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Part One: Clea
“They’re creepy.” Alicia clumsily signed the words to Clea. Her fingers still felt stiff around the motions; there was still a tick between thinking the word, then finding the associated sign. Alicia hoped some day that would go away; her tutor assured her it would at least get quicker. She had a tendency of wanting things to get solved overnight, demanding an immediacy that life simply didn’t provide. She’d get there. Someday. Everything worked on some day.
“They’re just sculptures, Alicia.” In contrast to Alicia’s, Clea’s hands were damp and clay-covered, gently sculpting the latest of her creations. Her focus was half on the clay and half on her sister, though the latter more reluctantly and with a tighter pinch to her eyebrows. “You could squash this one with one hand.”
A beat.
“Don’t.” She added sharply, as though she could sense the younger-sibling urge to immediately kick the proverbial sand castle before it could even cross Alicia’s mind. It felt like something she would’ve said before. When Alicia was six and wanted her hands in everything her siblings did, if it meant she had their attention for just one moment. Verso always played along, making art of her tiny, misplaced hand prints. Clea made her hands well-acquainted with Alicia’s hair.
It felt distant, but familiar, and it made the corners of Alicia’s lips tick up, just at the edges. Her fingers curled into her palms, purposeful, as though she was actively resisting the urge for her sister’s sake. The movement only made Clea’s scowl deepen, and she turned her attention back to the little sculpture in front of her. Alicia almost thought she could see a smile of her own teasing around the edge of Clea’s expression when she looked down, but she had enough sense not to point it out. Their relationship wasn’t built on wearing their emotions on their sleeves. It was always what could be read between the lines. The familiar routine of it settled on Alicia’s shoulders, comfortably enough for her to take a proper seat across from Clea at her workbench.
Sitting on the tabletop was a tiny Démineur. A thin wire held it aloft, hovering just over the platform to which Clea had affixed it. She’d twisted another wire just so to make it appear as though the mine in its hand was a bobbing, destructive balloon. Clea’s fingers were working carefully around the scuba-gear head, prodding the clay into the right shape. The paint would be applied after firing.
Alicia was almost thankful for that. The figure’s flat, dull gray made it the smallest bit easier for her to look at. Even so, there was still a steady, breathless rise in her heart rate as she looked at it. Her hands, now placed safely in her lap, fidgeted against the fabric of her pants. There was a part of her that formed the half-thought that would mean summoning her rapier to her hand. She could almost feel the familiar weight of it. She could almost hear the sharp report of Gustave’s gun, and the heat across her face as the Demineur’s mine exploded.
She pulled in a sharp breath and looked down to her lap, where her hands had gripped around nothing. With her gaze directed down, she missed Clea looking up, still hunched over her sculpture, but her focus solely on her sister.
Clea’s workshop was full of familiar figures. The Nevrons hadn’t ended up in the canvas without inspiration, and Clea had been inspired by horrors for far longer than Renoir and Aline had been in the canvas. When she was little, Alicia found them disquieting, but not terrifying. She’d never particularly liked the workshop, but she didn’t feel like crawling out of her skin when she had to fetch her sister for supper.
At seventeen, Alicia found it hard to open the door at all. It was a wonder she was sitting across from Clea in the first place. It was not without great effort on Alicia’s part. Her focus had shifted from Clea, to the ceiling, to the door behind her, to the stool, to Clea again. Anywhere but the Démineur on the tabletop, or the Gault on the pedestal in the corner, or the Glaise by the supply cabinet, or–
Alicia was veritably surrounded. Creepy had been a vast understatement.
“They’re just sculptures, Alicia.” Clea’s voice was sharp, but there was something else in it. Something a little softer under the surface, something Alicia could only remember noticing in the months in the wake of the fire. A vague memory at best, the fuzzy and distant sound of concern, muffled as it was through the haze her life had been. Clea wasn’t soft, but sometimes. Sometimes, Alicia knew better.
