks, keeping her tone casual, though her weight has shifted like she’s ready to step in.

Maelle glances over her shoulder, smiling as if the question’s rhetorical. “If I don’t try, what’s the point?”

Sciel exchanges a glance with Lune, who’s watching with the same wariness but says nothing.

Verso, standing just behind his not-quite-sister, remains silent—though the slight forward lean of his posture makes it clear he’s ready to move.

Maelle faces the empty air again. “Clea told me that François was one of her first creations. A turtle made of stone with no legs.” Her lips curve faintly, fond. “Said it was easier to start with something that couldn't run away. I don't think that's entirely necessary, but the principle of starting with the basics should be the same, so…”

Her hands lift, sketching in the air. The space between her fingers warps—colors bleeding in, shapes layering over nothing until something is there: slate-gray skin, a mossy crown, bulbous golden eyes. A frog, squat and endearing, breath misting faintly in the cool morning air.

It lets out a single, low ribbit.

And for a moment, it’s perfect.

But then Maelle’s breath catches—sharp, like she’s missed a step and her heart is scrambling to catch up. Color drains from the frog in streaks, breaking apart into pale petals that swirl and scatter on the wind.

She exhales in a ragged burst. Her knees buckle.

Verso is there before she can hit the ground, bracing her with an arm around her back. “Easy—easy, I’ve got you.”

Maelle tries to speak but only manages a shallow gasp. Her skin is ashen, a sheen of sweat clinging to her temples, and her pulse beats frantically under Verso’s fingers.

Lune steps in, sweeping away the last threads of dissolving color with a sharp flick.

“That’s enough.” Her voice is low, clipped.

Sciel doesn’t move. Her jaw is tight, nails biting into her palms. Worry at the attempt is there, yes—but beneath it, a hotter, sharper thing: the knowledge that every Painting is taking much, much more out of Maelle than she can afford to give.

And then there's the question she doesn’t dare ask—How many more times can Maelle keep trying before she can’t stand back up?

She sinks to her knees in front of the heaving girl—her darling Maelle, her savior, her undoing.

“We’re getting you to a doctor.” Her tone final, Sciel dares not leave any room for arguments. “Today.”

“Tomorrow,” Maelle tries to argue.

“Today, Maelle,” Sciel all but begs, hands on the silver-haired Dessendre’s shoulders. “It hurts me, seeing you like this.” 

Maelle's bottom lip wavers. “Sciel, I—”

“For me, Maelle?” she whispers.

And Maelle nods, shaky but more willing.

“Okay.” A deep breath. “Okay. For you, Sciel.”

And then Lune's there, one hand on Sciel’s back while the other rubs circles into Maelle's shoulder.

“For what it's worth,” Lune says, gentler and soothing—she’s been trying, Sciel realizes, to find other ways to make Maelle understand, “it was a wonderful frog, and that ribbit was groundbreaking.”

It garners a weak laugh from Maelle, even as Verso moves to hoist her onto his back.

“You think so?”

“I do.” Lune takes her hand—so much smaller than her own—and squeezes it. “You'll be a wonderful Painter someday Maelle, I know it. But right now, no amount of magic chroma frogs are worth the cost of your health, alright? So let's try to keep the Painting to a minimum until we can get to the bottom of this.”

Maelle only nods again, eyes slipping shut.

“S’okay, Lune,” are the teenager’s final words before succumbing to the exhaustion, her breathing evening out as she clutches Verso’s shoulders.

And the immortal man sighs, then smiles wearily at his two female companions.

“To the doctor?” he says.

Sciel nods. “Lead the way.”

///

It's always the damn harbour with the two of them, isn't it?

Sciel loves and hates it—it's a familiar sentiment, she finds, every time she discusses anything with Verso. And she figures it's symbolic or something. The harbour had been where the Gommage took place every year. Once upon a time, the very sight of water would send a wave of nausea through her body, and she'd hated the harbour for that, too. But now, there's some strange sense of comfort as well—the lapping of waves that grounds her to reality, the “Papa, Va t’en!” on the Monolith to remind her of their victory, the company she's grown used to from Verso’s frequent appearances.

She loves and hates it. The blatant honesty every time they sit here.

“There's no health professional in the entire world that can fix her, is there?”

Verso shakes his head, and Sciel doesn't know why she bothered asking.

She misses Lune terribly. They'd brought a sleeping Maelle home having called for a trusted doctor, and the kind older woman had asked for Lune to stay—following Expedition 33’s success, Sciel’s lover had gained a sizeable amount of fame amongst Lumière’s medical circles for her impressive skill in healing spells. Lune could help ease Maelle's muscle pain, as it turned out. And so while Sciel and Verso had been sent out to prevent crowding in Maelle’s quarters, Lune remained behind at the young Dessendre’s bedside, promising to find Sciel as soon as she could later.

“Maelle can be helped, as Lune is assisting with now,” Verso says, staring down at the water. Down below, the tide rushes higher as the sun begins to set below the horizon. “But there is no preventing this kind of deterioration completely. The Canvas is not rational, it cannot be reasoned with. It wears and tears at the soul like a sandstorm, both inside this world and out, until there is nothing left. First the body, then her mind. First when she sleeps, next when she wakes.”

Sciel wonders when the ache in her chest will finally ease.

Lune. I miss you.

“Why is this world so unkind?” she asks instead.

Verso chuckles. “It used to be kinder. Simpler.”

“I suppose it was created by a child, after all.” Innocence, so easily corrupted. And now the land is stained by grief.

“It's a double-edged sword.” Verso tips his head back, looks up at the darkening sky. “Sometimes, during the month I was out on my own, I would look at the sky and wonder if Lune could ever truly be satisfied here, in this world.”

Sciel looks at him sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing about you,” Verso says quickly, holding his hands up helplessly. Sighs. “I mean that this world has boundaries. Concrete ones. As you said, it was created by a child. And I know you have no frame of reference, but it's horribly, horribly small. Especially compared to the grandness of the world beyond this Canvas, where there's always something new to be discovered.”

Ah.

“You think the world will become small to her, right?” Sciel thinks hard about it—how they'd sailed all over the map, but eventually, even Esquie would force them to turn back around. Had those been those boundaries? “Eventually, she'll grow restless.”

“And don't forget—You will, too.” Verso chuckles, elbowing her. “It’s been a while since you've been satisfied by your old mundane life.”

Sciel breathes in. “You're right.”

“You'll always be happy together, there's no doubt about that.”

“But we'll always be wishing for something more.”

“Maelle once said that she would paint the outside world for Lune. A Painting inside a Painting.” Verso jaw tightens. “I don't think that's a good idea anymore.”

“It's not,” Sciel agrees. Then she pauses, slows down. “You…” Her brow furrows, and she remembers that final battle—the real one. Maelle on one side, Verso on the other. “You didn't think any of this was a good idea, did you?”

Verso doesn't meet her gaze.

“It's complicated.”

“You knew that this would happen—you saw it when Renoir showed us Aline.” Sciel drops her head to her hands, wishing that this could all just go away. “When we all saw what was happening to Aline. And yet… And yet—”

“You wanted to live,” Verso murmurs. “I can't fault you for that. You, and Lune, from the day you started preparing for Expedition 33, you two had only done everything right. You killed one Paintress and allied yourself with another. You defeated Renoir for the people you loved. How could you reach the end and then decide it was all for nothing?”

“How can that be, indeed?” Sciel whispers.

They had known what they wanted—herself, Lune, and Maelle.

But Verso had known what he hadn't wanted.

I don't want this life. I don't want this life.

“I know it means nothing now,” Verso says quietly, “but I'm sorry. Not for the stance I took, I still stand by that. But I'm sorry that you were stuck in that cycle—in that whirlwind of grief that had nothing to do with you.”

“Funny,” Sciel mumbles, thinking back to her conversation with Clea. I'm truly sorry that you were all caught up in it. “Someone said something similar to me recently.”

“And I'm sorry that you're still stuck, that it isn't over despite Aline and Renoir no longer being in the Canvas.”

And not for the first time, Sciel finds herself at an impasse. What should she say to that? Somehow, I'm sorry you're still alive doesn't quite cut it. Neither does I'm sorry you're still stuck here because your not-quite-sister can't seem to let you go.

“It's hard,” she eventually says. “You're my friend. I want what's best for you. But the thought of you gone…”

“Yeah.” Verso chuckles. “I know. I watched my sisters beg for a way out, too. I lashed out at Maelle when she unpainted Alicia. I told her I wasn't ready to say goodbye.”

“Were you angry when you woke back up?” Were you angry that Maelle refused to let you leave?

“Of course I was.” Verso had disappeared the first month into the restoration. Just straight up vanished into the wilderness with Monoco and Esquie, the others only reassured by Maelle’s Paintress powers that he was still alive. “And a part of me still is—I don't think that'll ever go away. Not after being alive for so long. But then, the Dessendres were not ready when their Verso died, either. I don't think that there is ever a ‘ready’ when it comes to witnessing death. I'm proof that you can live for over a century, witness countless lives fall, and still not be prepared.”

I don't want this life, he had said, broken on that battered battlefield at Maelle’s feet. I don't want this life.

“Perhaps they were not ready,” Sciel says quietly, and it feels almost like blasphemy but she knows a similar story, too. Her horrible grief from Pierre, the numerous losses she faced. The horrible way she dealt with it. “Maybe the original Verso’s death blindsided them all. But that doesn't mean their response was right.”

“It certainly wasn't the healthiest." Verso chuckles, running an exhausted hand through his hair.

Reality is, Aline and Maelle perpetuate the same cycle.

“But… at the same time.” Sciel presses her hands together, thinking of Maelle gasping for air in that clearing. It's a sickening type of irony. “I wouldn't exist were it not for Aline’s grief. For Maelle’s grief.”

“You wouldn't,” Verso agrees. “Lune wouldn't exist, either. Or Gustave. Or Sophie. Or Emma. Countless good people wouldn't exist were it not for the Dessendres’s horrible, horrible ways of dealing with grief.”

“How fucked up is that?”

“Pretty fucked up,” Verso replies, and it's so absurd that they both break into laughter—the kind that results in Sciel crying onto Verso’s shoulder, and Verso sniffling back tears of his own.

And when Lune finds them later with Monoco in tow, both deep into one of Verso’s best bottles of wine, Lune throws Verso at Monoco, hauls Sciel into her own arms, and promptly threatens to set the both of them on fire if they ever try drinking alone by the harbour again.

///

(Sciel isn't usually the rambly type of drunk.

A tad bolder and more freely expressive, typically, but perhaps there's something about the accompanying sadness that has her lips even looser than usual.

Lune helps her through it, ushering her into their home with gentle murmurs and grounding touches. All the while, as she's being lowered into a warm bath with Lune climbing in behind, Sciel tells her about it all—Verso’s exhaustion, the Dessendre family’s spiral of grief, Maelle’s deterioration.

“It’s so fucked up,” Sciel mumbles as Lune’s lathering her hair with shampoo. “Why is it so fucked up, Lune?”

“I don't know,” Lune tells her honestly, pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder with a weary smile. “I don't know. I wish I knew, so I could ease your heart.”

“You already ease my heart,” Sciel says, shifting in place to look Lune in the eyes with the utmost seriousness. “Even being here with you right now makes me feel all sorts of better. I missed you so much, earlier.”

“We were just apart for a few hours,” Lune chides, but she’s silenced by Sciel’s lips and despite everything, Lune laughs into the kiss.

“You could be across the room and I'd miss you,” Sciel says when they break apart, still very serious.

“How are you still charming even while you're drunk?” She begins to wash the shampoo out.

“You always find me charming.”

“You're right. Want to know something else?”

Sciel nods. “I want to know everything about you, Lune.”

Maybe my heart will actually burst.

“I search for you unknowingly every time I enter a room,” Lune tells her, because it's true and she has made a vow to herself to only ever tell Sciel truths. “Even when it goes against all logic. Even when I know you're elsewhere.”

And finally, finally— Sciel smiles.

It's everything, absolutely everything. Lune’s heart swells with something so disastrously close to serendipity, and the moment Sciel asks to be carried to bed, Lune sweeps her into her arms and peppers her face with kisses.

Later, when they've both managed to get into their sleep clothes, Sciel slips under the covers and whines when Lune takes too long turning all the lights off. It's only when Lune finally joins her between the sheets that Sciel finally settles down, drawn into Lune’s arms; magnetic.

“You were cute earlier,” Sciel mumbles, curling into her shoulder. “When you were comforting Maelle about her frog.”

“You think so?” Lune chuckles, tucking Sciel in closer, wrapping her arm around the other woman's midriff. “It really was a nice frog—probably the nicest frog I've ever seen.”

Just not worth the cost of knocking the wind out of Maelle. Lune doesn't need any further observation to determine that.

“Mmhm. You've mellowed out since the expedition, Lune.” Sciel yawns. “You've always been…” In her exhaustion, she seems to struggle to find the word. “You've always been sturdy. Like an anchor—my anchor. Always keeping me on the path forward. But now you're really warm too. More like a harbour. My personal harbour. I’m not afraid of water anymore…”

Her words fade into a drowsy hum, but the sentiment lingers, curling in the space between them. Lune exhales softly, resting her chin against Sciel’s hair.

“And who do you think I learned all of this from, silly?” She plants a kiss to Sciel's temple, closing her eyes. Sciel won't remember most of this in the morning, Lune is well aware. Still, it's worth reminding—always worth reminding. “You're safe here, Sciel. No matter what happens, we've always been better together.”)

///

She's not sure what draws her awake before morning has even arrived.

The bedroom is dim, washed in the faintest grey-blue light, and Lune is still curled close against her, steady in sleep. For one long moment, Sciel simply listens to the rhythm of her breathing, tempted to let herself drift back down with it. But there’s a prickle in her chest—a restlessness she can’t name.

When she shifts, Lune stirs faintly, lashes fluttering. Sciel leans in quickly, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“Shhh. Only a moment,” she whispers, and Lune relaxes again with a small sigh.

Sciel eases herself from the sheets, padding barefoot across the floor. The air grows cooler as she climbs the narrow steps to the rooftop hatch, and when she pushes it open, the first brush of dawn greets her—brisk, salt-tinged, alive. She draws it into her lungs like a cleansing breath, stepping out into the pale light.

Then, she blinks, eyes widening.

“Esquie!” Sciel exclaims in surprise, shocked to see their companion’s round frame against the lightening dawn sky.

“Bonjour, mon ami!”

A brief jog across the rooftop is all it takes for Sciel to launch herself into a giant, cushy hug, laughing.

“What are you doing here?” she asks when she finally draws back, grinning.

“I felt your unease,” Esquie tells her, earnest as always. He pats the rooftop edge beside him, and Sciel is quick to take a seat, leaning into his large comforting hand as it moves around her. “You were restless, so I came!”

“Oh, Esquie…”

“What's wrong, my friend?”

“I…I suppose I've been having all these thoughts recently,” Sciel confides, shifting to cross her legs as her shoulder slump. “About Maelle, and about our world—about the Canvas. About what should be done about it. But I've also been wondering what the point of it all is. Last night, I spoke to Verso and… it just hit me, how insignificant I am in it all.”

“Insignificant?” Esquie repeats, as if he's never even thought of the word. “You, Sciel?”

“I'm not one of the Painters, Esquie. Not like Maelle or Clea.” Sciel smiles ruefully. “I'm not an immortal like Verso. Hell, I'm not even a scholar like Lune or Gustave. I'm just… a bunch of ink and chroma turned sentient, mercifully spared by those who could spare me.”

“Is there something wrong with ink and chroma?” Esquie asks, his masked head swiveling in earnest. “I, too, am just ink and chroma.”

“You're also one of the most powerful creatures this world has to offer,” Sciel says, chuckling. Then she heaves out a heavy sigh, blowing stray strands of hair out of her face. “I'm not like that at all. Yet here I am, thinking about the fate of the Canvas as if I have any right to question its destiny.”

“But, you do,” Esquie insists.

“Am I not supposed to just sit back, grateful to still be alive?”

“You are Maelle’s friend. Is that not enough reason to think?”

“I don't know.” Sciel opens and closes her hands.

“You are also Verso’s friend,” Esquie reminds her. “And you have become Clea’s friend.”

Sciel startles. “You know about her?”

“I will always recognize my old friend Clea!” Esquie says proudly. “But she has been hiding, so I have not told anyone aaaaanything.”

“Not even François?”

“Not even François!”

“Oh, good,” Sciel says, mentally wiping away a bead of sweat. That's a relief, at least. “We keep having these conversations, Clea and I.” She chuckles. “Conversations about things far beyond my pay grade as a teacher.”

“But not beyond your pay grade as a friend,” Esquie reminds her again.

Sciel finally allows herself to smile. “If you really think so.”

“A pebble dreams no less than a boulder,” he tells her very seriously.

“You can't help but speak in riddles and metaphors, can you?”

“How so?”

“Never mind.” Chuckling, Sciel just shakes her head. “I just wish I knew how to help Clea. At least that would be one more mystery out of the way.”

“Hmmm,” Esquie ponders, another deep melody; a charming sound from an ancient bell. “When the stars forget their path, they ask the rocks and stones.”

“You and your rocks and stones and boulders,” Sciel says, affectionately exasperated. Still, she grins broadly, nudging him with a closed fist. “But thanks. I'll think it over, you giant marshmallow of wisdom.”

///

The sunrise talk with Esquie had helped, but as the morning drags on, Sciel feels the weight of the previous night clinging to her shoulders like damp cloth. No amount of chalk scratching against the board can quite shake it, nor can the forced brightness in her voice as she tries to wrangle a dozen restless minds.

The weather is far too kind for lessons. Sunlight pours in through the tall windows, golden and taunting, and her students’ attention keeps drifting outside to the courtyard where petals spin lazily on the breeze. She can hardly blame them—her own thoughts keep slipping back to Verso’s words, to Maelle’s pallor, to Lune’s steady arms around her in the bath.

But still, she pushes through, voice rising over the mounting chatter, assigning sums and exercises that are forgotten the moment her back turns. By the time Clea stalks in with an armful of books and a scowl sharp enough to silence half the room, Sciel feels like she’s barely holding the whole day together with frayed string.

And then— knock knock knock.

The sound cuts through the noise, sharp enough to jolt her upright. Every head in the classroom swivels. Sciel looks up, heart stumbling in her chest—

—and there she is. Lune, framed in the doorway, smiling in a way that makes Sciel’s knees go weak.

And as Lune backs out into the hall, Sciel turns to Clea immediately.

“Keep them under control for a few minutes?” Sciel essentially pleads, to which Clea simply waves her off, barely repressing a smile.

“Go see your girlfriend already. Anyone with a pair of eyes can see that you need it.”

“Thank you,” Sciel breathes, and then she's dashing into the hallway, over a dozen curious eyes latched to her back.

She pays them no mind.

“Lune!” Sciel beams, already feeling the exhaustion of the day lightening at her lover’s sudden appearance. She's across the hall in a fraction of a second, throwing herself into Lune's arms, laughing at the soft oof from the woman in her embrace.

“Sciel,” Lune sputters out through a light chuckle, “The children are trying to stare—”

“Oh, who cares!” Sciel pointedly ignores the squealing students behind her, the hushed whispers of gossip starting to sweep across the classroom. “I'm just so happy you're here—” Then she pulls back, slightly confused. “Why are you here, exactly?”

“Well—”

“Lune told us you didn't get much sleep last night,” a third voice chimes in, Sophie poking her head over Lune's shoulder with a wide smile. “And not in the good way.”

Shrieks erupt from the teenagers as Sciel feels her ears start to burn.

“Soph!”

Lune groans, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Sophie, we talked about this.”

“And I simply couldn't resist.”

“Anyway.” It's Emma who speaks this time, the Chief Councilor having appeared in the hallway at some point during the cacophony. “We ran into Lune at the boulangerie as she was buying pastries. I have no meetings for the rest of the day, so we figured we'd tag along and see if there was anything we could do to help.”

“Oh, pretty please!” Sciel all but begs. Then, lowering her voice so her students can't hear, “I've basically given up on real lessons for today. Beyond me and my inability to focus, the weather is devastatingly nice out and the kids have been ridiculously distracted.”

“Sciel.” Clea materializes in the doorway, crossing her arms with a scowl. “Terribly sorry to interrupt, but I'm at my wit’s end here.”

“Hello there, Amélie.” Lune's coy tone is equal parts knowing and amused. “Lovely to see you again.”

Clea smiles tightly at the raven-haired woman, and Sciel rolls her eyes, sidles over to her teaching assistant and knocks their elbows together in a subtle motion for the Paintress to lighten up.

“Lovely to see you, too,” Clea finally says.

“Is it?” Lune can barely hold back her smug smile.

“Jury’s still out,” Clea drawls, and Sciel has never seen the resemblance between the Dessendre sisters so clearly.

“Oh! Do you work with Sciel?” Sophie asks, and Sciel is once again hit with the reminder that beyond the survivors of Expedition 33, the rest of Lumière knew nothing of Clea.

The single other progenitor of their world. The creator of the Nevrons. Maelle’s biological sister. A Paintress. And now—

“This is Amélie, my coworker and my teaching assistant,” Sciel introduces, gesturing to the woman beside her in a friendly manner. She feels Clea stiffen at her side ever-so-slightly before relaxing, the tension gone as if it were never there to begin with. “Amélie, let me introduce you to my friends—Sophie and Emma.”

Clea dips her head in greeting, her prior scowl vanishing as she smiles graciously. “A pleasure to finally meet you all.”

In the back of her mind, Sciel wonders how thoroughly Clea had been trained by her parents. How they had molded her into their ideal daughter. How Clea manages to plaster on a mask so convincing, even Sciel feels fooled.

It's Sophie who moves first. She grasps Clea’s hands within her own, ever warm-hearted and endlessly pleasant. “Oh, the pleasure is ours! Happy to make your acquaintance, Amélie.”

Emma makes no motion to move. Instead, her gaze remains inquisitive, as if working out a complex math problem.

“A pleasure.” She nods once at Clea, who raises her brow but points out nothing, just dips her head in return.

Then she turns back to Sciel.

“Sciel, the children,” she reminds her.

“Yes, I know…” Glancing into her classroom to peek at the clock, Sciel sighs. “Just over thirty more minutes until I'm allowed to just let the rascals play outside in the yard for the rest of the day.”

“Do you need a distraction?” Sophie asks.

“A distraction in the form of a lesson would be best,” Clea advises. “That way, they can at least tell their parents about some teaching when prompted at home.” She looks pointedly at Lune. “You wouldn't happen to be able to spew thirty minutes worth of Lumina research, would you?”

“I could,” Lune chuckles, “but I doubt it would hold their attention for very long. I can probably help in another way, though.”

Sciel perks up. “Oh?”

“It'll be a treat for you, too,” Lune promises, reaching out to pinch Sciel’s cheek affectionately.

Sciel can’t help herself—she glances over her shoulder and then rises to the tips of her toes, presses her smile to Lune’s lips in an unspoken thank you.

And with that, Lune summons her guitar to her grasp and strides into the classroom.

///

(If Lune were to be completely honest, she's dreamed about this before—one of her most vivid, most yearning dreams from their expedition days. Walking into Sciel’s classroom, greeting children while equal parts nervous and excited, not to lecture about maths or sciences but instead to teach them about music.

Before even Sciel, music had been her real first love. Unsurprisingly, her parents had found it a frivolous pass time. They'd never truly approved of Stella’s passion for art or Sol’s disinterest in their research, but they'd let them do as they pleased. 

Lune had been their backup plan—their final stand—and thus, she'd nearly given up on her passion, her songs confined to the worn pages of her notebooks.

Of course, she'd begun to truly rekindle it under the shadow of the Monolith. She'd composed songs by the fire light, swapped ideas with Verso, who was plenty skilled on his own. They'd traded notes, and Lune had found it sad—two musicians at heart, forced to wield blades and fire for a chance to return to that passion.

“Are you ever gonna show her that notebook of lyrics?” Verso had asked once, sitting on logs beside the campfire as they'd gotten ever closer to the Monolith. “Or will you shove down your love for her just as you shoved down your love for music?”

Lune had shoved him off his log instead, and he'd toppled to the ground while laughing.

“You're hopeless!” He had wheezed, as if she wasn't fully aware of his growing feelings for her. As if she hadn't been aware that he'd been holding himself back, knowing she could never give him what he wanted.

She'd been grateful that Sciel had been away that night, sparring with Maelle. Nowadays, though, Lune wonders what could've happened if Sciel had been nearby, had been there to witness that.

And not just the aftermath of a one-night stand.

“I am not,” Lune had hissed under her breath, still wary despite the clanging of steel blades echoing from some forest clearing. “I'm being practical. She has a husband she's fighting for, Verso. A future worth fighting for.”

“And what of your love?” He had goaded her. “What are you fighting for?”  

“My first love,” she'd simply said. “For my music.”

“If music is your first love,” Verso pondered, “and therefore your longest, then what is Sciel?”

“The one from my dreams and delusions.” And Lune could only shrug. “But if I could pick, then she'd be my greatest.”)

///

Sciel leans against a windowsill, arms folded loosely, though in truth it’s the only thing keeping her upright.

“Moi je n′étais rien

Et voilà qu'aujourd′hui

Je suis le gardien

Du sommeil de ses nuits

Je l'aime à mourir—”

Lune sits at the front of the classroom with her guitar balanced on her knee, voice carrying clear and low, weaving through the restless chatter until even the rowdiest of students are hushed, wide-eyed. The sunlight streaming through the tall windows makes her hair glow like dark glass catching fire; her smile comes easy, warmer than any lesson Sciel has ever tried to give.

“Vous pouvez détruire

Tout ce qu'il vous plaira

Elle n′a qu′à ouvrir

L'espace de ses bras

Pour tout reconstruire—”

She doesn’t even notice when her chest tightens. It’s the same ache she felt under the Monolith, back when everything was uncertain and cruel—the same one she feels every time she hears Lune playing the guitar. An ache that feels, impossibly, like something being stitched back together.

“Elle a gommé les chiffres,” Lune sings, “Des horloges du quartier—”

Maybe Sciel really will cry.

“Elle a fait de ma vie

Des cocottes en papier

Des éclats de rire—”

Around her, the children sway and clap along, giggling when Lune throws them a wink. They’re enchanted, utterly hers. And Sciel, too, is utterly hers.

“Elle a bâti des ponts

Entre nous et le ciel

Et nous les traversons

À chaque fois qu'elle

Ne veut pas dormir

Ne veut pas dormir

Je l′aime à mourir.”

I love her to death, Lune sings, over and over and over. I love her to death.

And Sciel believes her. She falls in love all over again.

///

(“So. Why'd you slip outside when the music started?”

“...It brought back unwanted memories.”

“Is that so? Hmm…”

“What is it?” Demanding.

“Clea.”

“...”

“You are Clea, right?”

“If you already know the answer, don't bother asking. It's a waste of time.”

“So you're definitely Clea.”

“Well, Miss Chief Councilor, care to tell how you learned about me? Did Sciel—”

“No. Sciel, shockingly enough, is great at keeping secrets from you so long as your name isn’t Lune.”

“I see.”

“I found out about you because Maelle asked me to help style her hair a particular way a few days ago. She told me it belonged to her other sister.” Eyes rove over brunette locks fashioned back with a dark headband before wandering further down. A nose wrinkles. “Do you always keep your shirt unbuttoned that low?”

“Maybe.” The corner of a mouth tugs into a smirk. “Is it low enough to your liking?”

Cheeks dust pink. “Are you not the slightest bit interested in how I know your name?”

“Fine. Tell me.”

“Maelle said it in her sleep. She called for both you and Verso. I could put two-and-two together.”

“...Don’t take it personally. I’m sure you were more of an older sister to her than I ever was.”

“Duly noted. So, Clea, answer something for me—Why is it that you don't go see your sister?”

“Straight to the point, I see. I respect it.”

“Naturally. I haven’t grown used to having time to waste yet.”

“If only you’d been able to instill more of that urgency into Alicia.” A scowl. “I needed her help with Renoir and Aline ages ago.”

“Why do you not visit your sister? She misses you.”

“She’s your sister, too. Or perhaps something like a daughter?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“Apologies. Avoidance has become my specialty as of late—intentionally or not.”

“I’ve been there countless times. But it was my friendship with Sciel, actually, that taught me that my feelings were not trivial things to throw away, nor were they just kindling to a fire.”

The two women lapse into silence.

Then—

“...Do you really want the truth, Miss Chief Councilor?”

“It would be preferred.”

“I don’t visit Alicia because in my reality, my little sister cannot even speak. I’ve spoken with her in Canvases before, but that doesn’t negate the truth that I will never hear her real voice again—that she will never speak words with her own throat, mouth, tongue. And no amount of time spent here in this painted paradise of hers can change that.”

“...”

“I'm not here to delude myself. I can't afford to. And I'm not about to let myself start slipping back into missing something that I just learned not to miss.”

“Clea—”

“And if she kills herself by staying in here… I don’t know how I’ll face that reality. I don’t know if I’ll be able to anymore. I’ve already lost a brother. I’ve halfway lost a mother. My childhood Canvas has been desecrated beyond repair, a battleground for children pretending to be grown adults. What will I do if I lose my sister for good, too? Death may no longer be just death in this world, but it still means something permanent in mine. And for all my powers as a Paintress in here, I’m powerless out there.”

“Oh, Clea…”

In the schoolyard, Sciel and Sophie hold hands as they begin a game of Ring Around the Rosie with the younger children, Lune quickly being tugged into their shenanigans with a fond roll of her eyes. 

“You wanted the truth, right?” Clea heaves a shuddering breath, curling up on the schoolhouse step and hiding her face in her hands. “I’m angry, Emma. And worse than that, I'm afraid .”

It takes no thought at all—Emma drops to her knees beside her, pulling the shaking woman into a tight hug. One of the hugs Gustave used to give her back when she was still grieving their parents after their Gommage. The only hug she still remembers how to give.

And if she notices when Clea blinks back tears and refuses to let them fall, she says nothing.)

///

They spend the rest of the afternoon in Sciel’s empty classroom, talking about nothing and everything—gossip amongst the students, gossip amongst the Councilors, gossip amongst the general public. A lot of gossip, essentially—turns out, Clea hears a lot while blending into the background—and an equal amount of laughter.

Even Clea’s shoulders relax over the course of several hours. She trades dry quips with Sophie with ease, banters with Lune as if they've known each other for years, and stares at Emma when she thinks no one is looking.

(Sciel sees it, though. She wonders what happened, when the two of them had sat together on the stoop.

Then, figuring it's none of her business, Sciel leaves it be. For now, at least.)

Sophie ends up suggesting they take “Amélie” to dinner, and that's how Clea ends up at a crowded restaurant as the sun is setting, crammed around a table between Lune and Emma, across from an increasingly entertained Sciel.

And then at some point, as she's talking with Sophie and Emma about the logistics of hiding wine within Esquie’s large, marshmallow body, Sciel hears it—

“It's not so bad, right?” Lune says to Clea, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Getting dragged out every once in a while.”

Clea rolls her eyes, her sigh dramatic and long suffering.

“It's loud, and we can hardly hear each other over the noise,” she mutters, but then her eyes shift and she pokes at her food with her fork. “But it's not… bad. I didn't mind today.”

“Sophie and Emma are fun,” Lune comments. Across the table, the two women have begun talking about a new romance novel—one that Sciel had caught the name of earlier, just to be promptly forgotten. “I've known them for so long, but I don't think I was really friends with them until recently.”

“Sophie is fun,” Clea corrects, wrinkling her nose. “Emma is something else.”

“How so?”

“She’s too observant.”

Ah, Sciel realizes. That explains it.

She files away that little piece of information for later.

“You don't think that's bad, though,” Lune says.

“It's not bad. Not necessarily.” Clea frowns. “Just an… observation of my own. She's a good sister to Alicia. That's all that really matters at this point.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Me? Of one of Maman’s painted creations? Hardly.” Clea scoffs. “I'm also not delusional—I was a horrible sister to Alicia. I can't take back the choices I made, and I wouldn't even if I could.”

Then she sighs again—a real, deep sigh. “Though, it’s exceedingly easy to see why she wants to stay. She has so many people who love her here.”

Lune makes a low noise of agreement.

“It's that very fact that will be our undoing, isn't it?”

Minutely, Sciel’s eyes widen.

So Lune has also…

Clea chuckles. “Join me. I'm already undone.”

Lune raises her hand to flag down a waiter.

“You underestimate what you mean to her,” she simply says after ordering dessert for the table.

And Clea grows quiet at that, not appearing to know what to say.

It’s Emma who notices, pausing her conversation with Sophie as Lune hooks her little finger with Sciel’s under the table.

“Amélie,” she calls casually, her voice lifting above the restaurant chatter.

Clea blinks, drawn out of her stupor as if she just remembered she must answer to that name. She straightens in her seat, meeting Emma’s questioning look with an expression of schooled neutrality.

“Yes?”

“Everything alright?” It's Sciel’s turn to ask.

“I—”

Clea halts, gaze flitting between the four women all with their attention solely on her. But then a quiet moment passes, the charming noise of the restaurant fading to a low hum, and an understanding seems to dawn. Clea’s tense shoulders relax, and she laughs quietly.

“I'm fine,” Clea says softly, and for once, Sciel believes her. “Just taking it all in.”

Emma nods as if in approval.

Chocolate soufflé is served. Clea eats every single bite.

///

The moon shines bright in the sky by the time they say their goodbyes for the night, the cobblestone streets awash with lamplight, beckoning them all home.

Sophie and Emma head off first, waving with a promise to gather again soon.

Clea departs next, her apartment in a quieter, newly restored area of the city.

Which leaves Sciel and Lune to their own devices, Sciel humming contentedly with a skip in her step as they meander their way back to their own home.

“Thank you, by the way,” Sciel tells her, squeezing their intertwined hands. “For speaking with Clea earlier.”

“Oh, you heard that?” Lune shrugs, smiling wryly. “I was just curious about her reaction to Maelle’s other family. For some reason, I'd never imagined Clea and Emma in the same space before.”

“They have an interesting dynamic,” Sciel comments, trying to sound far less interested than she actually is. Judging from how Lune laughs, she hasn't succeeded. “What? It's true! Emma somehow knows Clea’s identity, I just know it.”

“If I had to guess,” Lune ponders, “Emma probably pieced things together from Maelle. Remember? Maelle once asked us to fix her hair like Clea’s after we visited the Flying Manor.”

“Speaking of Maelle…” Sciel trails off. She's been chewing on what to say since earlier, at the restaurant. “About what you said earlier, Lune—”

“Which part?”

“The part where you implied that our love for Maelle will be our undoing.”

“Ah.”

“It's just—I understood what you meant immediately, is all.” Sciel’s smile dims slightly, and she shakes her head. “Because we’re her friends, and because we love her, we’ve all been dancing around this impasse.”

Lune nods. “But we can't ignore it for much longer.”

“You said so yourself before,” Sciel says quietly, watching the way Lune’s jaw clenches, then unclenches. “It’s hard to ignore someone once you're fully aware of them. And from the moment I learned about Maelle’s symptoms, it's been impossible to ignore her worsening health. Clea and Verso just help drive home how dire it all is.”

“Maelle’s body is otherwise healthy,” Lune says, coming to a stop in front of the large fountain in the center of the now-empty plaza. “The doctor asked me to stay and help, right? But I’ve never felt so useless, Sciel. Soothing her muscle pains was easy, but watching her twist and turn and groan in her sleep?” Her hands ball into fists. “I tried to wake her up from the nightmare—I tried. Nothing I did worked.”

“‘First her body, then her mind.’” Sciel recalls Verso’s words vividly. “‘First when she sleeps, next when she wakes.’”

“I don't want to see what happens,” Lune confesses. “I don't want to see the nightmare spread to when she wakes.”

Sciel softens, reaches out to take Lune’s hand within her own.

“I don't either.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“You can tell me anything.”

“I want to live, Sciel.” Lune closes her eyes. “I want to live, I really do.”

Sciel steps closer, arms wrapping around Lune’s waist, resting her chin on her lover’s steadfast shoulder. She places a lingering kiss to the side of Lune’s head.

“I want to live, too.” With you. With our friends. With our Verso, and Maelle, and even Clea. With you, with you, with you. “I want it so bad, sometimes I think it'll eat me up from the inside.”

“But not like this,” Lune admits, exhaling shakily. Her quiet truth. The truth that they'd all been dancing around.

“Not like this.” Sciel echoes the sentiment. “Not when we have to watch Maelle die before our eyes.”

Dragging a distressed hand through her hair, Lune leans further into Sciel’s warmth. “Maelle's health in our world reflects that of her real world body. If she dies in her reality, she can't be brought back. No one can bring her back. Not even Clea.”

“Before, Clea asked me if I thought it was worth it.” If she closes her eyes, Sciel can still remember that day, not too long ago—the warm classroom, Clea languidly lazing at a desk, Sciel erasing the blackboard. “Infinitely more days for Lumiérans at the cost of one girl’s livelihood.”

“A pretty, hazy daydream,” Lune says.

“You’d think it would be obvious, right?” Sciel laughs, devoid of humor. “Thousands of Lumièran lives extended for the price of one.”

“ ‘The future of Lumière is more important than any individual life,’ we used to say.” Lune snorts. “Never mind the question of how ‘real’ or ‘alive’ we truly are.”

Fondly, Sciel chuckles. “Never mind that.”

“What do you think, Sciel?”

“You once told me that there's no true way to quantify the weight of a life.”

“Do you still believe that?”

“I do.” Sciel nods. “But I also think that I was avoiding the question, back when Clea asked me. She wasn't looking for an objective answer.”

Lune twists in her embrace, turning such that they're face-to-face. She runs her hands down Sciel’s arms, her aching adoration blatant.

“So tell me, then. What does matter?”

“The fact that I don't want Maelle to die,” Sciel tells her fervently. “That I don't want to live in a world where she must suffer for us to obtain even a single day more.”

And then Lune is smiling, wide and warm. Her wildfire, the flames inviting. Eyes sparkling like starlight, her hair bathed in the gentle glow of lamplight. And she's leaning in, mesmerizing, a siréne, and Sciel cannot look away, couldn't even if she wanted to, and—

“Looks like we're in agreement,” Lune says, blinking back the tears that prick at her eyes.

And Sciel does not hesitate for a second longer; just leans in and kisses her.

///

(“I think my fear,” Lune will admit later, once they're back in their home and she has Sciel perched on the kitchen countertop, and she's standing between her legs as Sciel relishes in the fact that she's finally taller, and and and, “is that after everything we've lived through, survived through, killing the Paintress and returning from the Gommage, everything— I’m afraid we're finally going to reach that end and realize that we'd been so stupid.”

Sciel noses at her ear, then travels down to start trailing kisses up the side of her lover’s neck.

Lune’s breath hitches, and it's hard to make sense of the words Sciel brands against her skin with a searing hot mouth.

“You could never be stupid,” Sciel murmurs. “Your mind is so beautiful, ma chérie.”

“But if we tell Maelle to leave—as we should— then Verso was right, all the way back then. We could have destroyed the Canvas back when its fate was still being decided after that final battle and prevented Maelle’s suffering.”

Sciel doesn't stop moving, her kisses unrelenting. “And so—”

“What were we fighting for?” Lune asks helplessly.

“This,” Sciel says heatedly, and she takes Lune’s face in her hands, leans down and claims her lips with her own.

Oh.

A chance for this.

Something unbreakable in a world of breakable things.

It was always that simple.

The voices in Lune’s mind grow silent. She lets Sciel’s love roar over her instead.)

///

It's an early Saturday morning when Sciel shows up at Clea’s door with Lune, Emma, and Sophie in tow.