“You can say that, you’ve never had to fight one of them.” Alicia stared resolutely at her sister. The way her lips thinned as she pressed them together, the slight lift to her brows. She needed acknowledgement, something, anything that said someone in her family recognized she’d lived an entire life in a canvas everyone else was so insistent was just a playground, an escape, and nothing more. “Those mines actually hurt.”
“Hm.” Clea hummed, and it almost felt like she was admitting to something. The corners of her lips tugged up, and Alicia quickly decided she didn’t like what Clea was admitting. “Not enough, if the number of people to get past them was anything to go off of–”
“Clea.” Alicia huffed, and one of her hands came down on the table hard enough to give a dull thud, and shake the little Demineur. Clea’s hands moved quickly to stop it from tipping, and she met Alicia’s glare with one of her own. It softened quickly, catching on something in Alicia’s expression.
“Surely, you were skilled enough to kill a good many of them yourself.” She allowed, cautious. Alicia took a moment, staring at her hand on the table and ignoring the sea of Nevrons around her. She had. She could remember the sense of relief, when they would successfully finish a battle. How they’d smile, bump shoulders, relive their best moves. Gustave’s soft you did good, and Lune’s nod before she would usher them forward again. Her breathing evened out, and she gave a small nod before looking back up at Clea.
“These were easy.” She tipped her head to the little Démineur. “The Lampmaster, though. How do you even come up with some of these?”
The smile on Clea’s face at that moment was wicked around every edge. “It’s called genius, sister dear.”
Alicia reached out with one hand and squashed the little Démineur, the clay giving with a wet schlorp as she pulled her hand away. There was a moment of shocked silence, the entirety of the Dessendre Manor standing in tense anticipation.
“You little–” There was a flurry of movement as Clea reached across the counter. Her hands were met with empty space, and Alicia’s raspy, retreating laughter.
PART TWO: RENOIR
It had been a long time since Alicia had really looked at a canvas. In the weeks following the destruction of Verso’s canvas, she’d barely even allowed herself to linger on the portraits adorning the manor walls, let alone blank linen and cotton. There were rooms in the manor that had simply been off limits to her, both by her own self-isolation, and her family’s newfound habit of hovering. She half-suspected her father would manifest himself at her shoulder, should she even think of picking up a palette.
Perhaps in those few moments following, she’d considered it, might have even fought for it. When she was ejected from Verso’s canvas, gasping, blinking chroma from her eye and pushing herself up from the wood floor of her father’s atelier. Her mind had been nothing but Verso, Gustave, Sciel, Lune, Mococo, Verso, Gustave, Gustave, Gustave–
If she could’ve picked up a paintbrush, then she might have tried. But it was everything she could do to breathe, and her father had been there, hands gentle on her shoulders, his voice soft in her ears. “Deep breaths, ma fifille. Like that, yes.”
She’d let him comfort her until it felt like she could move again, then she’d shrugged him off. Since then, she’d kept to her room. ‘Little Shadow’ felt more apropos than ever. Her family was something that could be handled only in small doses, one at a time, one step at a time. They seemed just as content to stay at her periphery. They were the flickering light at the edges of her vision, there to show they were there, but too afraid of being imposing or upsetting some imaginary balance to push their way in fully. All save for Clea, who was more than happy to throw her curtains open and drag her out of bed every morning. Her father, on the other hand, could only be caught in half-gestures, one hand reaching out only for him to abandon the attempt before he could learn if she’d accept it or not.
Alicia took a tentative step into Renoir’s atelier, her first since she’d been thrown from the canvas. The Creation still hung suspended from the ceiling; there was almost a smug accomplishment in knowing she and her friends had defeated her father’s crowning achievement. The room was still scattered with various canvases, a few of which she recognized. She could remember the shifting colors of Visages’ island. The music had felt so familiar around Siréne.
Her eyes caught on her father, his hand poised above a canvas, a splattering of pigments staining its surface. His eyes were clear, simply lost in thought. Alicia had to purposefully scuff the sole of her boot against the floor to finally gain his attention. He didn’t startle, he wasn’t one for such things, but he did shift in his chair. The surprise was evidenced more in the way he stilled the moment his gaze found her.