“I, um—” Sciel struggles to find the words, rubbing the back of her neck in front of a bemused Clea standing in the threshold of her apartment. “In all fairness, I was planning on asking if you wanted to just accompany me to the boulangerie, and then we could surprise Lune, Sophie, and Emma with breakfast or something. But then Lune woke up, and—”

“Because it’s so nice waking up to your lover sneaking out of bed to meet up with another woman,” Lune interjects sarcastically, but her eyes gleam with well-meaning mischief.

“—So it turned into a bit of a girls’ trip.” Sheepish, Sciel gestures towards a grinning Sophie and amused Emma.

“To the bakery,” Clea says incredulously, crossing her arms.

“Not anymore. We’re going a bit farther than that, I’m afraid. I hope you didn’t have any plans for the holiday weekend.”

Sciel points skyward, Clea following the motion with her gaze until her mouth parts in shock.

Casually soaring overhead, Esquie lets out a cheery wheee! before cartwheeling through a cloud.

“Wha—”

“Emma and I have never been to the Continent before,” Sophie explains, nudging the aforementioned woman cheekily. Emma simply coughs into her fist, apparently intent on avoiding Clea’s curious gaze at all costs. “And what’s a safer entourage to take us than two expeditioners from the legendary Expedition 33 and a Paintress herself?”

Clea seems to choke on whatever words had been sitting on the tip of her tongue.

“I— Pardon?” Her gaze whips to Sciel and Lune, the former of whom raises her hands defensively.

“It wasn’t me this time!”

Lune merely points at Emma in lieu of response.

Clea stares at the Chief Councilor, unimpressed. “Am I going to wake up tomorrow to the whole island knowing who I am?”

“It’s just Sophie,” Emma says defensively. “And she promised she wouldn’t tell Maelle.”

“Or Gustave,” Sophie adds.

“Verso and Monoco don’t know you’re here either.” Lune huffs. “The boys can stay in the dark.”

“And is Maelle not going to be suspicious of where you’ve all vanished to?”

“The boys have taken her Nevron hunting for the whole long weekend,” Sciel replies cheerily, clapping Clea on the back. “Esquie dropped them off at Monoco’s Station earlier. She won’t notice a thing.”

“...I really get no say in this, do I?” Clea sighs, stepping onto the cobblestone street and closing the door behind her.

“You do not,” Emma and Lune both chorus as Sciel cheers, shouting their success up to a whooping Esquie.

“It’s called having friends, darling.” Sophie winks, and she steps up to link arms with Clea. “And from how Maelle’s described you, it sounds like a new experience.”

Smothering down her own amusement, Sciel playfully shoves Lune at the abrupt laugh that escapes her lungs.

“So,” Clea drawls, letting herself get led down the street, “do I not even get a hint about where we’re headed?”

“Do you ever stop asking questions?” Emma exasperatedly shoots back, and Clea’s mouth clamps shut as Sciel finally howls in laughter, stumbling into Lune as their shoulders shake, grins too wide.

Chapter Text

Sciel hadn't ever acknowledged—had refused to, until now—how much she'd missed her expedition uniform until she'd slipped it on for the first time in months, felt the fabric slip on like a second skin, and realized that this was like coming home.

Tied around her bicep, her gold armband proudly proclaims itself: 33, in all its glory.

She's admiring herself in the mirror, adjusting her jacket just so, when the door to her bedroom pushes open and she whirls around, grinning at her lover with something fierce.

“Lune,” she says breathlessly, unable to find the words for the inexplicable joy in her chest.

“You missed it, right?” Lune meets her grin with a knowing smile. She's wearing her expedition uniform, too—as if they'd both beelined for them when they brought their friends back to their apartment to change into more adventure-appropriate clothes. “I did, too.”

“It's like I feel lighter,” Sciel says, jumping up and down on the tips of her toes, then summoning a flurry of foretell cards with a light laugh as they disappear into sparks. “I could probably touch the sky!”

“Just don't leave me down here alone,” Lune chides playfully, padding across the room to gingerly rest a hand on Sciel’s waist.

“Says the one who can fly.” Sciel laughs, shaking her head as she leans into Lune’s touch. “We’re ridiculous. Who gets sentimental over a uniform?”

“We do,” Lune replies simply, her thumb brushing over the seam of Sciel’s jacket like it’s something precious. “Because it’s proof we survived. Proof of the journey we went on. Everything we did and saw.”

Sciel exhales, softer now, her grin tapering into something fonder, quieter. “Sometimes I hate remembering it. The desperation, the exhaustion, the fear. But then…” She lifts her hands, letting another scatter of cards spiral into being, glowing briefly before vanishing like fireflies. “I think about the nights under strange skies. The stories we told. The way the world seemed endless, even when we thought we were running out of time.”

Lune’s eyes shine, their depth carrying all the same memories. “It was freedom, wasn’t it? A brutal kind of freedom, but still—freedom.”

Sciel nods, throat tight. “We never would’ve seen half of it if we’d stayed here forever. The snowy mountains, the yellow forests, the mansions in the sky…” She trails off, breath catching with the weight of it all. “It feels almost wrong to admit it, but sometimes I miss it.”

“Me too,” Lune murmurs, forehead dipping to rest against Sciel’s, her breath warm and steady between them. “But maybe that’s alright. Missing it means it mattered. No more dome, just clear skies.”

A knock rattles the doorframe before Sciel can respond. Sophie’s sing-song voice floats in from the hall. “Are you two finished gazing into each other’s eyes, or should we leave on Esquie without you?”

Sciel startles, then bursts into helpless laughter, burying her face against Lune’s shoulder as Lune groans dramatically.

“Coming!” Sciel calls, still giggling. She pulls back just enough to press a quick kiss to Lune’s cheek before taking her hand. “Ready?”

“Always,” Lune says, and together they step out to rejoin their friends—two expeditioners once more, heading toward a familiar horizon yet still branded anew.

///

Esquie brings them to a landing near a patch of forest just as the sun begins its descent across the sky. Even with a fast flier, they wouldn't make it to their destination before nightfall, so Lune is the one who makes the executive decision to prepare camp sooner than later for the night.

“This area isn't very dangerous,” Sciel assures her friends as she's helping Emma off Esquie’s back. “There are Nevrons, but not too many, and we're relatively close to the Gestral Village.”

Sophie, who had climbed down with Lune’s assistance, claps her hands in delight. “Maybe if we have time tomorrow, we can stop by the Gestral Village? I’ve always wanted to see a Gestral!”

“Regardless of if we visit, I'm sure we will.” Clea snorts, a tsk on the top of her tongue as she slides off Esquie with no help whatsoever. “Gestral merchants choose the strangest places to set up shop. You could be at the ends of this world and somehow a Gestral would be there.”

It's honestly a bit surreal, seeing Sophie and Emma in coats and breeches. Sciel’s known Sophie nearly her whole adult life, and she cannot remember a single day her friend had worn anything but a skirt. Emma, similarly, had become almost notorious for her long dresses and ornate hats, as if she'd been born in such a classy outfit.

Clea, on the other hand, has remained nearly the same. The same suspender skirt, the same striped shirt with dark too many buttons unbuttoned. The same unflappable countenance, moving with ease through the Canvas, as if it adjusted for her every footstep.

The only difference is that now, she—and Lune—have forgone their shoes once again, treading barefoot against the earth.

(“I never asked, but why is that?” Sciel eventually asks curiously, watching Lune swirl through the air in all the freedom only the grand space of the Continent could offer. “I've seen you fly just as well with shoes on, but it's clear you don't prefer it.”

And Lune shrugs, leisurely flipping with all the grace in the world, as nimble as a fish in water.

“When I was younger, it used to help me feel the elements,” she explains, Kralim materializing at her fingertips, two stains already present. “I’d feel more connected to the natural world. Nowadays, it’s not necessarily required, but I prefer feeling the elements beneath my feet when I can.”

Sciel nods—it makes sense. Practicality speaking, there'd never been much of a logical reason for her own uniform to have such an exposed midriff either. Nothing beyond “I like it, it's comfortable,” and eventually, “I like the feeling of Lune’s hands on my skin,” that is, so she gets it.

Behind them, Emma turns to Clea with an arched brow.

“And you?” She gestures to the Dessendre girl’s own barren feet.

“Why?” Clea smiles at her, sickeningly saccharine. “Am I distracting you?”

Emma rolls her eyes and wisely opts not to respond.)

In the present, however, Clea tips her head to the side, as if listening for something. Sciel catches on quickly, although not as fast as Lune, who's already turning to Clea with a question on her lips.

“Are the Nevrons nearby going to be a problem?” Lune crosses her arms, glancing at the girl pointedly. “Or will you gommage them?”

“I could,” Clea says, elongating the word into a considerate, lazy drawl. “Or, the two of you can finally let off whatever steam you haven't absolved sexually and kill them yourselves.”

“You’re the worst,” Lune says, never one to mince her words.

Clea flashes her a sweet smile. “You brought me here.”

Sciel shakes her head hopelessly. “You’re both ridiculous.”

But then she's summoning Chation, the double-headed scythe materializing in her right hand, her foretell cards in her left. Adrenaline courses through her veins, and it hits her again, that longing feeling—the part of her that misses when so many problems could be dealt with by simply cutting them down like weeds.

What a complex, yet simple world they live in.

Judging from the wide-eyed look Sophie shoots her, Sciel’s sure the grin on her face is something manic.

“Lune,” she says insistently, and the earth beneath their feet shakes once, twice, three times. Nevrons nearby, approaching.

And Lune huffs out a laugh, Kralim materializing once more as she glides over, fire sparking at her fingertips.

“Follow my lead?”

“Always.” Sciel nods eagerly. Then, to Clea, Sophie, and Emma: “Just hang back for a bit, yeah? This shouldn't take long.”

One Wildfire later, and Sciel is dashing into Lune’s flames with a Searing Bond on the tips of her fingers, a whirlwind of cards flying about her as she laughs, dancing through it all with Lune soaring ahead.

///

“Wow, doesn't this bring back memories?”

Sciel ducks beneath the overhanging, beckoning for the others to follow her into the grassy clearing—one of their more notorious campsites from the Expedition 33 days. On their journey, they'd visited the Gestral Village with a decent frequency, and as such this particular clearing had become a home away from home.

“This place hasn't changed a bit.” Lune lets out a low whistle, inspecting the area with a critical eye. “We should check if the firewood Verso collected is still where he last hid it—that would save us a lot of time.”

“And effort,” Sciel adds, already striding over to the cavern at the far end of the clearing. If she imagines hard enough, she can still feel the sensation—the way her heart would drop every time she'd enter this very cavern to see the Curator on the other side, silent and waiting.

While he had only been helpful during his time following the expedition, Renoir Dessendre had somehow been an imposing man, both in his faceless form and in his own skin. Sciel had gone out of her way to avoid as much conversation with him as possible. It was quite the opposite from Lune, who had fruitlessly tried to rope him into conversation on several occasions.

But there is no Curator now. There hasn’t been for a long time. He had long left the Canvas, promising to keep a light on for his daughter before dissipating into a flurry of petals.

Nowadays, Sciel only hopes that at the end of the day, there will still be a daughter to keep the light on for.

“Sciel? Did you find the firewood?” It's Sophie who breaks her out of her reverie, her dear friend poking her head into the cavern. Though, she must see the look on Sciel’s face—Sophie’s by her side in an instant, a worried hand touching her shoulder. “Sciel? Is everything alright?”

Snapping out of her reverie, Sciel flashes her friend a reassuring smile.

“All good. Just reminiscing a bit.”

“About the expedition?” At Sciel’s nod, Sophie worries at her bottom lip. “Good memories? Or bad ones?”

“Neither, I suppose.” Sciel chuckles, and she straightens up properly, beckons for Sophie to follow. She remembers now—the nook where Verso hid the extra firewood. “It's hard to explain, but there were times on that journey where things just were. Neither good nor bad, they were just there.”

The Curator— Renoir— was just one of those things. First he has been helpful, and then he has been an obstacle. In the aftermath, though, Sciel can understand him more—his desperation. It makes her wonder what she would've done in his position, with his powers.

She supposes she'll never know, though it's a fun exercise. If not a bit sad.

They bring back arms of dry firewood ready to be kindled, and Sciel mentally sends a thank you to Verso, wherever he, Gustave, Maelle, and Monoco are, clobbering Nevrons. She hopes they're having fun.

She also hopes they're eating as well as they are.

Lune has always been good at campfire cooking, go figure. During the expedition, Sciel used to pretend to swoon every time it was Lune’s turn to provide, much to Lune’s inherent embarrassment. Eventually her protests had grown to good natured eye rolls, smothered smiles, and quiet I'm glad you liked it, Sciel ’s—utterly adorable.

Sciel kisses her soundly on the cheek after everyone gets their share of immaculately seasoned grilled fish.

“Compliments to the chef,” she teases while the others are too busy enjoying their meal.

Right on cue, almost like a dance, Lune rolls her eyes playfully, tells her to eat before it gets cold.

And so she does, and before she knows it, the sun has set. Everyone settles down into their sleeping bags—Sophie, Emma, and Clea opt to stay closer to the fire.

Sciel, having almost missed the crisp night air, sprawls out on the grass a bit farther away. She stares up at the twinkling stars, coming to the startling revelation that it's actually been a while since she’s last spoken to them properly.

A warm body eventually settles against her side, curling up insistently as Sciel settles her arm around an aptly familiar waist.

“What are you telling the stars about this time?”

Lune’s voice is husky in her ears, and Sciel’s responding hum is musical, carries the cadence of the song Lune had sung in her classroom the other day—that wonderful song of love and devotion. She grips loosely at the coat of Lune’s uniform, absently smoothing her thumb over familiar fabric as she chews over her words, pondering how to convey the plethora of emotions she's been sending to the starry ether above.

“I'm telling them about you,” Sciel eventually replies, opting for simplicity and hoping Lune can hear the affection in her voice alone. “I'm talking about how wonderful you are, and how perfect you've been. And… how I've missed this. You and I, the open sky and moon above us.”

Lune makes a low noise of acknowledgement. “A lot has happened these past few months. There must be a lot to update the stars on.”

“Quite a fair bit,” Sciel agrees, bobbing her head. “And there are so many of them, after all. It can take a bit to catch everyone up to speed.”

“Oh, that reminds me—When I was a child, I tried to count them.” Lune pinches her lightly at Sciel’s quiet giggle. “It was a stupid idea, I know, but I had this grand plan to publish a paper on it—numbering the stars and whatnot. So when my parents would bring me to the outer islands for field training, I'd sleep beneath the stars and try to count them all, only to lose count without fail when I'd lose to exhaustion and fall asleep.”

Sciel twists in her arms, presses a kiss to the underside of Lune’s jaw, cooing. “My perfect scholar.”

“Now that I know you,” Lune continues, smirking, “I'm just asking the stars for an answer instead.”

“Oh?” Sciel turns onto her side, raising two fingers to experimentally press at Lune’s pulse point below her jaw—feels the way the other woman’s heart rate quickens beneath her touch. “And have the stars answered?”

Lune’s throat bobs as she swallows, her prior amusement wiped away as she meets Sciel’s knowing gaze.

“I've been told they're infinite.”

“As infinite as my love for you?” Sciel teases.

(And Lune wants to laugh. She tries for one, tries for composure, but it comes out shaky. Because something in Sciel’s tone hits too close to the bone—too honest, a bit too devastating. She’s never been good at accepting things that feel too good to be true, but for Sciel, she’ll try.

“You’re impossible.” She opts to drag her thumb over Sciel’s cheek, instead. Tender. "But yes. Exactly that kind of infinite.”)

///

In the spirit of travel (as well as Sophie and Emma’s first visit to the Continent), they sightsee around the area for a bit longer the following day. The morning is spent at the Gestral Village, Sophie particularly delighted to roam amongst the brush people. She and Sciel mingle around the merchants for far longer than they should, debating what souvenir to bring back to Gustave, before Emma eventually scolds a smug Clea for nearly gambling away their funds at the newly rebuilt casino, dragging her companions away without room for arguments.

“I wasn't actually going to gamble it all away,” Sciel overhears Clea muttering to a smirking Lune. “I physically can't. I have virtually infinite chroma.”

“It's the prospect,” Lune replies, shrugging. “She probably doesn't want you to be led further astray.”

“Oh no,” Clea says sarcastically, throwing her hands up, the air shimmering with her Paintress powers just for the show of it. “How could I possibly stoop any lower?”

Lune just snorts, jostling Clea with an elbow, and leads the way out of the Gestral Village.

As the afternoon drifts towards evening, they continue winding through sun-dappled clearings and old trails once familiar. It’s a quiet kind of meandering, the laughter from earlier giving way to something softer, steadier—contentment tempered by the tug of where they’re headed next.

Eventually, the road becomes one Sciel remembers distinctly.

And soon enough, Esquie's Nest towers before them.

Sciel watches Clea go stock still, as if her feet became tethered to the ground.

Lune comes to a halt, Sciel right next to her. Together they stand nearby, simply watching. Yet Clea’s gaze does not waver—she looks upwards, at the giant stone-carved face of their marshmallow-like friend standing tall and proud over the cave entrance.

Sophie flashes them a confused look. Sciel just shakes her head, raising a finger to her lips.

But Emma heeds no such warning. She touches Clea’s shoulder, feather light.

“Clea?”

“I’m fine.”

Emma’s lips press into a straight line. “You don’t look fine.”

“I’m fine,” Clea repeats, her face unreadable. Finally, she tears her eyes away from the giant effigy of Esquie, meeting Sciel’s green eyes with her own silver steel. “I had a feeling when we first set out that you wanted to take me here . And for the past day there’s been this sinking sensation in my gut. I’ve been trying to figure it out, to prepare myself.”

Sciel tips her head. “Did it work?”

“No.” The eldest Dessendre exhales, shoulders sagging. “I don’t know why I expected it to.”

Lune crosses her arms. “Surely you’ve faced worse.”

“Perhaps, but…” Clea shakes her head faintly. Then, quietly, “He must hate me.”

Sophie and Emma both look reasonably concerned at that.

Sciel keeps her expression carefully neutral. “You won’t know until you walk in.”

“Ohohoho!” Esquie chortles, careening through the air overhead. “We’ll meet you inside, mes amis!”

And then he’s gone, flying around to the backside of his nest.

“‘We’?” Emma echoes, furrowing her brow. She still stands close to Clea, the other woman having made no motion to move away. “Do I want to know?”

Lune chuckles, finally taking the first steps forward towards Esquie’s Nest, beckoning for the rest of them to follow.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

And so inwards they go, further into the caverns. Sunniso, much to Sciel’s inherent amusement, is still the Gestral tasked with guarding the entrance, and when Lune asks if a password is still required, he breaks into a dramatic sob and waves them onward without any further fuss. Sciel holds in her laughter until after they’re all past, before spinning on her heel to recall a rather humorous story about Gustave to a bemused Emma and giggling Sophie.

Clea, in the meantime, remains even quieter than normal. Sciel tries not to let it bother her—it’s only natural, being in this place again after so long. But still, she’d grown used to Clea’s dry wit, always so quick with a quip to balance out her own sillier comments or Lune’s voice of reason.

Nevertheless, she lets Clea walk in silence. She wonders how she feels, if every footstep seems to echo that much louder, the closer they draw to their destination.

The cave hasn’t changed one bit, decorated with statues of joyful Esquies and unlit torches. One by one, they light up as Esquie ushers them inside, clapping happily as he counts their numbers and realizes they’re all accounted for.

“Oh, I’m so happy you made it!” He enthuses, patting Sophie and Emma each on the back. “It’s been so long since we’ve had guests!”

“We’re happy to be here, too, Esquie,” Sophie giggles, tipping her head to one side. “But, who is ‘we’?” 

Sciel pointedly elbows Lune, who turns around to hide her scoff.

Meanwhile, Sophie gestures around to the spacious cavern, nothing but the giant rock in the middle. “There’s no one else—”

A big, booming voice cuts her off—

“No one?!”

Sophie shrieks, knocking into a startled Emma, who backs into a chortling Esquie, who steadies them both with his large hands.

“Oh! You got them good, FranFran!”

“Who—” Emma gapes, glancing between the giant rock turtle in the center of the cave—having finally noticed his smooth, masked face—to an infinitely entertained Sciel and Lune. “This is who you were both looking for?”

“Well, we knew where he was,” Sciel chuckles, hands on her hips. “He can’t exactly move. But yes. Emma, Sophie—meet François. François, meet Emma and Sophie.”

François himself seems far less amused.

“You dare bring more humans, you bumbling idiot?!” he spits out at Esquie, and despite his masked face, Sciel can virtually see the anger regardless. Then he turns to Sciel and Lune. “And you two hooligans! Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you!”

“We missed you, too, François,” Lune says flatly.

“What are their names, FranFran?” Esquie prods. “We should always remember the names of our friends. Especially since you have so few!”

“All humans are the same,” François barks. “And I don’t need more friends!”

“Not true! Look, I’ll introduce them again. Pay attention this time!” Esquie sweeps his hand over his companions, Sciel grabbing Lune’s wrist with one hand and waving with the other. “The smiley one is Sciel, and the serious one is Lune! You already know them.”

Lune turns to hide her snicker against the side of Sciel’s head—she feels a smile pressed against the crown of her hair, and Sciel smirks, nudging Lune’s hip with her own.

“So much for being the serious one,” she murmurs.

“Oh, shut up, you,” Lune retorts.

Meanwhile, Esquie motions to Sophie. “This one is Sophie! She’s with Gustave—you remember Gustave, right? The super kind one with the funny arm! Sophie is just as kind. She writes really good poetry! You’ll like her, FranFran.”

François grumbles under his breath, as if he knows better than to interrupt.

“And this,” Esquie continues, having moved on to Emma, “is Emma! She’s Gustave’s sister, and she’s even more serious than Lune. She wears really nice clothes in Lumière, François! And she always speaks her mind. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”

François remains silent.

Finally, Esquie steps aside. He waves his hands at the frozen figure there, seemingly oblivious to her turmoil.

“And look, François! This is—”

“Clea.”

///

(The entire cavern seems to hold its breath.

And for a long moment, Clea doesn’t speak.

She just stands there—rigid, unblinking, as if unsure whether she’s hearing things right. Whether this moment is real, or just some cruel echo of memory, conjured by the cave’s stillness and her own regret. 

This stifling silence, she hates it. It reminds her of the silent days at the manor—the ones that had followed Verso’s death. Long days when Maman was still stuck in this damned Canvas, when Renoir was too busy trying to drag her out to provide any sort of support.

Days when Alicia was in too much pain to grunt, let alone attempt to speak. When she would sleep endlessly, locked away in her room.

She hates it. Oh, she hates—

“Clea?” The voice is more unsure now, shyer. Such a far cry from the loud, booming cry from earlier. François—her dearest friend, François. “You—You are Clea, right?”

Her breath stutters, sharp and shaky. Clea can feel the moment her composure fractures like glass.

“Yes,” she breathes, taking the smallest of steps forward, her bare feet against the cool cavern floor. “Yes, François, it’s me—”

“Clea!” François whispers. Then, louder, “Oh, Clea, I missed you!”

Her steps come faster now, hurried. The distance feels insurmountable, yet insignificant all at once.

“François, I—” I’m so sorry.

“I waited, Clea! I’ve been waiting for so long!” François cries, joyous—as if he’d spent centuries in a desert without rain. “I knew you would come back!”

She runs for him.

“You waited for me?” Her voice breaks, scrambling to her knees before her hands cup at François’s large masked face. “All this time?”

“Of course I did!” François sobs, his smooth white head bobbing up and down. “I’d wait for you forever, Clea!”)

///

“See?” Sciel whispers, her arms wrapped around Lune’s waist. “Nothing to worry about.”

Lune hums softly, rubbing at Sciel’s back. “Friendships that can last decades, huh?”

Standing on her tiptoes, Sciel presses a kiss to her jaw. “Such things don’t break easily at all.”

///

They sit around in a small circle—Sciel pressed against Lune, Esquie acting as a comfortable chair for Emma and Sophie, and Clea leaning against François, absentmindedly stroking his mushroom-covered shell.

Clea tells François everything. And by extension, she explains in detail for the rest of them, as well. Her childhood spent with Verso in his canvas, the way she’d practiced painting in what would later become the Flying Manor, how she’d painted François as Verso painted Esquie, and together, the four of them would go on grand adventures with the Gestral and Grandis.

It’s the clearest picture Sciel has ever seen of the birth of their world—their own Verso had never gone that deep into it, and Maelle—Alicia—had barely been born during that time at all.

So Clea talks about growing older, and her growing responsibilities. She talks about the Painters’ Council and her role amongst them—her mother’s eventual successor. Her mother’s failure to uphold her duties when Verso died.

And she talks about the fire.

The very fire that had claimed her brother. The very fire that had scarred Alicia Dessendre permanently, stealing her voice, and her eye, and her love for life all at once.

Sciel feels her heart plummet at the sound of it all—that horrible, horrible fire and the endless grief it had caused. A shudder runs down the length of her entire body, and she huddles closer to Lune, her lover tucking her even closer without a second thought.

“I never understood it,” Clea says eventually. Inhale, exhale. “I still don’t. It is not hard to love Alicia. Verso gave his life for her. Renoir bends on his knee for her. And I—”

She cuts herself off, her lips pressing into a straight line.

“You're here,” Sciel finishes for her. “You came to the Canvas because you love her.”

“So how is it?” Clea wonders. “How is it that that woman cannot even bear to look at her? Her own daughter?”

Sciel feels her heart sink to her stomach.

“Me, I understand,” the eldest Dessendre continues, laughing once and it lacks all humor. “Verso was Aline’s favorite. Alicia is still Renoir’s. I held neither’s favor, and that was alright so long as I could paint. But Alicia was also Verso’s favorite. He died to save our precious sister. I thought I'd lost two siblings that day. The fact that she lived at all is nothing short of a miracle, so how—”

“Clea,” Sciel whispers.

“Alicia is a damn miracle,” Clea hisses insistently, eyes full of angry tears.

“A miracle in so many different ways,” Emma agrees, speaking up for the first time since Clea had begun her tale. A look passes between the two of them, as was often these past few days. “She’s blessed so many lives in two different worlds.”

Clea nods silently.

“She deserves to live,” Sophie adds softly. “There’s so much more for her than this weight she carries—a weight that she cannot seem to let go of.”

Sciel loves their friends endlessly.

“My sister owes nothing to our mother.” Clea’s silver eyes, so similar to Maelle’s, seem to gleam in the fire light. “Nothing to our mother, nothing to our father. Nothing to Verso. Nothing to me. We've all made our own choices, our own beds to lie in. Verso was a coddled fool, but I know he shared the same wish as me—for Alicia to live for herself, without regrets.”

“That's why you were willing to accept whatever choice Maelle made,” Lune surmises logically. “And why you wanted her away from the conflict outside the Canvas.”

Clea’s face twists into something resigned. “She would've been a liability even without her injuries. She feels too much, and it shows on her face. Someone earnest like my sister has no place in the godforsaken games that people with power play.”

Besides her, François grumbles. “I miss the days when we would play, just the four of us. Verso, you, me, and the marshmallow.” From where he sits cuddled with Sophie, Esquie coos out an awwww. “No other humans. No one else but us.”

Clea chuckles, patting his hard rock shell affectionately as she sniffs.

“I don't know, friend. These humans might not be so bad. They took me to see you, didn't they?”

“Are you finally admitting that we've grown on you?” Sciel jibes, sharing a low laugh with Lune at the way Clea sighs in defeat. “Oh, come on! You enjoy it when we bother you!”

François merely harrumphs. “Clea has not sung once since returning. Until she does, I’ll maintain you all a nuisance.”

Lune tilts her head at that. “Sung?”

“You sing?” Sophie chimes in, curious.

“She used to sing with me all the time!” François crows proudly.

But then Clea is stiffening, shooting a desperate look Sciel’s way, who immediately clears her throat, keeping her tone light.

“Maybe don’t open your mouth just yet,” she teases. “You’re so out of practice, I fear for my eardrums.”

François squawks indignantly in Clea’s defense at the same time the young woman herself lets out a discreet sigh of relief. The Paintress’s smile is tight but the excuse is welcome, and she nods in a silent thanks beneath François’s unhappy babbling. Meanwhile, understanding dawns in Sophie’s eyes as Lune reaches out and squeezes Sciel’s hand.

It’s Emma, surprisingly yet unsurprisingly, who appears at Clea’s side, a hand coming up to rest on the Painter’s arm. And perhaps even more shocking than that, Clea makes no effort to remove her, inclining her head towards the other woman’s touch instead, her shoulders relaxing.

“What other kinds of mischief did the two of you get up to?” Emma asks, settling easily into Clea’s personal space.

Grateful for the change in subject, Clea chuckles slightly, glancing down at François. “What didn’t we get up to?”

Sciel raises an eyebrow and turns to nudge Lune, only to find the other woman already watching the two with an amused glint in her eye. Besides them, Sophie hides a giggle beneath a dainty hand, and the three women smother down their laughter.

Meanwhile, François huffs indignantly. “Verso would get us into all sorts of trouble!”

Esquie guffaws. “You were just mad you couldn’t run on your own, FranFran!”

And so they talk long into the night, trading stories, swapping jokes, enjoying each other’s company in the presence of old friends. But eventually, the hunger hits, and they realize that they’d all yet to eat, let alone set up a camp.

“Won’t our backs hurt?” Lune wonders when Sciel suggests simply camping in François’s cave.

“That won’t be a problem.”

Rising to her feet, Clea simply waves a hand, a beautiful celestial sky complete with a crescent moon appearing above them, before she spins—lush green grass appearing at their feet, a warm gust of wind making its way through Esquie’s caves.

///

(They avoid the topic of music for the rest of their dinner, which is a shame—Lune thinks. She’s heard the painted Verso’s piano playing before, and she’s listened to Maelle humming enough to know that the teenager can more than carry a tune. It only makes sense that the eldest Dessendre sibling would also be musically talented despite her Painter inclination—Lune just wishes she could witness it.

Still, she doesn’t push. It’s something she’s learned from Sciel, figuring out the careful balance of push and pull and when to simply wait.

This, she acknowledges, is one of those waiting periods.

She gets thrown a bone, though, after they’ve tidied up François’s cave and are settling back down around the campfire.

“I don’t sing much anymore,” Clea eventually says softly, her elbow knocking against Emma’s as she shifts in place uncertainly. Nevertheless, she meets Lune’s curious gaze unwaveringly, “but I do miss the sound of my brother’s guitar. He… He preferred piano, but he was talented and dabbled in guitar on the side.”

Humming, Lune summons her guitar to her grasp, calloused fingers settling familiarly over the frets. She doesn’t know everything about Clea’s past, and they haven’t had the personal conversations like with Sciel, but the determined look on her face is enough.

Or well, both the determined look on Clea’s face and the way Sciel gets all teary-eyed as she gives Lune space to play.

Lune smiles at that—her soft-hearted lover. So different from the Sciel she’d ventured out to save the world with, yet the same. One an extension of the other, an evolution, or perhaps simply a natural progression that Sciel had finally learned to stop fighting against.

The Sciel from Expedition 33 would not have cried. She would’ve been the strong, supportive shoulder, but she would not have cried. Always used to shouldering her emotions alone. Recognizing when her own mask had become a part of her.

But Lune’s Sciel is soft-hearted yet braver. Brave enough to cry in front of her friends and admit when she’s feeling sad. Brave enough to acknowledge when things were wrong, to take steps to make them right again. Brave enough to no longer need that facade that had melded so seamlessly into her soul.

Her soft-hearted lover. Her brave lover.

Sciel.

They’ve made a choice—they have. And Lune is nothing but stubborn, she will see their decision, their truth, through until the end.

And yet, just this once, Lune wishes she could’ve lived another lifetime. Not as a scholar, but as a musician—a lyricist. Training her prose from the age of four with the most silver-tongued, studying with poets who had no other worries but to speak velvet to a devout audience.

Anything—anything, to be able to compose something accurate to the love that spills from her lips.

But there’s no turning back time. There is no going back—only forward.

She’ll have to make do with the songs she already knows, with the songs she can write with what time she has left in this world.

Not wanting to dwell in her contemplative silence for too long, Lune idly strums a major chord, warm and resonant.

“I’m not sure how well my playing can compare to a prodigy,” she says, “but hopefully I’ll sound pleasant enough.”

“Everything you play is beautiful and your voice is like magic,” Sciel cuts in immediately, wonderstruck as Lune grins broadly back at her.

Clea snorts as Emma hides a laugh in the Dessendre woman’s shoulder.

Sophie sighs longingly. “I miss Gustave.”

“And I miss Clea’s singing,” François insists, huffing.

All five women roll their eyes.

“Rocks for brains, mayhaps?” Emma mumbles, Esquie guffawing out an Ohohoho! I really like you, Emma! from where he listens nearby.

“Even if I were to sing,” Clea mutters, side-eyeing François, “I’d have to retrain you to stay in key.”

Lune merely laughs, locking eyes with an eager Sciel once more before she begins to strum a melody.)

///

It’s hard to make the active decision to leave the Continent the following morning—even Emma sighs, wistfully gazing at the beautiful bioluminescence painting the walls of Esquie’s cave before she slumps onto Sciel’s shoulder, bemoaning her return to City Hall.

“One of these days, I’m quitting,” she grumbles, much to Sciel’s bemusement. “Every day spent in the presence of those idiots on the Council eats away at my already limited patience.”

“Want me to just unpaint them?” Clea offers carelessly, stretching her hands above her head. At the stunned silence she receives in response, she blinks, unimpressed. “What? Too soon?”

They all burst into loud, boisterous laughter at that.

Esquie has a prolonged, dramatic goodbye with François, who mumbles out an I’ll miss you, too, I guess, before he’s sent into a blubbering mess by Clea’s shorter, yet equally heartfelt farewell.

(And if Sciel sees the Dessendre woman rapidly blinking back tears as they’re exiting Esquie’s Nest not much later, she says nothing.)

They’re back in Lumière by mid-afternoon, Esquie’s jolly mood somehow allowing him to fly even faster than usual—still as smooth a ride as ever, thankfully. But the quick trip leaves them plenty of time to prepare for the upcoming work week, and the women part ways with many promises to meet up again later in the week.

Sophie leaves first with a bright wave, off to find Gustave at his workshop at the Expedition Academy.

Clea and Emma, interestingly enough, head off in the same direction.

“Take care, Emma!” Sciel shouts after them. “And I’ll see you tomorrow at the schoolhouse, Clea!”

And for a second, Clea falters.

She turns on her heel.

“Sciel!” Clea calls before hesitating again. Emma reaches out, squeezes her hand. Clea nods once, then presses on. “About your suggestion… I’ll think about it.”

Sciel lets out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“Good,” she simply says, smiling. Then she raises her hand and waves harder, until the two women round a corner and vanish out of sight.

Beside her, Lune clicks her tongue, a sound of content.

“That certainly went well.”

Sciel nods. “Better than I could have ever imagined.”

“But you know… That’s not the way to Clea’s apartment,” Lune notes casually.

Sciel hums. “And not the way to Emma’s either.”

They share a brief look.

Then Lune quirks her brow, an unspoken question, and Sciel laughs. She grabs at Lune’s hand and tugs insistently.

“C’mon, you! Let’s go home. I’m eager to finally have you to myself again.”

///

Clea corners her in the hallway the very next morning with just a single word—

“Yes.”

And Sciel smiles wide, relief blooming in the crevices of her chest.

“Thank you, Clea.”

///

Lune helps her put the dress on for the first time—clips it shut, sweeps her hair to the side, then plants a kiss on her nape that sends a shiver down Sciel’s spine, feels it linger in the tips of her toes.

“Lune,” she protests weakly—emphasis on weakly, because she’s always been weak for Lune. Ever since they were young and griefstricken, Sciel has known that she would do anything for the girl in the tower with starlight in her eyes. It’s just a miracle that it’s taken them this long to get to this point. “Lune, we’re going to be late—”

“You’re the one who’s been turning down all the invitations,” Lune says teasingly, her fingers dancing down the expanse of her back. “Since when did you suddenly care about these Friday night parties?”

“Since I decided to finally attend one!” Sciel gasps at the teeth that nip at her ear, swatting playfully at her lover. “Lune! We already have a plan in action!”

“We’re fine, we’re fine! We have plenty of time!” Lune laughs, finally pulling herself away for long enough to give Sciel a long look over. “Twirl around for me?”

Sciel complies obediently, the deep greens of her new dress swishing about her—the color of pine in moonlight, soft and dark and a little wild, like something pulled from a dream they’d once shared.

Lune sucks in a breath, then smiles. “It’s perfect.”

Biting her lip, Sciel looks up at her through her lashes. “Are you sure I can have this? I can’t even imagine how much it cost.”

“Of course you can.” Lune hums, tugging at one of the flowy sleeves, satisfied. “I bought it for you, silly. Back from my last shopping trip with Stella.”

“All the way back then?!” Sciel shakes her head, her brain scrambling to do the mental math. “But we weren’t even—”

“I saw the way you looked at me in the blue dress,” Lune says, shrugging nonchalantly like it should be obvious. “Then, I just couldn’t get it out of my mind—the idea of what you’d look like in something similar. And so, when I was out with Stella and I saw this dress, I realized that it would match your eyes.”

Her mouth suddenly dry, Sciel laughs hoarsely. “And to think, I was just going to wear that black and white formal ensemble we all have.”

Lune tuts disapprovingly. “As if I would let you. You deserve the vibrance of colors.”

“And you?”

“What will I wear, Sciel?”

Sciel licks her lips. “The blue dress.”

And Lune’s mouth curves upwards, feline. “As milady commands.”

///

Maelle smoothes her hands down the front of her dress for what feels like the hundredth time.

It’s silly, really—she’s been to more than a handful of these parties ever since she’d restored Lumière and its residents. But something about tonight makes her feel more jittery than usual. Maybe it’s the way the harbour air clings warm to her skin, still adjusting to the summer heat, or the way the stars seem a little clearer than they have in weeks. Or maybe it’s just the fact that—for once—she picked the dress.

Soft lilac silk, simple but elegant. Not painted, not conjured. Hers. A gift from Gustave and Sophie, tailored to her measurements, the hem brushing lightly against her calves as she walks.

Real. Nicer than anything she’d owned before the restoration. Almost as nice as her clothes from the Manor—the real Manor. The one she’d pushed to the back of her mind time and time again.

She’s halfway down the cobbled promenade toward the usual waterfront restaurant—close enough to hear the muted sounds of music and laughter drifting from the terrace—when a voice calls out behind her.

“Maelle!”

“Oh!”

She turns, already recognizing the voice. Sciel stands just off the road, Lune beside her. Both of them are dressed for the evening too, though they look more like they’ve stepped out of one of Maman’s masterpieces than a formal party.

“Sciel!” Excited, Maelle hurries over to her older friends, her evening already looking up. “Oh, you finally decided to attend!”

“I did,” Sciel chuckles, inclining her head towards Lune. “This one told me she couldn’t handle another evening kissing up to stuffy Councilors on her own.”

“You’ll understand soon enough,” Lune promises ominously, her sigh ringing deep. “I keep getting ‘volunteered’ on behalf of the Expedition Academy.”

Maelle groans. “I wish I could’ve declined, too. They always insist I attend, though, since I’m the one painting all the restorations…”

Sciel softens.

“I see. Well, we were actually wondering…” She offers the younger girl a gentle smile. “Would you mind a detour?”

“A detour?” Maelle blinks.

“It’s not often we get time like this,” Lune adds, her voice kind. “Just us, with no other responsibilities looming over our shoulders.”

Maelle hesitates. The restaurant is right there—she can see the warm candlelight flickering from the patio, hear the faint strains of a string quartet. Gustave, Sophie, and Emma are expecting her. The rest of the Councilors, too.