“Alicia.” Her name came soft, and something in her chest flipped over at the sound of it. Verso. No, the painted version, the version of her brother who so desperately needed to be his own person, had told her she was her father’s actual favorite. Alicia had always believed it to be Clea, but in that moment, it was a hard point to argue. There was a tentative but pleased smile on Renoir’s face that crinkled the crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes. He looked old, but just on the cusp of contentment. “It is good to see you.”
Alicia nodded, but it seemed to be enough. There was a silence between them, awkward for a moment before Alicia gestured towards the canvas. “What are you working on?”
Renoir squinted at her hands, “Slower, ma fifille.”
She repeated the signs, slowly, waiting for some form of recognition to pass over her father’s face before moving onto the next. “What am I working on?” Alicia nodded, and huffed a laugh at the look of joy Renoir gave her. He was learning. He was trying. He was getting better. Alicia couldn’t help her smile in return. “It’s a piece for the council.
“I would rather be doing just about anything else but…” He blew out a sigh, his attention fully on the canvas now. There was a resigned set to his shoulders, and he looked older in that moment than he ever had before. “Every time I try to paint something these days, it’s you. Or Clea, Verso. Your mother. The council wants something deeper, but this family is the deepest thing I know.”
Alicia paused; she knew the versions of her family her father put onto canvas. Her gaze drifted around the atelier again, catching on every familiar portrait. One in particular stole her attention and held it. A rickety tower stretched endlessly up, up, up until it disappeared into the clouds. A haystack on stilts, forever reaching despite the efforts of so many to pull it back down to the Earth. Alicia, and all the hope in the world her father had for her. It made her dizzy simply looking at it.
Renoir spoke of depth as though he could see where they hit bottom, and he understood every meter in between. She wondered if he ever stopped to consider whether or not his understanding was absolute. She crossed the room to stand in front of The Reacher. The canvas, though small, felt as though it towered above her. Her head tilted back until there was a swoop in her chest, and she closed her eyes until it passed. Renoir remained a silent observer behind her.
“It is hope, Alicia.” He explained in a voice he’d only ever used when he was trying to teach her something. She nodded, once, and listened for a huff of frustration behind her. It never came. Instead, there was the light scrape of her father’s stool, and the patter of his footsteps, the clunk of his cane before his hand fell gently on her shoulder. “I have only ever had hope for you.”
“I know.” She did know, she thought. Despite everything, her father only ever loved her. “It feels…” Her hands hesitated, and her father watched her carefully, brows drawing together. “Unrealistic.”
Even looking at the portrait felt mildly dizzying. Alicia could remember the trek up to the top, the way the rickety structure had swayed back and forth, how the wind whistled as it cut through wood beams. Now, with her feet on solid ground, she couldn’t remember how she had mustered the courage and the constitution to climb it at all. Determination could do many things, even overcome her body’s innate response to heights.
At its core, The Reacher wasn’t her. It was her father’s idea of her. He was like that; he was a man full of ideas. He was so firm in his belief, so sure of what he saw in people, Alicia wondered if he ever stopped to look at the person underneath. It felt like an unfair thought, even as it crossed her mind. Like learning sign language, her father tried. He wasn’t always the fastest, but he would get there eventually.
“Papa.” She turned away from The Reacher to look at Renoir. His brow was creased, and he looked as though he was taking in his painting in earnest, trying to see what she saw in it. “You know I have vertigo.”
“I don’t–” Alicia spelled out the word, v.e.r.t.i.g.o. “Oh. Yes, I know. It’s a parable, ma fifille.”
“I know.” It was a wonder, Alicia had found a way to express frustration with her whole body. “This. You wanted it to be me, but it is not me. I don’t want to fly, Papa. This just makes me dizzy.”