But Sciel is looking at her with such open hope. And Lune, though quieter, isn’t looking away.

Maelle fixes her skirt and nods.

“Alright,” she relents, allowing herself to smile. She’s missed Sciel and Lune—it almost feels like they’ve been worlds apart recently. “Just for a bit.”

And so she follows them down the sidewalks towards the harbour. It’s familiar—she’s walked it countless times, countless gommages—but tonight it feels different. The lanterns flicker like fireflies in the dark, and the sea below whispers softly against the stone.

And that’s when she sees them.

“Glad you all could make it to the real party.”

Maelle brightens, smiling as Verso beckons her over to where he stands with the others. For once he is out of his expedition uniform, a black fitted suit tailored to his exact size.

Gustave is there as well, in his signature blue suit, Sophie present beside him with a comforting and supportive hand on his shoulder, where flesh meets prosthetic beneath the fabric. The couple greets them with a friendly wave, Verso with a dip of his head, and Maelle jogs over to them eagerly, before pivoting to look back at Sciel and Lune.

“You’re all here! We’re all—” She cuts herself off, nearly stumbling over herself as she catches a glimpse of the water’s edge—two figures, silhouetted by the glow of the Monolith.

“Maelle?” Sciel calls, grounding her back to earth.

“Wh—” The girl stammers, wide eyes flicking from all her friends to the scene before her. “Sciel, what’s going on…?”

Clea sits at the edge of the harbour, talking in low, quiet tones with Emma. Engrossed in their conversation, Emma dons another one of her formal, elegant dresses while Clea, in true form, remains standard—pinstripe shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and her long, navy blue skirt. But at the commotion behind them, Clea pauses, glancing behind her and catching Maelle’s stunned expression.

Slowly, she rises, then pulls Emma to her feet with her. All the while, silver meets silver, and Clea tips her head, the corner of her mouth quirking up.

“Alicia.”

Maelle, unable to read her sister’s tone, ducks her head.

“Clea.”

“It's a beautiful city you've got,” Clea comments, hands on her hips. “You've done a commendable job with its restoration.”

Blinking in surprise, Maelle seems to straighten. “You—You really think so?”

“I do. I've been living here for a bit, actually. A few months now—a relatively insignificant time in our world.” At the wary expression that takes over Maelle’s face, Clea scoffs. “Oh, don't look at me like that, dear sister. I was content to remain a silent observer until your persistent friends came and dragged me into the light.”

“You…” Maelle blanches, looking around in a daze. “You all knew…?”

It's Sciel who shakes her head. “Not everyone. Not until recently.”

Clea shrugs. “Maybe if you'd visited Sciel at the schoolhouse more, you would've seen me, too.”

Maelle gapes.

“You're a teacher?” She looks to Sciel for confirmation, who laughs under her breath, offering a shrug of her own. Then the silver-haired girl rounds back on her sister, incredulous. “A teacher?! You?”

Clea sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. She looks to Lune. “I feel like I should be insulted.”

Lune chuckles. “To be fair, I would've never expected any member of the Dessendre family to go anywhere near children.”

Maelle winces. Clea pays no mind.

“On the contrary, I think I'm rather good at being a teacher.” Crossing her arms, Clea shifts on one leg, bobbing her back and forth, as if in thought. “It's fascinating, watching how children behave. Especially when I wasn't allowed to act much like one in our own household. Do you get what I mean, Alicia? There's this earnestness that comes with youth. And all too often, it gets lost along the way, when we grow up.”

Maelle, who had looked ready to interject just a heartbeat prior, immediately grows silent. She stares up at Clea with big, begging eyes—as if praying for her to stop while ahead.

But Clea does not heed her plea.

“It's that same earnestness,” Clea continues, beginning to take slow steps towards her sister, “that I see all throughout Lumière. Your Lumière, Alicia. Not our mother’s—the Lumière that you've been restoring. It's beautiful and lively, a keepsake of Paris yet somehow trapped in time. But Alicia—”

“Clea,” Maelle cries, rushing to her with fear in her eyes. “ Don't—”

“Alicia.” Clea grips her by the shoulders, silver once again meeting silver. “What was the cost?”

Maelle stares at her, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Words fail her. Her mouth opens and closes but nothing comes out.

Clea surges on.

“How many days were you bedridden?” Her gaze flicks to Lune, who gives her an indiscernible nod. “How many times did you cough until your lungs ached? How many mornings did you wake up short of breath, nightmares terrorizing your sleep?”

“Stop!” Maelle cries. “Stop!”

“How far will you go, little shadow?” Clea presses. “How far will you go to keep this beautiful dream your reality?”

“It is reality!” Maelle insists, throwing out her arm to gesture to her friends, her family. “Our reality!”

“Their reality,” Clea corrects. “Our Canvas.”

Maelle flinches.

She staggers a step back.

The world blurs at the edges of her vision—not because the Canvas is fading, but because she is. Because for all its vibrant beauty, Lumière cannot protect her from Clea’s truth. From the truth she already knows, that she's been running so desperately away from.

She squeezes her eyes shut. Shakes her head. As if denial might peel away the reality clinging to her skin.

But Clea does not reach for her again. None of them do. Not yet.

And that, somehow, hurts the most.

Because now she is standing in the silence they’ve all accepted. She is alone in her refusal.

Her voice cracks in her chest, useless. Her hands tremble, reaching for something—anything—to hold onto.

But there is no fantasy left to clutch. 

“Maelle,” Sciel murmurs, her hand trailing over the silver-haired girl’s back only to grasp gently at her shoulder. “Maelle, we must move forward.”

“All of us,” Lune adds, sharing a meaningful look over the young Paintress’s head. “No more stagnancy. No more hiding.”

“I—” Maelle shakes her head, bottom lip trembling. She scrambles for Sciel’s hand, then grasps blindly for Lune’s. “I still don't want to go! If I leave, then the Canvas will be—”

“Destroyed, yes,” Clea finishes. “But not by Renoir. Not by his hand.”

Maelle’s eyes widen, reaching for her with shaking hands. “Then… By—”

“Me.” Clea takes her hand, squeezes gently. “This Canvas will be destroyed by me, and only me.” She smiles faintly. “I did paint half of it, after all—it’s only fair.”

The younger Dessendre stares at her, speechless.

“We’ve talked about it,” Clea continues, gesturing to the circle of adults who had so rapidly become so meaningful to her as well. “All of us, and we’re all in agreement.”

“All of you?” Maelle whispers. First she looks to Lune, who dips her head solemnly. Then, she whips her head around to look at Gustave, who smiles at her comfortingly. With a small cry of betrayal, Maelle twists around, seeking comfort from Sciel, who parts her arms and welcomes her into her embrace willingly.

“It’ll be okay, sweetie,” she whispers, her heart aching. “Everything will be okay.”

“I don’t want to lose you all! I don’t—” Maelle chokes on her words, and her gaze lands on Verso, who had been silently observing from the side. She looks into his eyes and seems to deflate under what she finds there. “You… You never wanted this…”

“I wanted you to find happiness, Maelle,” Verso tells her truthfully, his voice low with emotion. “Happiness without conditions, without some death sentence.”

“You still want to fade,” Maelle says miserably, gripping at Sciel desperately even as she pulls away. Her eyes are trained to him, even as he finally moves forward. “And I’ve kept you tethered here.”

“You tethered me with love in your heart,” Verso murmurs, kneeling before her. “It was out of love, I know it, Maelle, but it was also out of grief. I’m not your Verso, not your brother, and I cannot take his place. And as long as I exist here, as long as this Canvas exists, we are chained to each other. Love… can be a heavy burden. But it is not meant to anchor you like as it has.”

“I’m sorry,” Maelle breathes, her shoulders heaving. “You’re… You’re tired, but I didn’t want to believe you. I’m so sorry—”

“You’re tired, too.”

“I—” Maelle shakes her head vigorously. “I’m fine! I’m—” She steels herself for a single, suspending moment. “Still! If I leave, then all of you will be—”

“We’re all ready and willing, Maelle,” Gustave says gently, and he smiles bravely, touching her shoulder with meaning. “Let the adults protect you this time, alright?”

“Maybe the adults out there failed you,” Sciel murmurs against silver hair, Maelle hugging her back just as hard, “but we don’t have to, sweet girl.”

“We don’t want to,” Lune emphasizes. “We’re figuring it out right alongside you, Maelle.”

“But I’m scared,” Maelle admits, blinking rapidly to keep the tears at bay. “You’re all in here, and I—I don’t have anyone outside the Canvas. I can’t speak out there… And other people are scared of me… There’s no one to—”

“You have me,” Clea says fervently. “You’ve always had me. I’m just… I’m just sorry I was so horrible at expressing it. I’m sorry for being so angry all the time, and terse, and awful.” Her jaw tensing in frustration, Clea forces herself to breathe. “Being completely transparent, I don’t always know how to turn it off, Alicia. I feel like I’ve been angry my whole life. But not at you—never like this.”

“It’s alright,” Maelle says softly. “I get it. I feel like I’ve been sad my whole life.”

A broken, cracked laugh leaves Clea’s lips.

“I suppose we both have some things we need to work on,” she says with a chuckle. Then, gentler, “We can figure it out together, if you’d like?”

Maelle nods, gazing up at her through wet lashes. She still grips onto Sciel, but she smiles weakly at the elder Dessendre.

“Maybe if we put our pieces together, we can make one whole happy person,” Maelle says with something between a hiccup and a giggle.

And Clea laughs—honest-to-god laughs. “What a sight we’d make, right? The pair of us.”

Sniffing, Maelle finally detaches from Sciel’s side and reaches out for her sister. Clea acquiesces, taking Maelle into her arms and breathing out—a deep sigh of relief.

“It…” Maelle swallows. “It doesn’t have to be right away, right? I don’t have to go right now?”

“No, of course not.” Clea shakes her head, carding deft, soothing fingers through Maelle’s hair. “We’ll have to go home sooner or later, but you still have time to have lots of fun with everyone.”

“We’ll have a blast, Maelle,” Verso promises, his charming smile returning to his face—unforced, effortless. Like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. “We’ll make the most of every single day.”

“So long as you ease up on the painting,” Lune interjects, clicking her tongue once. “Clea’s here now—if you want something made, just ask her.”

“And then I’ll decide if it’s worth it,” Clea adds wryly.

///

“So,” Eventually, once her tears have finally stopped pouring down her cheeks, Maelle looks around at all the adults—her family—while shifting from foot to foot sheepishly. Gingerly, she rubs at her right eye, sniffling and a bit teary but her tentative smile is brave. “What do we do now?”

“Now,” Emma states, having remained silent for the duration of their talk, crosses her arms with one perfectly arched brow, “we hijack that party and take all the liquor. I think we all need it.”

Clea, now standing by her side as if attached by the hip, stares at the Chief Councilor incredulously. “I never thought I'd hear that from you, of all people.”

Emma merely scoffs. “Maybe I'm uptight, but I'm not a prude. How do you think I deal with my coworkers every day?”

Having seemed to have just registered the two women’s apparent closeness, Maelle glances between them in surprise—Sciel can virtually see the gears churning in her head.

But before she can ponder for too long, Sophie chuckles, quiet with a spark of something. She, too, had let the others do the talking, but she reaches for Maelle regardless, swinging their joined hands in that soothing way Sophie has become so beloved for.

“Don’t worry,” she winks. “We’ll find some apple juice for you, too.”

Maelle laughs wetly, the light already returning to her eyes. Then she nods with newfound eagerness, taking the hand that Lune, surprisingly, extends to her, before throwing all caution to the wind—she launches herself into Lune’s arms, Lune laughing as an achingly bright happiness surges through Sciel at the sight.

“What's this?” Lune asks, quiet enough for only Maelle and Sciel to hear.

“Just wanted to,” Maelle mumbles, now securely tucked into the raven-haired woman’s side. Lune’s arm shifts so that it rests over Maelle's shoulders, and Maelle sighs, sinking into Lune's embrace. “I think that… when I realized you stood with everyone else, Lune… that's when I knew my days here were coming to an end.”

Lune makes a low noise, but says nothing.

“It scared me,” Maelle confesses. “Because you had fought the hardest for this world during the expedition. Because I knew that your change of mind wasn't something you could've decided easily.”

“It was hard to admit,” Lune relents, and she continues to hold Maelle unrepentingly, tucks a strand of hair behind Maelle's ear. “I didn't want to admit to being wrong. That we’d been wrong.” Still, she smiles. “But even now, I still don't think we were wrong, Maelle. If we didn't have this extra time, I wouldn't have found Sciel again. We wouldn't have met Clea. We wouldn't have all been able to gather like this.”

She gestures to all of their friends, who have taken to mingling amongst themselves as Lune and Maelle converse. Sciel stays silent as she stands close to them—the two other women who she'd been to hell and back with. The two other women Sciel would face the Paintress with all over again, should the need arise.

“We've all grown closer thanks to you, and I…” Lune laughs. “Well, you know me. I didn't have many friends before.”

The look in Maelle's eyes softens. “I just wish you could have even more time with everyone. With Sciel. The two of you have been so happy together…”

Lune inclines her head thoughtfully.

“I’ve been thinking a lot recently. Mostly about this idea of friendships lasting decades—maybe even centuries.” She tips her head in the other direction, contemplative. “Surely, if a friendship can last even that long, it can weather even longer divides.”

“Do you really think so?” Maelle asks, voice small.

Lune nods.

“What Sciel and I have,” she meets Sciel’s eye, and Sciel feels her legs grow weak at the warmth there, “it can’t be severed so easily. Not at all. And all of us… Beyond life. Beyond death. Even if it can't be proven in this lifetime, I think we all carry each other with us, wherever we end up.”

“What she's trying to say is that you're stuck with us, Maelle,” Sciel adds with a grin. She reaches out to pinch the younger girl’s cheek, much to Maelle's protests. “Regardless of if you're in the Canvas or out of it.”

“You two…” Maelle pulls back, looks both of them in the eye—her longest companions. Her most faithful, to hell and back. “You don't… You don't regret any of it?”

Sciel shakes her head as Lune says it—“Not a single moment.”

“Alright. That's truly all I can ask.” Then, Maelle giggles quietly, nuzzling back into Lune. “Sciel’s turned you into a big softie, Lune.”

Lune scrunches her brow, frowning. “Is it that bad?”

Maelle nods, her smile stretching wider. “It is, but I kind of love it. It suits you.”

And Sciel coos, leaning over to plant a kiss on Lune's cheek.

“I love it, too.”

///

(“Did you win, Clea?” Maelle asks curiously, a bit later, after the wine had been brought out and she had stolen her sister away to the balcony before Clea could even finish her first glass. “Is the war with the Writers over?”

At that, Clea halts. Then, with a quiet huff, she shakes her head.

“No. No, it’s not, actually. Renoir is handling things while I’m gone.”

“Oh.” Maelle blinks—not judgementally. Just processing. “That’s alright. I’m sure the tide will turn in our favor soon enough.”

“I hope so, too.”

“I’m just… surprised, I think.” Maelle fiddles with the hem of her skirt almost shyly. “I thought you’d be too busy to ever enter Verso’s Canvas yourself. And I… I thought you wouldn’t want to.”

“I thought so, too.” Clea’s shoulders sag, and she stares upwards at the sky. “I thought I didn’t want to see this place ever again.”

“What changed?” Maelle inquires.

And Clea simply smiles, equal swatches of both sadness and relief. She twists the glass of wine in hand, watching the liquid swirl around and around.

“I woke up one morning and realized that I’d grown tired of staying mad. I didn't have much in mind, I just knew I needed to do something about it.”)

Chapter Text

And in true Expedition 33 fashion, Sciel and Verso linger at the harbour for just a bit longer than the rest, having stolen glasses of wine before making their escape.

“You’re going to get your dress dirty,” Verso tells her as she settles in her usual spot, her heels removed so she can freely kick her legs over the edge. Beneath them, the sea is gentle as it laps against stone, brine kissing her heels as she swings them to-and-fro.

“It’s alright. Nearly anything can be washed anew, as we found out plenty during the expedition.” Sciel sends him a pointed look. “So? Are you going to join me, Mr. Suit-and-Tie?”

Verso chuckles roughly, lowering himself to the ground beside her.

They kick their feet out over the waves together.

“I'm sorry,” Sciel eventually tells him, and she means it. The words resound through her mind, the words she'd once said to him— Death is no longer just death. How foolish she'd been. “Back during the expedition, I said some things to you. And… in hindsight, I was being really shallow.”

Verso shakes his head. “You were just calling out our new reality. With Maelle’s powers back, death really was no longer just death.”

“Still.” Sciel cranes her neck up, debates what to tell the stars of today’s events. “I don’t think I fully grasped the implication, but I did understand some of it. I think I was still mad at you, right after we were brought back. I think some part of me wanted it to sting.”

“It’s alright,” Verso promises. He, too, stares up at the night sky. “I betrayed you all. I withheld information. I got attached time and time again, and I still chose myself over all of you. More than once.”

“You were tired.”

Verso laughs. “I deserved it when Lune called me a fucking coward.”

“Okay, maybe you deserved that.” Sciel finds herself laughing, too. Then, curiously, she peers at him. “How did you get her to forgive you, anyway? After we defeated Renoir and we watched you face off against Maelle on that battlefield?”

“We talked a lot on our trips to the Continent.” Verso’s face scrunches, makes a funny expression. “Fought a lot, too. Especially on that first trip. I lost count of the amount of times she hit me with her Lightning Dance and Elemental Genesis.”

Even Sciel winces at that. “Yikes.”

Verso shrugs once. “It was necessary. And, well, you already know how I felt about her. But I was angry, too. Our fights were good for both of us—lots of stuff bottled up got wrenched out into the open. But by the end, we had some sort of new understanding. We understood each other a lot better.”

Sciel hums. “Sometimes, tackling something literally head on can be the simplest solution.”

“But she really was right about some things. There were times I could’ve acted differently,” Verso acknowledges, offering a rueful smile. “Maybe if I’d trusted you all a bit more—if I’d been a bit less hopeless—we could’ve found another way sooner.”

“It’s something to consider,” Sciel replies, taking a small sip of her wine, “but ultimately, there were just so many factors at play. Like what would have happened if you hadn’t needed to wait for so long for a successful expedition, or how the world would have turned out if Alicia Dessendre had been reborn into the Canvas just a few years sooner.”

Verso chuckles. He swirls his own glass once, watches the red liquid dip.

“This is true, too.”

“Would I have ever met you?” Sciel wonders. “Would I ever have met Maelle? If there had been no further need for expeditions, would I have ever reconnected with Lune?”

“Scary thoughts, huh?”

“It’s strange thinking about how our lives could be so different.”

“It is, indeed.” Verso smiles wearily. “And now your days are numbered again.”

“Yes, but not in a bad way.” Sciel tips her head back, taking a long swig of wine before exhaling, licking her lips as she smiles, resigned but content. “Or at least, not in the worst way.”

“There are worse ways to go than Clea Dessendre.” Then Verso pauses. “If you'd told me I'd be saying that a month ago, I wouldn't have believed you.”

Sciel laughs, knocks their shoulders together. “Little did we know!”

“So little we did!”

And they fall into a momentary silence.

Eventually, Sciel sighs, finally letting herself slouch after a long day. “Today has been exhausting. These past months, actually—absolutely, utterly exhausting.”

“It has,” Verso agreed, chuckling lowly. He takes another sip of his wine.

“But it wasn't all bad,” Sciel relents. Because these past few months had given her Lune. Because these past few months had gotten Sciel her life back. “There were rough moments, but it's all going to be worth it.”

“It wasn't all bad,” Verso agrees quietly, wringing his hands out. “It…” A small, secretive smile plays at his lips—so different from the charming, roguish smiles Sciel had gotten so used to. “Yeah. It wasn't that bad at all.”

Sciel’s jaw drops.

“Verso,” she says.

“What?” he asks, but his smile turns a shade goofy, and Sciel laughs in disbelief.

“You’re unbelievable!” She scolds him, but even she can’t hide the wide stretch of her own grin. “When were you going to tell us that you’ve found somebody?”

“Eventually!” Verso says defensively, but there’s a warmth in his tone that Sciel has never heard before. “I did, though. Find someone, I mean. Someone I knew in the past, actually.”

Sciel’s eyes widen. “Is it…?”

“It is.”

“And she knows?” Sciel asks softly. “You told her about everything that happened?”

Verso nods, taking a deep breath. “I… I did, yeah. And I apologized a lot. It’s part of why I haven’t always been around.”

Sciel raises an eyebrow, grinning. “You’ve been groveling?”

Verso laughs. “The hardest I’ve ever groveled in my life. I’ll… I’ll introduce her to you guys sometime. Before everything’s over.”

“I’d like that.” And Sciel takes his hand, smiles at him brilliantly. “I think we’d all like that—knowing that you’ve found yourself a bit of happiness despite it all.”

They toast to that and down the rest of their wine.

///

The night ends with a sleepover, of all things, at Gustave and Emma’s house.

Sciel’s not sure how many drinks she’s had by the time Emma is ushering her in through the door, but she’s plenty sober enough to follow her friend’s well-meaning instructions. Arm-in-arm with Sophie, they make their way to the bathroom to wash up and change.

Eventually, when she’s feeling like herself once more, she piles onto Emma’s bed—herself on the left, Sophie in the middle, and Emma on the right—and Sciel feels like a teenager again, shimmying under the covers with her closest friends, trading secrets under their breaths as if they'd get in trouble.

“Where's Lune?” Emma asks as she’s handing Sophie a spare pillow. “I didn’t see her as we were leaving. Oh, don't tell me she's still with the boys?”

“They abducted her and Clea.” Sciel chuckles, recalling Lune’s disgusted expression as Gustave and Verso had slung their arms over her shoulders, a laughing Maelle tugging a resigned Clea along—a merry band, the five of them. “I think Maelle was the conductor.”

Sophie giggles, snuggling up to Sciel as Emma turns off the light. “After the night she just had, Maelle deserves to be humored. It was great to see her in good spirits despite all the heavy topics.”

“I agree,” Sciel murmurs, and they lapse into a pregnant silence.

Then—

“Sciel?”

“What is it, Soph?”

“Can I ask you something a bit random?”

“Of course. What’s up?”

“What's it like?” Sophie questions, genuinely curious. She shifts onto her side, her cheek pressing against the smooth fabric of her pillow. “Being with another woman, I mean.”

In the dark, Sciel can just make out the outline of Emma grow still, as if listening intently.

“It's… Well, it's everything a relationship is when there's love involved, really.” Sciel hums thoughtfully. For a moment, she closes her eyes, recalling the familiar feeling of Lune’s body, the ways she'd grown used to the places they'd press so perfectly into each other. The curve of Lune’s lips when they’d kiss. Lune’s hands, slender and lithe, so different from a man’s—the best kind of different. “But I also suppose it's softer, mostly. Lune is softer than any man I've ever been with.”

“Her lips are actually moisturized?” Sophie supplies, eyes twinkling.

“Yes!” Sciel laughs, although it comes out more girlish than she'd expected. Blushing slightly, her fingers knead the comforter shyly. “Plus, since she's also a girl… there were some things that just came more naturally to us.”

“So, Lune is incredibly intelligent,” Emma counts off, raising one finger, “deadly in combat, a gifted healer, musically talented, devastatingly beautiful, an attentive girlfriend, and amazing in bed?”

“Aren't I lucky?” Despite her face being ablaze, Sciel cannot help the pride that swells in her chest. “And she's all mine.”

“Save some for the rest of us,” Emma jokes quietly, but there's a note of something, a blip in her tone, that has Sciel and Sophie sharing a knowing look.

Suddenly they're both shooting up, a twin pair of energetic grins looking down at a startled Emma, who clutches the blanket to her chest.

“Guys?!”

“Where did you and Clea go after we got back to Lumière?” Sciel asks hurriedly, leaning over Sophie’s legs in excitement.

Sophie gasps. “Emma went somewhere alone with Clea?!”

“Yes! Lune and I saw them walking off together, and it was not in the direction of either their places—”

“Why are we suddenly talking about Clea?!”  Emma grouses. “I thought we were talking about Lune!”

Sciel waves her off. “We can always circle back to Lune later. I've been dying to know about this ever since we returned from our trip!”

“What happened to sleeping?” Emma throws a hand over her eyes, groaning.

“We're not tired anymore,” Sophie says instantly.

“It's Saturday tomorrow,” Sciel adds.

“I can't believe you're both older than me…” Emma pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing deeply once more.

Then, begrudgingly and reluctantly, she reaches over, the covers shifting with the movement, and turns the light back on.

“If I tell you what Clea and I did that day, can we all sleep after?”

Sciel and Sophie nod vigorously, and that’s that.

///

They, in fact, do not go to sleep after Emma relays the events of that day to them.

Sophie ends up gasping, then gushing, which leads into a different storytime entirely—one about Gustave, and a time he’d buried himself in his workshop mysteriously, only to emerge a week later with the most gorgeous music box she’d ever seen. By the time Sophie’s halfway through, Sciel is too entertained and Emma too invested for any of them to even recognize the time on the clock.

Inevitably, they do circle back to Lune—Sciel opens up about the first time they’d met in the Crooked Tower, when they’d comforted each other far away from the emotional strife of the harbour and its petals. She talks about the day they’d found each other again, the words they couldn’t say. Thirteen years of Lune’s distance crashing to a halt when they’d realized— this is it, we’re all that’s left.

She tells them about the nights spent wrapped in each other’s arms. How she’d fallen asleep instantly that first night. How Lune had come to expect her at the end of every day. How she’d returned to Lumière, laid awake in a bed that felt foreign, and took far too long to realize what was wrong.

How a single night in Lune’s bed and Lune’s arms had been enough to wipe it all away.

“Sometimes I still feel guilty,” Sciel confesses to them. “That I couldn’t fit into Pierre’s life the way I once did. That I ended things and wound up far happier soon after. But I didn’t… I didn’t want to lead him on any further.”

Emma exhales. “You did the right thing, Sciel. It would’ve only been worse for both of you if you’d stayed longer.”

“You’re right.” Sciel smiles tiredly. “And Pierre said he understood—when I explained everything to him, that day. I told him how I’d been feeling, and he was sad, but he said he could see it. That my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.” She chuckles. “By then, even he knew what would be best for me.”

Sophie nods, somber in the dark. “Pierre is a good man. It’s just that… you both were no longer what each other needed. And that’s alright.”

“Besides, I think anyone with eyes can see that Lune is just what you need,” Emma adds, teasing yet sincere. “It’s been nice, Sciel. Getting to see you glow again.”

And so the three of them talk until the sun rises.

///

Sciel thinks she’s going crazy when she hears a thunk on Emma’s bedroom window.

She shoots up from her pillow, a quick glance at the clock telling her that it’s ten in the morning—they must’ve fallen asleep somewhere between six or seven earlier. It’s all a haze, as are most all-nighters, and Sciel groans under her breath, about to collapse onto her pillow once more when she hears it again—

Thunk.

“What could that possibly be?” Emma grumbles from her side of the bed, barely awake herself.

Thunk.

“I’m going insane,” Sciel mutters. “It’s the lack of sleep.”

Thunk.

“Scieeeeeel,” Sophie whines, tugging at Sciel’s sleepshirt. “You’re basically up already. Please?”

And so Sciel sighs, hauling herself off the bed and heading over to the window.

She pushes aside the curtains, blinking at the bright light that streams in, and—

Sciel does a double take. Then a third, just in case.

A giant grin slowly spreads across her face.

She sprints away from the window, launching herself onto the bed with a bright laugh.

“Emma, Sophie, up, up, up!”

Sophie yelps at her friend’s disruption. “Sciel?!”

“What did you see out there?” Emma sputters.

“Don’t look! Just get up! We need to go to the yard!”

It takes a solid three minutes for Sciel to corral her friends down the stairs, bugging them to hurry and put on their shoes before steering them out the backdoor towards the lovely green yard behind the siblings’ house.

Sciel whoops as she charges outside.

Behind her, Emma and Sophie stop dead in their tracks, frozen in the doorframe.

“What's going on here?” Emma’s eyes widen. “Is that—”

“Snow!” Sciel cheers, taking no time at all to launch herself into a pile, tackling a laughing Lune in the process. Their sprawling collapse is cushioned by the soft, powdery sensation, and Sciel laughs as Lune tugs her down into a hug, relishing in the chill contrast to Lune’s warmer touch. “And it's not even melting!”

Lune grins cheekily. She's out of her dress now—at some point, she and the others had changed into their expedition uniforms.

“Did you like our snowballs?”

Sciel rolls her eyes, bumping her forehead against the raven-haired woman’s. “Not my most ideal wake-up call, but I’ll give you points for creativity.”

Gustave pops his head out from a rather large mound that had formed, his wide, wide smile full of childlike wonder.

“You guys have to try it,” he calls, shaking his head to get the snow off much like a dog would, much to the amusement of a giggling Sophie. She crouches nearby to take his face within her hands, plants a peck on his cheek. “It's a savior in this heat.”

“Where did it all come from?” Sophie asks in awe.

“And how is this possible?” Emma gawks. “It’s too hot in Lumière all year around for snow, let alone in the summer.”

Their answer comes swiftly.

“Clea, again!” Maelle’s laughter lifts above the newcomers’ chatter. “Again!”

And from somewhere else amongst the snowy mounds, there's a sigh.

“Alright, alright. Last time, okay?”

Finding herself successfully in Lune’s lap, Sciel sits up, glancing at lover in confusion.

“What…? Was that Maelle and Clea just now?”

Pushing herself upright as well, Lune shakes her head, fingers splaying across Sciel’s midriff as she smothers her smile against the shorter woman's shoulder.

“Wait for it.”

And before Sciel can question any further, a loud WHOOSH fills her ears and when she looks up, two girls have been shot into the sky, Maelle shrieking in excitement as Clea grips at her shoulders. They suspend midair for a brief moment before toppling back down to the earth, tumbling into the soft snow amidst Maelle’s shouts of glee.

In the end, the Dessendre girls are a tangle of limbs. Maelle giggles as she disentangles herself from her sister, sitting up with a sparkle in her silvery eyes.

“I think that was the highest today!”

“You think?” Clea flicks her hand, a gust of wind following the motion to dance in Maelle’s hair, eliciting more giggles.

Sticking her tongue out, Maelle shoves her sister playfully before scrambling over to Gustave.

“Gustave! A second opinion?”

“The highest you've flown this whole morning, Maelle!”

And from where they watch within their own snowy embrace, Lune pinches Sciel’s waist, eliciting a surprised squeak from the shorter woman.

“Lune!” Sciel twists in her lover’s hold, nose scrunching.

“Eyes on me, silly.” Lune grins, and from the corner of her eye, Sciel sees the telltale glint of chroma as Lune blows, a cool breeze washing over her face.

Sciel blinks, her smile returning in an instant.

“So, what is it exactly that you've all been doing?” She gestures to all the snow. “You know. Since you were dragged off last night.”

“Well, during dinner, Gustave and I were a bit curious about how Clea’s Paintress powers differ from Maelle’s,” Lune explains dryly, drumming her fingers on Sciel’s thigh. “Even Maelle didn’t know her sister’s full potential, though, so we just decided to ask. Clea was bored, and Verso just happened to be with her. We were all varying degrees of drunk and Maelle insisted on having some fun, so here we are.”

“Ever the erudites, aren't you all?” Sciel chuckles, planting a kiss to Lune's cheek. “And how'd we end up with all this snow?”

Lune shrugs. “It started out pretty simple—we asked Clea to create some of those magic chroma frogs, like the one Maelle tried to make last time. It proved to be child's play for her, naturally, so we just started throwing out random requests.”

“Wait.” Sciel furrows her brow, looking around. “What happened to the frogs?”

Lune waves dismissively. “They're somewhere out there on the Continent now. I think Clea transported them…” She frowns. “Clea! Where did you put the frogs again?”

“Flying Waters,” Clea calls back lazily. “I'm sure they'll be at home there.”

“There’s a flaming unicorn roaming around the Frozen Hearts now,” Verso adds helpfully. “And a giant, pink cloud dragon somewhere above the Reacher.”

“That one was my request,” Maelle chimes in.

“But then eventually, the sun rose and it started getting hot again,” Verso continues, and he jerks his thumb in Gustave’s direction. “This one began complaining about the growing summer heat—” Gustave squawks in protest, “—so I asked Clea for some snow. Gustave had never seen snow before, so Clea made even more, and—”

“Here we are,” Lune says.

“Here we are,” Maelle, Gustave, and Verso echo.

“If you can't tell,” Clea adds sardonically, “we haven't had much sleep.”

“We can see that.” Sophie giggles, her hands on Gustave's shoulders. “And to be fair, we didn't get much either.”

Lune turns back to Sciel questioningly, whose grin only promises trouble.

“Oh, sleepovers. Girl talk. You know how it is.”

///

(From where she still lays sprawled out in the snow, her long, auburn hair fanning about her like a lion’s mane, Clea eventually smirks.

“Hello, Emma.”

“Clea.” Emma crouches beside her, brushes snow off the Paintress’s shoulders and unruly hair out of her face. “You’re a mess.”

“Painting gets messy, that's just how it is.”

Emma sighs. “You're lucky I'm good at dealing with messes.”

Clea makes a small noise of acknowledgement.

“Hmm. Lucky, indeed.”

She lets Emma dump a handful of snow onto her stomach. She wrinkles her nose in dramatic distaste, pretends to shudder from the chill, closes her eyes and listens to Emma’s laughter carry on a warm summer breeze.

It’s absurd, the reminiscent feeling of longing that aches from every bone in her body.

Almost as absurd as snow in summer.)

///

The rest of the day is, unsurprisingly, spent sleeping.

In the comfort of their own home, Sciel finally tumbles into bed, pulling Lune down on top of her, and they remain like that for the remainder of the daytime—tangled together, limb to limb, shifting around the mattress in tandem. Always touching in some way, Sciel’s heart hopelessly full.

She dreams of Lune, because of course she does.

Of holding Lune’s hand amongst the chatter of their friends, hooking their pinkies together even when in separate conversations. Of watching Lune strum her guitar in front of an enraptured classroom, a chord progression shifting from minor to major. Of teaching Lune how to dance in the stillness of their apartment, whether in the sunlight trickling in or under the shine of the moon.

Of charging into battle with her scythe and foretell, Lune flanking her with ease as she glides over the ground, ethereal.

Of surrendering to a warm, bright light in the comfort and safety of Lune’s arms.

She dreams of Lune in the loud moments, and the quiet moments, and all of those moments that fall in between or anywhere else.

Sciel dreams of Lune, and they are wonderful, wonderful dreams.

And when she wakes, gentle fingers stroking the scar across her stomach draw her back to reality. Soft lips leave a trail of kisses from her temple, down to her neck, and Sciel’s eyes flutter open to Lune peering up at her through her lashes, somehow looking both shy and smug all at once.

“Hey stranger,” Sciel says, smiling groggily.

“Hi stranger,” Lune replies, chuckling as she nudges at Sciel’s cheek with her nose.

“Have I ever mentioned how much I adore how affectionate you've become?” Sciel wonders aloud. She reaches up, fingers carding through raven black hair, scratching at Lune’s scalp in a soothing manner.

 Lune hums, leaning into the touch. “Apparently that's what over three decades of touch starvation does to a person.”

“Did Maelle tell you that?”

“Who else? Certainly not Clea.”

“Hah!” Sciel laughs, softening when she sees the way Lune’s eyes sparkle at the sound—twinkling starlight. She’s so grateful that it hadn’t dulled after everything they’d lived through. “So, you’re making up for lost time.”

“With what time I’ve got.” And not a hint of Lune sounds sad about it. She presses another chaste kiss to Sciel's lips, pulling away with a certain type of tender fondness. “I plan on making the most of it.”

“There’s an infinite amount of numbers between zero and one,” Sciel mumbles, easily distracted—she tends to do that, when she gets a bit too trapped in Lune’s dark eyes. “Clea told me that once.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Which means that I’ve had an infinite amount more time with you today than I did yesterday, ma chérie .”

Lune laughs, a musical cadence underscored by sheer adoration.

“This is true. And I am truly honored to have gotten to spend infinities with you, Sciel.”

///

The request comes without fanfare.

Clea stops by the apartment just after breakfast, voice quiet but firm, asking if they can talk somewhere private. There’s something about her tone—measured, brittle at the edges—that makes Sciel follow without hesitation.

She leaves with a kiss to Lune’s cheek and a quiet promise—“I’ll tell you everything later.”

And so they walk in silence to Clea’s apartment, tucked away at the far edge of the newest restoration of residential buildings. Sciel’s never been inside before, and for a Paintress—someone who could, theoretically, reshape her surroundings at will—Clea’s home is startlingly normal. Worn floorboards. A small dining table with only two chairs. The faint scent of paint and tea. Nothing overly curated or performative. Just… surprisingly lived-in.

Clea leads her to a room at the back of the apartment. The sculpting studio—though it feels more like a sanctuary. Tools are arranged with careful precision along the walls, and faint flecks of clay still cling to the edge of the counters. Sunlight filters in from a high window, dust catching on the beams like powdered gold.

Sciel doesn’t speak, opting to wait in silence.

Clea stands near a worktable, one hand resting on a familiar figure—François, lovingly recreated in miniature, slightly more faithful than the rock version Esquie had carved of him (and Clea). And her fingers linger there, hesitant.

Then she turns.

“Don’t tell Alicia—” she says quietly, like the words had been building in her throat for a long time. Then she pauses, continues. “Don’t inform Alicia about anything regarding what I’m going to tell you.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” And it’s true—the fact that Clea had asked to meet with Sciel separately, alone, had spoken volumes. The thought of telling Maelle hadn’t even crossed her mind. Still, Sciel tilts her head. “Why?”

“It would defeat the purpose of what I’m trying to do.”

“Which is?”

Clea hesitates, then sighs. “Sorry. I'm still trying to find the words.”

“That's alright,” Sciel tells her. “I get it.”

They fall into another silence. Then—

“Clea?”

“Yes?”

“Promise me you'll do your best? When you erase us, that is.” Sciel’s hands fidget in her lap. She chuckles to herself, a myriad of emotions fluttering about in her chest. “Sorry, I can't explain it properly, but I'm afraid. Yet not afraid, at the same time.”

And for a single, long moment, Clea simply stares at her, her hands still cradling the miniature François.

Then, she nods. “I promise.”

“Do you… Do you know what it'll be like?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I'm not sure,” Sciel admits. “But I wanted to ask so I might as well reap the consequences I sow.”

Clea blinks, then laughs. “That's such a Sciel thing to say.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, I’d say so. But if you must know…” Clea tips her head. “It’ll be painless. A beautiful oblivion. If you're not aware of it, you won't even know it's occurring. Like falling asleep—you’ll soon have forgotten when it happened.”

But then Clea pauses, shifting under the purpose of Sciel’s lingering gaze, her silver eyes flickering with something knowing as she draws her thumb over the expanse of mini-François’s shell. 

“And it'll feel like no time has passed,” she finally says meaningfully, “when you wake up again.”

Sciel's eyes widen.

“What—”

“It won't be here.” Clea pointedly stares elsewhere, her hands fidgeting as she rocks on her feet. “There might be a Lumière, but there also might not be. I… haven't decided that far yet.” But then she exhales slowly, her gaze softening imperceptibly as it drifts back to a stunned Sciel, like she's made up her mind. “But you'll be you. Or at least, I'll try—”

“Clea—”

“And that's really all I can—”

“You… You want to repaint us?” Sciel asks breathlessly. “Into a different Canvas?”

Clea looks away. She places the François figure down on a nearby table, moving to stand over by the window.

“You don’t have to look so grateful,” she says. “This is just me being selfish. It might not be perfect. I can't promise I'll get everything right, or that all of you will still even be you. But… I'll try. As a more experienced Painter, I have my ways of storing the memories in the chroma. And if I don't get it exactly the way it was, then maybe I'll let Maelle try, too. If she can move past this, that is. Once she's no longer drowning.”

“Clea…”

“And now that I'm burdening you with this knowledge, I'm not even sure how you'll react when—”

“I think… I think it'll be alright as long as I remember this.”

“Remember what exactly?”

“That you wanted to try.” Sciel smiles. “As long as I remember that you tried your best, I'll be okay. Even if I'm not exactly the same, even if I can't discern my own imperfections. But to know that someone tried and put in all that care—I think I would be able to find meaning, just remembering that.”

Clea stares at her.

“You have too much faith.”

“It’s not like I have much else to offer.” Still, Sciel finds herself laughing. She’s felt so light these past few days, a weight lifted off her shoulders. “But yeah… It would be nice. To be brought back to life by a god who isn't grieving.”

Clea’s face twists into disgust.

“I don't want to be your god.”

“Then don't be.”

“Can it really be that simple?”

Sciel smiles. “Can’t it be? I guess that's the upside of being in a canvas. Anything is possible. You can be whoever you want. You'll always be my friend, though.”

“Then, I’ll make you a world without gods. So that no one can dictate your future.” One hand on the windowsill, Clea stares out to the sky. “No countdowns, no Gommage. Art for the sake of art, life for the sake of life.”

“That’s how it always should have been, right?”

“Ironically, that’s what Aline taught me.” Clea sighs. “The utter hypocrite.”

Sciel shifts from foot to foot. “How is she?”

“Who knows?” The eldest Dessendre daughter shrugs.“Although, better by any metric, I suppose, than if she had stayed in the Canvas longer.” Then she casts Sciel a long look. “Only you would bother asking about that woman’s wellbeing.”

“Do you hate her?”

“I don’t know. If you asked me a few months ago, I might’ve had a different answer. I’m still angry, but perhaps that anger means I care.” Clea makes a face. “Or, maybe I do just hate her. At what point does hate wrap back around into love?”

“I don’t know,” Sciel replies, echoing Clea’s own words.

Yet it’s the truth—she doesn’t know. Sciel doesn’t think she’s ever been that angry at someone before, doesn’t know if she’s capable of it. But then again, she’s never been abandoned like that—Clea, fighting a war alone, only to find out that her mother’s replaced her by a painted, idealized version.

She can see why Clea would hate her. Aline.

“You should talk to Lune,” Sciel eventually says. At Clea’s questioning expression, she chuckles slightly, crossing the room to join her by the window. “You two could bond over mixed feelings regarding your parents.”

“Speaking of—you can tell your wife, too, by the way.”

Sciel nearly trips over her own feet.

She whips her head up, cheeks flushing.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lune,” Clea clarifies, crossing her arms with something akin to amusement. “The woman you’re so infatuated with these days. Ring a bell? The woman you seem physically incapable of keeping a single secret from? If that’s not married behavior, I don’t know what is.”

“I—” Sciel winces, ducking her head in embarrassment. “I’m still sorry about that. For letting your name just slip out that first time. I swear I’m usually better at secrecy.”

“It's alright.” And from the way Clea smiles, small but assuring, it really is. Such a far cry from the steelier woman she'd met in the schoolhouse months ago. “It wasn't all bad.”

“Verso said something like that a few days ago.”

“Did he?” Clea barks out a laugh. “Well, I'm glad he found some sort of meaning in this extended life of his.”

“Is he…? Will he also be…?”

“That's ultimately up to him.” Clea shrugs. “But I’m leaning towards no.”

Sciel smiles sadly. “That's what I figured.”

Then she clears her throat.

“And what about Gustave, Sophie, and Emma?”

“Gustave and Sophie are around Alicia the most, and I don't really want anything leaking out.” Clea chews on her lip. “If you trust them enough, though, then I trust your judgement.”

Sciel looks at her pointedly. “And Emma?”

“I already told Emma,” Clea admits, wringing her hands out with a sigh. “Or rather, she pried it out of me. Said I had a funny look on my face yesterday and followed me all the way home.”

“And you caved?”

“She seemed worried about the city and its people.” The eldest Dessendre suddenly looks like she wants to be anywhere else. “Laying out my plan was the least I could do to ease her worries.”

“So that's why Gustave asked me if I'd seen Emma this morning,” Sciel muses. “Apparently, he thought she had Councilor duties so he'd been looking for her at City Hall, but no one had seen her.”

“We ended up talking well into the night.” Clea looks comically stricken. “It was late, and we opened a bottle of wine Verso gifted me. I wasn't about to let her walk home by then.”

“Where did she sleep?”

“I gave her my bed,” Clea grinds out, massaging her temples. “And then I took the couch.”

“Right. How chivalrous of you.” Sciel grins, not believing her in the slightest. Graciously, though, she returns to the topic on hand. “So. I can tell Lune.”

Clea sighs, straightening. “Yes.”

“About your plan? About the world you want to make?”

“All of it. You can tell her that I want to repaint you all.” Clea’s silver eyes gleam. “You can tell her that it wasn’t all for nothing. I—” The Dessendre woman exhales. “I’m no Writer, don't get me wrong, but… Perhaps the people of your Lumière deserve a gentler epilogue.”

///

(By the time Sciel returns, the sun has dipped low, bathing their apartment in soft amber. Lune looks up from where she lounges on the couch, a half-read book resting against her chest—and smiles the moment she sees her.

There’s something different about Sciel’s expression. Brighter. Freer. Like she’s carrying a secret made of moonshine.

“You’re home,” Lune says, setting the book aside.

Sciel nods, and without a word, crosses the room to slide into her arms.

They settle in close, legs tangled and foreheads brushing, the golden hour wrapping around them like a blessing. When Sciel finally starts talking—about Clea, about a new Canvas, about what might come next—it’s with a kind of awed wonder in her voice. Like she still can’t believe it’s real.

Lune listens, silent and attentive, letting each detail wash over her like the tide. No gods. No countdowns. No strings. Just life, and choice, and second chances.

By the time Sciel finishes, her eyes are shining with the kind of hope she hasn’t let herself feel in years.

And Lune surges forward, drawing a giggling Sciel ever closer.

“Your kindness,” Lune whispers between kisses, peppering kisses everywhere she can reach before returning to Sciel’s lips, breathing her in. “It was your kindness that’s given us a second chance. A new beginning.”

Sciel shakes her head dizzily. “She just… She just looked so lonely.”

“And you befriended her. You.” Lune looks at her with such overwhelming, indescribable adoration that Sciel just wants to melt. “You changed her mind about us—about all of us. Only you could’ve done that, Sciel. You’ve always been the best of us.”

“That’s not true,” Sciel protests, eyes wide. “You—You’ve always been my rock—”

“And had I met her before you, I would’ve charged at Clea with an Elemental Genesis,” Lune states plainly, her mouth tugging upwards in amusement. “Let’s be real, Sciel. If it weren’t for your fondness of her, Clea and I would’ve been off to a much rockier start.”

Sciel frowns. “You’re not that brash!”

Lune laughs, bumping their foreheads together. “I’m tempered by you, Sciel.”

“Oh.” Sciel flushes, suddenly growing shy.

“Yeah.” Lune chuckles, pokes her arm with a finger. “Oh.”

Covering her face with her hands, Sciel groans. “You always know how to make me embarrass myself.”

“I should hope so.” Lune smiles into her shoulder. “No one else seems to phase you.”

“No one else is you,” Sciel mutters, voice muffled by her palms.

And they giggle like teenagers, curled in a blanket of stolen peace. Outside, Lumière continues—but here, just for a little longer, they’re allowed this quiet. This closeness. A hope for more infinities.

Then, Lune sighs.

“But we can’t tell Maelle.”

Sciel shakes her head. “If she knows, then the stakes will vanish. Maelle’s problem has always been letting go.”

“She’ll want to come back,” Lune surmises. “Even if she returns to the world outside this canvas, she might linger in that dark place, wanting to join us instead of reclaiming her place in her reality.”

“That’s not healing.” Sciel would know. “Limbo is the most tempting place of all.”

“It was always about letting Maelle save herself, wasn’t it?” Lune leans over, resting her head against Sciel’s. “She needs to choose to live again. Without guarantees or certainties.”

“And when she does,” Sciel says, because they both know Maelle, know how crafty and resourceful and brilliant she is. How brave that girl is. It is only a matter of time, they both know it. “When she finally makes that choice, then we will be her gift. All of us.”

Lune hums. “Tomorrow comes.”

“Tomorrow comes.”)

///

Several weeks later, they meet Julie on a warm Friday night.

Slender and beautiful, long ash blonde hair cascading down her back, tucked behind her right ear, with a pair of clever green eyes to match. She looks at ease next to Verso, who can’t keep the smile off his face as he leads her through Gustave and Emma’s house, over to the kitchen where everyone else already mingles.

“Sorry we’re late,” Verso says sheepishly, finally letting go of Julie’s hand. But he glances at her again, as if he can’t believe she’s here, and she catches the look, hides her laughter behind a curtain of hair.

Sciel straightens in her seat, immediately coming to attention. 

“You’re not late at all, friend!” Gustave greets him enthusiastically, walking over to clap him on the back. Sciel grins at the sight—it’s been endearing to watch both of Maelle’s not-quite-brothers bond. Gustave then reaches out to Julie, smiling kindly as she shakes his hand. “And it's wonderful to finally meet you. Julie, right?”

“That’s me.” Julie’s eyes turn into crescent moons when she smiles, and Sciel’s gaze snaps to Verso—he looks at Julie like she’s his salvation. “It’s lovely to finally meet you, too. Verso’s told me a lot about you all.”

“Only good things, right?” Sciel winks.

And that stupidly charming smile is back on Verso’s face again. “Naturally.”

Introductions go around the room, although Julie seems to have a good grasp on who they are already, simply from getting up to date ever since her restoration. Sciel will never get used to that, being well-known, even amongst the previous generations. But regardless, it's not surprising when Julie shakes everyone's hands with a graceful dip of her head—Sciel’s always had the feeling, just from her time spent with Verso, that he's always had a thing for the effortlessly sophisticated, steadfast type.

Then, belatedly, she wonders if Julie knows about what had transpired between Verso and Lune. Verso had said he'd told her everything, but—

She gets her answer sooner than expected, when Julie approaches Lune, who'd been talking with Clea across the room, and gets rewarded with a friendly hug.

“Hey,” Lune greets with a smile. “You look great.”

“You as well!” Nervously, Julie tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I wasn't sure if I was supposed to bring anything, or—”

Lune waves her off. “Oh, no need. Sophie’s taken over the kitchen, and she always makes too much food for these anyway.”

They exchange a few more words that Sciel cannot hear, but before she knows it, Lune is steering Julie over to the dining room table, where Sciel already sits with Maelle.

Sciel perks up immediately. “Lune, Julie, come join us!”

“We're coming, we're coming,” Lune chides, then reaches over to muss with Maelle's hair, the younger girl blowing a raspberry. “What were you two doing over here?”

“Sciel was gushing about you,” Maelle says immediately, much to Sciel's inherent embarrassment.

“I was not—”

“It’s alright,” Julie interjects, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “I was at the Academy when you brought Lune her notes the other day. After you left, a few of us crowded around for answers, and it turned into a full-blown storytime.”

And as Lune lets out a long-suffering sigh, Sciel decides then and there that Julie is her new favorite person.

Dinner soon finds them all gathered at the table not long after, plates full and conversation flowing easily. Sophie’s cooking, predictably, is met with unanimous praise, and Sciel merrily opens a second bottle of wine. Someone passes the bread, someone else knocks over a glass, and in the middle of it all, Julie fits like she’s always been there.

And at some point, Maelle nudges Verso with a grin. “So, how did you two meet?”

Julie turns his way, raises an eyebrow. Verso pales.

“Uh—”

“How eloquent,” Clea drawls.

Propping herself up on an elbow, Julie tips her head innocently. “Are you asking about our real first meeting? Or our more recent one, sixty-seven years later? Because neither of them were in his favor.”

“Yeah, uh—” Verso winces. “You could say that we initially separated on, uh, rocky terms.”

Julie chuckles. “Which is putting it mildly.”

“What? It’s close enough to the truth!”

“Need I remind you,” Julie tuts. “You were the one who stabbed me.”

Emma chokes on her wine as Sciel barks out a laugh, Maelle hiding a snicker of her own into Sciel’s shoulder.

Lune lazily raises her own glass to an appalled Verso in jest.

“You deserved that, you coward.”

Meanwhile, Gustave, completely flabbergasted, somehow knows to look to Clea instead.

“Don’t look at me,” the Paintress says, crossing her arms defensively. “I had nothing to do with that.” Then, under her breath: “Directly, at least.”

Verso levels an unimpressed look at his not-sister. “Hey, it was your Nevron that destroyed half my torso. Technically, you’re the reason the Search and Rescue team lost trust in me.”

Clea throws her hands up, exasperated. “Well, unless I forgot, I didn’t tell you to stab your girlfriend, did I?!”

Sophie clicks her tongue. “Things were pretty rough sixty-seven years ago, it seems.”

And it’s Julie who bursts into laughter this time—full-body, shoulder-shaking laughter, and she doubles over once she catches a glimpse of the utterly aghast look on Verso’s face. Weakly, she grips at his arm to keep herself sitting upright, wiping genuine tears from her eyes.

“Oh, Verso! Your expression…!” She manages to say between giggles. “I’m so glad you found good people to keep you humble!”

“Julie—” Verso groans, dragging a hand down the side of his face. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to introduce you—”

“You were trying to keep Julie from us?” Sciel exclaims, taking care to sound extremely offended. “Verso, how dare you—”

“He hates being outnumbered.” Lune shakes her head in disapproval. “How sad.”

“Another Verso mistake. What else is new?” Maelle chimes in with a grin, having meandered to Julie’s side in all the chaos. Without further ado, she takes Julie’s hand, squeezing as she cranes her neck up and meets Verso’s softening gaze. “She’ll fit in quite well here.”

And Emma simply sighs, taking a long swig of her wine before leaning further into Clea’s side.

“There’s something deeply wrong with all you expeditioners.”

///

Hours go by in the blink of an eye, and Sciel finds herself sitting next to Maelle again. They’re outside this time, the moon bright overhead, and they sit on the steps leading out to the yard, where some of their very adult friends play some very childish games.

As Emma and Clea draw pictures on the stone pathway with chalk, Gustave and Verso bat at each other with sticks they’d found in the garden. Meanwhile, Sophie, Julie, and Lune sit in a small circle, talking about something or other nearby. At one point, Lune looks over at Sciel questioningly, beckoning for her to come over, but Sciel shakes her head with a small smile, wordlessly pointing to Maelle, deep in thought next to her, and Lune nods in understanding before turning back to the other women.

Maelle watches them all quietly, her smile small but true.

Sciel observes her for a moment, then lets herself relax, letting the sounds of her friend’s chatter wash over her.

Then, a small voice cuts through.

“I’m so, so incredibly lucky.”

Sciel smiles. “I am, too.”

Maelle hums, and then her head is resting on Sciel’s shoulder, tucking herself against Sciel’s side.

“Everyone tonight has been so happy. You’re all so, so happy. Even Verso is happy.”

“Life’s been a bit of a dream recently,” Sciel admits, wrapping an arm around the younger girl’s waist. “Absolutely surreal. Like I’ve been floating on a cloud.”

“I know.” Playing with the edge of her sleeve, Maelle lets out a sigh of contentment. “It’s been great for me, too. With Clea here, I haven’t had to do much painting. My health has been better, and the nightmares have been at bay.”

“That’s great,” Sciel enthuses. “I’m so glad to hear that, sweet girl.”

Maelle nods. “It’s just a bit bittersweet because… it really can’t last, can it? Clea needs to return to the real world eventually, to help Papa deal with the Writers. And I… I can’t paint the way that she can.”

“Not yet,” Sciel reminds her softly, rubbing at her back. “You’ll be a wonderful Paintress, Maelle. It’s just… You can’t learn while you’re here.”

Another small nod. “I know.” Maelle closes her eyes. “I know.”

“But you will,” Sciel promises, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “You’ll learn, and you’ll heal, and you’ll create magnificent worlds unlike any that have been seen before. Your imagination and your bravery are your strengths, Maelle. You will do incredible things, and I will be so, so proud of you.”

“I will,” Maelle promises, hugging her tight. “I’ll make you proud, Sciel. I'll make all of you proud.”

“I know you will, sweet girl. I can feel it in my soul.”

///

Maelle is gone the next morning.

Left behind for them are two notes, both of which Sciel finds on the dining room table of her shared apartment with Lune—one in soft, careful handwriting, the other scribbled with unmistakable sass.

From Maelle—

Thank you. You two were everything I ever wanted in a mother and more.

And from Clea—

Get better locks, idiots.

Sciel stares at them for a long moment, blinking rapidly. Then she bursts out laughing.

“Of course they would both leave without saying goodbye,” she says with a watery giggle, setting down both pieces of parchment. “These damn Dessendres—”

“Well,” Lune says, clicking her tongue, “they're certainly not a family of Writers.”

Sciel doesn't know why she's laughing, nor does she know why she's crying. But Lune runs a hand over her back without any further pretense, pulls her in for a hug. And Sciel laughs and cries as Lune kisses away her tears, rains love all over her face.

///

There’s an additional sentence on the back of Clea’s final note. Lune’s the one who finds it, penned in even smaller font—

By the way, the number represents days. Happy early birthday, Lune.

///

That very night, as the clocks strike twelve, a countdown appears on the Monolith. The hastily written “Papa, Va t’en!” flourishes away, and in its place—a giant, golden 32.

“Oh, fuck Clea,” Lune mutters when she sees it the following morning, as they stand on their balcony. “She had to pick thirty-two days, of all numbers—”

Meanwhile, Sciel barks out a laugh, shaking her head in amused disbelief. “I mean, I suppose we never did get to see our lovely thirty-three change to thirty-two. Clea’s dark humor knows no bounds.”

“I think this is my fault.” If Lune’s eyes could roll out of her skull, they would. She leans on the railing, two fingers massaging her temples. “‘Happy early birthday,’ what bullshit. That woman, I swear—”

“Oh, from the other night? When you mentioned you were morbidly curious how the Monolith would look if the countdown actually reached zero?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

It quickly becomes evident that the majority of Lumière cannot see the giant number—when they ask the neighbors, they’re rewarded with confused looks and several remarks that the Monolith’s been empty since the restoration.

“Hmm. So Lumière gets to remain in ignorant bliss,” Lune remarks as they walk through their usual cobblestone streets, casually waving at neighbors and acquaintances who greet them good morning like today is just another ordinary day. “It’s probably for the best. They never did learn the truth about Maelle’s declining health.”

“Emma would’ve had an aneurysm from all the Council debates that would’ve sparked,” Sciel adds, fighting off a headache from the sheer idea of it all. “It’s better this way—they don’t know the true nature of our world, after all. And that’s alright.”

Lune nods, chuckling under her breath. “Yeah, that’s alright. After everything, they deserve to experience these last days in normalcy.”

///

Day 32.

It’s Julie, much to Sciel’s surprise, who they find waiting by the harbour. Overhead, the sky has turned cloudy, and Julie stares out at the Monolith, a type of quiet wonder in her eyes.

“I never got to see it swap down to the double digits,” she tells them as they join her by the water. “When I died, it was still at one hundred.”

And it comes as second nature when Sciel reaches out, touches Julie’s arm as she would any dear friend she’d known for decades.

“You should’ve had more time.” She shakes her head. “Your Gommage wouldn’t have been for a long, long while.”

“I could’ve had longer, but everything went wrong so quickly.” The ash blonde woman looks over her shoulder, smiling faintly. “Verso and I, we were both too foolish to be truthful with one another, and too blind with fear to see through the other. What we both did… We were, ultimately, both wrong in some ways, and both right in others. But I loved him so much—I think that’s why the thought of a betrayal hurt even more.”

Slowly, Lune comes to stand on Julie’s other side. “He mourned you every single day. For sixty-seven years.”

“He told me he searched for me in other people,” Julie admits. “And that was frightening, for a bit. I’m sure he doesn’t realize it, but I was just as afraid that I’d botched my chance as he was. We had all this bad history to work through, and I wasn’t the one he defeated the Paintress with.” Then she wrings out her hands, exhaling deeply before looking at Lune. Her smile turns wry. “But I suppose we’ve already hashed that out.”

Lune’s mouth quirks up at that, but she opts to roll her eyes dramatically. “Trust me, he’s all yours.”

Julie turns to Sciel, her smile playful yet genuine. “You and Lune made me believe in love again. The others at the Academy would constantly try to get her to go for drinks, but Lune was in a rush to leave every day. She said she never wanted you to return to an empty home.”

Eyes widening, Sciel feels a face-splitting grin pull at her lips, her heart swelling to dangerous proportions as she regards her lover adoringly.

“You really said that?”

Flushing, Lune pointedly looks elsewhere. “I might’ve implied something along those lines.”

“You really are a big softie now!”

“Sciel.”

Julie laughs, her eyes alight just from watching them. “I told Verso, actually. That I want a love like yours. He told me that he’s not as smart as Lune, or as kind as you, Sciel, but he’s trying his best.”

Sciel grins. “As long as you can feel his sincerity.”

“I feel it every single day,” Julie replies, holding her hands to her chest. “He makes sure to show me in all the ways that matter the most.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence after that.

The waves lap gently against the harbour, and for a long while, no one speaks. The Monolith looms ahead, no longer a threat but still a monument—a relic of all they’ve endured.

Julie closes her eyes, and Sciel and Lune follow suit—just, listening. To the tide, to the quiet breaths beside them, to the world they’ll soon say goodbye to.

It’s Sciel who eventually speaks. “Do you know what you’ll do?” At the end of it all.

Julie opens her eyes again.

“I think I’ll disappear with him,” Julie says, soft but resolved. “I loved him sixty-seven years ago, and I love him even now. So that is my wish—to be by his side this time. So that he’s never alone again.”

Then she tilts her head up to the sky. “Did you hear that, Clea? That’s my answer.”

And the sky, as if in response, glows gold at the edges—the clouds parting just enough for a shaft of light to break through.

///

Day 31.

It’s not much different from any other day.

The morning is soft. Breezy. Sciel almost wonders if Clea had painted the clouds just so as an apology, because sunlight filters through like gauze.

Sciel arrives at the schoolhouse twenty minutes early, same as always. She unlocks the door, greeting her students one by one, listens to their chatter about what they had for breakfast, what bug they found on the way over, who beat who at cards.

She lets them self study for the first hour. Quiet time to decompress from the weekend.

Clea’s usual stool by the blackboard is empty, and her personal desk in the back has been cleared.

Sciel doesn’t mention her absence. Neither do her students.

And she doesn’t stop by Clea’s old desk until it’s lunchtime and her students are outside. She’s tidying up when she notices it—small, unassuming, and left precisely in the center of Clea’s former desk chair.

A tiny clay figurine, no taller than her pointer finger.

It’s Maelle sculpted in miniature, sword in hand, defiant smirk on her face. Her stance is pure mischief. The tilt of her head. Her back perfectly straight—their daring, fencer friend.

Sciel goes still. Then picks it up slowly, reverently.

There’s no note. Just a single, tiny signature carved beneath the base.

C.

And so Sciel smiles without meaning to. Her chest aches with it as she carries the figurine to the front of the room, sets it back down right atop of Clea’s stool by the blackboard, and lets it watch over the classroom for the rest of the day.

///

Day 25.

They visit Monoco at Monoco Station, who promptly hauls them all up to the Frozen Hearts.

“A flaming unicorn Nevron showed up a few days ago,” he announces as they soar over the peaks on Esquie’s back. “We’re going to kill it.”

Lune, Gustave, and Verso immediately exchange looks.

“Uh—” Gustave glances between his two friends. “We really weren’t thinking ahead, were we?”

“I should've known this would come back to bite us in the ass,” Lune says under her breath. “And then she just tossed it out here—”

“I told her not to make it a Nevron,” Verso grinds out through his teeth. “I told her. I said, ‘Clea, you don’t know how that’ll affect the ecosystem,’ and she just smiled at me like I was the idiot.”

“Well, clearly, it wasn’t the ecosystem you should’ve been worried about!” Sciel laughs, clapping him on the shoulder. “You should’ve known Monoco would catch wind of it, especially in the Frozen Hearts.”

“Did she give it powers?” Julie asks, bright-eyed.

“Almost certainly,” Gustave says with a sigh. He calls forth his gun and checks the barrel.

Her rapier in hand, Julie grins. “How lovely.”

Verso simply sighs, readying his sword and dagger.

Ahead, a fiery silhouette rears on a cliffside—hooves sparking, horn ablaze, flames licking off its tail like a comet.

“Oh,” Lune says, her hands already sparking with elemental energy. “It’s actually kind of beautiful.”

“Yeah, isn’t it?” And Sciel’s eyes are already glowing faintly, and she summons her scythe while grinning like a kid on her birthday. “This is the most excitement I’ve had in weeks.”

“Emma was right,” Sophie comments, but unlike the others readying their weapons and preparing to jump, she reclines back on Esquie, content to watch. “There is something deeply wrong with you expeditioners.”

///

Day 20.

For once, Sciel gets home first.

She races out of the schoolhouse the moment her last afterschool tutoring session is done, arms full of papers and a half-eaten sandwich, heart set on one very specific goal: beat Lune home.

It’s petty. It’s dumb. But she wants to be the one waiting by the door for once.

When Lune pushes through the threshold later that evening, mildly soaked from the drizzle outside, she pauses in surprise. There’s warmth in the apartment—real warmth. There’s a fire going in the fireplace. Every lamp is lit. Something smells of mustard, thyme, and white wine.

And Sciel’s there, poking her head out of the kitchen with a triumphant grin.

“You’re late,” Sciel declares smugly. “You promised me you’d be home by sundown.”

Lune blinks at her. “Did you… race me?”

Sciel shrugs, suddenly shy. “Maybe.”

And Lune—who’s soaked and exhausted and vaguely suspicious—just smiles and drops her bag, stepping out of her shoes. She makes her way over and leans in, brushing a kiss to Sciel’s cheek.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I missed you.”

Dinner is excellent, of course. Sciel’s poulet à la moutarde has been perfectly simmered, and Lune leans over more than once to seal Sciel’s mouth with her own.

Afterward, they curl up on the couch, bare feet tangled under the blanket, a mug of something warm passed between them. A candle flickers nearby as Lune rests her head in Sciel’s lap while Sciel absentmindedly threads her fingers through raven black hair.

And she reads aloud from a novel Lune’s already finished, because Lune says she likes hearing it in Sciel’s voice. Occasionally, Lune murmurs corrections—not to what Sciel’s is saying, but to the characters in the story, as if she knows better than them. Sciel pokes her in the ribs every time.

For a while, it’s just them.

The countdown outside is forgotten.

Just the rain against the windows and steady breathing, warmth filling every ounce of their space.

///

Day 14.

The conversation happens outside the boulangerie.

It’s early evening, the sky soft with lavender light, and Pierre is already seated at a small table when Sciel walks by on her way home.

She pauses, waves, and he waves back.

It would’ve been strange not to sit.

He asks her how her students are doing. She tells him about the boy who’s started sketching elaborate airship schematics in the margins of his essays, and the two girls in the back row who whisper about novels instead of focusing on their arithmetic—but still hand in perfect ledgers every week.

(She thinks about Clea, and the art lessons she began to give in class. How Clea’s imagination had slowly been transforming the lives of their students—the way they had begun to dream again.)

Eventually, he glances towards the horizon.

“Is she good to you?” he asks.

Sciel smiles. “She is.”

Pierre nods. “Good.”

He doesn’t say it like a man trying to convince himself, but rather a man who finally believes her. That she’s okay—more than okay, even.

When they part ways, he doesn’t try to hug her. Just offers a gentle nod, a ghost of a smile.

And Sciel walks the rest of the way home, lighter than before.

///

Day 10.

They fight the giant, pink cloud dragon near the Reacher, because of course they do.

“Our last hurrah!” Monoco bellows, swinging around his enormous bell with earth-shaking force. It reverberates across the cliffside like a war drum, despite the fact that none of them technically agreed that this was to be a hurrah, last or otherwise.

“Are we even going to make it to Day 0?!” Verso shouts, ducking into a roll to dodge a giant thunderbolt. “What did Clea put in this thing?!”

“Emotional instability, apparently!” Lune fires back, redirecting a gale with a strategically placed Typhoon. Beside her, Sciel sighs in relief as Lune’s chroma heals at the shallow wounds on her arms. “It’s fighting us for fun.”

The dragon lets out a delighted chime, glittering eyes crescented in mischief. With one lazy sweep of its cotton-candy tail, it nearly knocks Julie off her footing.

“I’m fine!” Julie calls, catching herself with practiced ease. Verso is at her side in a heartbeat, an energy tint in hand. “But it’s fast. We need to flank.”

Sciel’s already circling wide, foretell cards scattering to grant Lune an Intervention. “If we pin it near the cliff edge, I can draw it off-balance. Lune, can you cover me?”

“Always.”

“Why is it smiling like that?” Gustave pants, barely avoiding a shockwave that cracks the ground at his feet.

“Because it knows!” Monoco grins wildly. “It’s been waiting for this its whole life!”

“Clea only made it a few weeks ago!” Verso yells.

And the Reacher watches from afar, unmoving. From its height, witness to all things. Probably not impressed.

///

Day 9.

“So.” Sciel whistles innocently. “Should we go visit the frogs at the Flying Waters?”

“No.” Four voices groan emphatically in response.

And Sciel laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

///

Day 6.

(“Remember what you used to say?” Gustave jokes, whacking at Lune’s shoulder with his prosthetic. “The future of Lumière is worth more than any individual life?”

Lune rolls her eyes. “You used to say that, too, idiot. And please, for the love of— put that arm of yours back on!”

“I shall do with my arm as I wish!”

She snorts, half amused, half exasperated, as he holds it aloft like a trophy. Then they fall quiet for a moment, the only sound the soft click of his tools as he fiddles with a few internal mechanisms. Through the open window, someone laughs—maybe one of the newer recruits, eager to explore the Continent without the looming threat of the Paintress.

Everything feels warmer these days.

“I used to believe it, you know,” Lune says eventually, voice lower now. “That we were just… parts in a larger machine. That it was right to sacrifice ourselves if it meant saving the whole. My parents… they were so set on me fulfilling their dream in their stead. Never once did I think I had a choice to do anything differently.”

Gustave glances up, gently serious now.

“But I think,” Lune continues, eyes drifting out towards the east side of the city, where Sciel undoubtedly was playing with the children in the schoolyard by now, “I started believing I could live for more than just duty. That I could want things—selfishly, personally—and still be good.”

She lets out a breath. “Sciel never asked me to be anything but honest. Even when it meant risking what we had. Even when it meant choosing someone else’s freedom over our own potential happiness. But I think we both knew—all of us did—that the so-called ‘right thing’ wasn’t necessarily the compassionate thing.”

Gustave sets down his tools, the last click echoing faintly. “Those are always the real questions—the right thing versus the compassionate thing, not to mention whatever other ‘things’ there are to consider. And… ultimately, who has to live with the consequences.”

“They’re hard questions with no real, correct answers,” Lune murmurs. “There’s no true way to quantify the weight of a life.”

“Well.” He leans back, gives her a tired little grin. “Regardless. I say we did alright.”

Lune huffs, lips twitching. “Somehow.”

“Do you think Maelle’s still mad at us? Even a little?”

“She did choose to leave on her own volition, thankfully. So, who knows?” Lune chuckles, reclining in her chair. “But in the end, you were right, that night. Sometimes, children have to let the adults protect them.”)

///

Day 5.

Sciel finds Lune out on the balcony again, guitar in her lap, the latest half-finished song scrawled beside her in that familiar messy handwriting.

She leans against the doorframe with a fond smile. “Another new one? You’ve been busy recently.”

Lune nods without looking up. Still, Sciel can see the curve of her lips.

“Well, I’ve had a lot of good inspiration. I'm counting myself blessed.”

Sciel steps closer, peeking over her shoulder at the notes. “Hmm. You’re rhyming ‘horizon’ with ‘surprising’? Bold.”

“Temporary lyrics for now.” Lune chuckles, plucking at a stubborn string. “Artistic license.”

Sciel huffs a laugh and settles beside her, pulls her knees to her chest. “How many songs is this now in the past month? Five? Six?”

“Seven, technically,” Lune tells her. “But only four that I’d actually let people hear.”

“Mm. I like the one from last week. The one with the verse about magic frogs.”

“That wasn’t a real song.”

“It had a chorus,” Sciel points out, grinning.

Lune rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t hide her smile. She nudges Sciel gently with her knee, and Sciel nudges her back. The guitar settles into a softer rhythm, the melody mellow and warm beneath the sound of the city winding down.

“Want to hear it?” Lune asks after a moment, voice quiet but sure. “The new one. Not the one with the frogs.”

With a gentle laugh, Sciel leans her head on Lune’s shoulder.

“Always.”

And Lune plays.

///

Day 3.

It’s after dinner at Emma and Gustave’s place again, and most of the group has moved outside—Verso and Gustave are loudly reenacting one of Verso’s half-remembered battles with way too much sound and far too little choreography, much to the amusement of a heckling Julie and a tittering Sophie.

Inside, it’s quieter. Just the clink of dishes being stacked, the scrape of a chair against the floor. The wine has long been poured, and Sciel and Lune linger in the kitchen, talking softly about nothing in particular.

Emma doesn’t say anything at first. She just stands by the doorway, watching the scene beyond the window—the way the dusk paints everyone gold. Her fingers curl lightly around the stem of her glass.

Then, quietly:

“Do you think I’ll ever see her again?”

“Who?” Sciel tilts her head. And it dawns on her—the last night they’d shared like this, Emma had constantly been with… “Clea?”

Upon Emma’s wordless nod, Sciel glances at Lune. The two share a look—something unspoken, deeply knowing, and impossibly fond.

“Emma,” Lune says gently, grateful for the din outside masking the shift in mood, “didn’t Clea tell you…?”

“She did,” Emma interrupts quickly, a flush rising to her cheeks. “But I wonder… I mean, she was able to make so many changes to our world without even physically being present, so…”

“Emma,” Sciel says, stepping closer, reaching to take her hand in her own. Her grip is warm and sure. “I know you’ll see her again.”

The silence that follows is soft—not heavy, but full. Emma nods, barely, and Sciel squeezes her hand once before letting go.

Outside, someone yells dramatically about treachery and swordplay, and Emma exhales a laugh through her nose. Lune rolls her eyes with affection. For now, the world still turns. There is still a bit more time.

And somewhere, outside the Canvas, Clea prepares.

///

Day 2. 

Lune sings for the students again that morning.

It starts as it always does: with her sitting by the window, guitar balanced on her knee, students clustered around in varying degrees of attentiveness. The older ones lean back with practiced nonchalance, pretending they’re only half-interested. The younger ones sway in time with the chords, already humming along by the second verse.

And Sciel watches, from behind her desk, as Lune’s voice fills the schoolroom like sunlight. Something about it always makes the world feel gentler, as though the Canvas itself is pausing to listen.

There’s no grand message in the lyrics today—just a simple tune about journeys and returns, the kind of thing that lingers in your bones; stays with you, always.

When the song ends, there’s a beat of silence before the applause. One of the students—brave and earnest—pipes up to ask if she’ll ever play a set in the opera house.

Lune blinks, startled, and Sciel laughs.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lune says with a chuckle, her guitar whisking away into chroma.

It’s not until later that Sciel notices the sheet music tucked into Lune’s satchel. The title is scribbled out in the corner, half-crossed out and rewritten three times over: “Splendeur de L'arc-en-Ciel.”

///

Day 1.

They gather at the harbour long before the hour strikes midnight.

Above them, the Monolith still bears its number—golden, enormous, undeniable.

1.

Soon, it will shift.

The wind is gentle tonight, the sea hushing, rolling with a strange serenity. In the moonlight, everything seems gentler, slower—like the world itself is bracing for the change.

Julie and Verso sit at the edge of the pier, their shoulders pressed together, whispering. Occasionally, one of them laughs—quiet and reverent, like a secret. She brushes his cheek with her knuckles; he presses a kiss to her wrist. It’s all the warning she gets before she’s being swept into his arms, his face buried into the crook of her neck. She embraces him back just as fiercely.

Behind them, Sophie and Gustave sit close by a lantern’s glow. They aren’t saying much—they don’t need to. Gustave’s fingers are curled loosely around hers, and Sophie leans into him, watching the water glimmer with far-off light. He’s been quiet all evening, gaze drifting now and then to the spot where the waves meet the peer—where he once watched her turn to petals and scatter in the wind. Their eyes meet, and she smiles softly, hand tightening around his. He exhales, like a weight’s been eased, and smiles back.

A little farther behind the group stands Emma, apart but not alone. Arms crossed, expression unreadable, she gazes out towards the Monolith with a kind of stubborn poise. No one calls to her, and she doesn’t call out either—but every now and then, her eyes flicker across the people she’s grown to care for. Her brother. Her friends. Her… Clea. She presses her lips together and looks away.

Sciel and Lune stand slightly apart from the rest, arms looped around each other. Sciel’s face is tucked into Lune’s shoulder; Lune’s cheek resting against her partner’s temple. The salty ocean breeze lifts stray curls and the edges of their uniforms—somehow, amusingly, all the expeditioners had known what to wear.

For a long time, neither speaks.

Then—

“I'm not thinking of it much as an end,” Lune admits, her arms languidly around Sciel’s waist. Then she shrugs, starlight in her eyes. “But rather, the start of a new adventure for us.”

Sciel grins. “That’s our thing, isn't it? Always some new horizon to chase.”

They sway gently in place, the sounds of the harbour folding in around them—waves, voices, laughter, wind. Behind them, Lumière continues on, blissful in its livelihood.

“Look at us, always moving the goalpost,” Lune murmurs, and Sciel tosses her head back and laughs.

“We'd be horrible parents,” Sciel says very seriously, her voice betraying a smile.

“Oh, the worst,” Lune agrees, eyes warm and affectionate.

They fall quiet again—a comfortable, familiar silence. One that Sciel already knows intimately from nights under the stars, wrapped in each other’s arms, the unknown awaiting them in the morning. But this time, she knows Lune down to her soul, finds comfort in the uncertainty instead—they’ve faced hell and triumphed over it. This temporary end is a mere pause in the journey.

Sciel leans in, presses her forehead to Lune’s.

“You ever think about what’s next?”

Lune hums. “Sometimes. But mostly, I’ve been thinking about the now. About you. Instead of stressing about what’s ahead. You’ve made it exceptionally easy to focus on the now.”

A breath of laughter leaves Sciel. “Hopeless romantic.”

“Don’t tell anyone. It’ll ruin my very serious image.”

“Lune?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For letting yourself be found that day.”

“And thank you, Sciel, for looking for me even when I was being stubborn.”

They chuckle at that and let this truth settle—

It is not death that awaits. Not an end, but instead, a new beginning.

“I'll find you again,” Sciel promises, her lips brushing Lune’s in an almost kiss; soft yet almost playful, a vow for an adventure. “In every single world, I will find you again.”

Just as the belltower tolls twelve times, signalling the arrival of midnight, Lune leans forward, presses one final, chaste kiss and laughs against her lips.

“Not if I find you first.”

And so, they watch with bated breath as the number on the Monolith flourishes away, the 1 turning into a bright, golden—

///

Day 0.

“Know that I love you, Lune.”

“Silly, I never had a doubt. I love you, too, Sciel.”

And at the end of it all, in the face of that all-encompassing, bright light, they share a smile.

Tomorrow comes.

End.