Her father huffed a small breath out, and his gaze shifted from his daughter to the portrait and back. Even if he didn’t understand the disconnect, it was clear he understood the idea of it frustrated Alicia. Somewhere, he’d missed the mark. Alicia stood patiently by, waiting for him to offer an explanation, a word of comfort, an acknowledgement, something. He’d thrust his ideas for Alicia onto her in so many ways. He did it out of love, and Alicia was trying, trying so hard to understand that for what it was.
“Okay.” One hand tightened on the head of his cane, and he turned soft eyes on Alicia. “Why don’t you show me. Show me you.”
A tension left Alicia’s shoulders. She smiled at her father, and he returned it in kind. Her heels clacked together and she gave him a salute, on it, Papa! When she left the room, it was with Renoir’s laughter behind her, a small collection of pigments, and a whole lot of determination. Her father had asked to see her, and she was going to show him.
PART THREE: ALINE
“Renoir showed me a painting you did for him.” Alicia startled at her mother’s voice from behind her. The greenhouse was typically the quietest place in the manor. It didn’t echo in the same way as the grand halls and sweeping dining room. Clea could slam the front door, and Alicia would know she was home from Renoir’s atelier. It always felt empty. The greenery and flowers adorning every inch of the greenhouse muffled the echoes, and painted it in so many different colors and hues. It was alive. It felt alive, and Alicia had loved it even from early childhood.
It was also every inch her mother’s domain. Alicia shouldn’t have been shocked to find her there; she was the intruder, after all. It was that Aline had addressed her in the first place that truly shocked her. How long had it been since the two of them had a conversation one on one? How long had it been since they’d sat on a bench together in the greenhouse, Alicia’s head on Aline’s shoulder, or following on her heels with a watering can, or regaling her mother with her latest fantasy while Aline absently nodded and pruned her flowers? How long had it been since Aline had chosen to start the conversation?
They’d been trying in fits and starts; acknowledgements across the dining room table, a soft brush of Aline’s hand on her shoulders as she passed. Aline would leave a cup of water at Alicia’s bedside, the door to her greenhouse open during the hours she knew Alicia liked to wander. There was an attempt, because there was love. While it could be hard to remember at times, the truth stood firm, regardless. Her mother hadn’t always been good at overt declarations or flowery words. Like Clea, Aline’s love was found in the in-between.
Alicia pivoted around in her seat on the greenhouse bench. Aline stood behind her, and for the first time in Alicia’s memory, she looked nervous. Her fingers were gripped almost too-tight around a familiar journal, her back was ramrod straight. There was a pinch to her eyebrows. She was the picture of someone used to presenting herself with a certain decorum, who was wrestling to maintain it. Slipping. The both of them were on such unsure footing, and Alicia suddenly and unexpectedly longed for the days in which she would rush to wrap her arms around her mother’s waist, giggling, unafraid of her ire in a way only the youngest sibling could be.
Alicia curled her fingers around the back of the bench, tipping her head in a way that Clea and Renoir would recognize as a question. Aline shifted the journal with one hand before moving around to sit next to Alicia. Her weight settled warm against Alicia’s shoulder, familiar, the echo of a memory from younger days. It was purely muscle memory that had her leaning in closer, pressing their shoulders together as her mother opened the journal, half on her own lap and half on Alicia’s.
Alicia knew what page she was going to turn to before she landed on it. A part of her wanted to recoil. This wasn’t made with any of her mother’s suggested techniques. This wasn’t her brother’s playful whimsy, or her sister’s curated perfection. This wasn’t some grand parable, with layers and layers of meaning to be peeled away and analyzed for hours on end. There were sprawling portraits in museums somewhere littered with her family’s signature strokes, and this would likely never be one of them. But Alicia wasn’t just a shadow anymore. Her father had asked her to show him who she was, and she had, in her own way. She wouldn’t recoil from it.
The page Aline turned to was all color and few hard lines. A fire burned across the page, oranges and reds bleeding into each other. At the center, a girl with flame-red hair stood, facing away. Her stance was firm on the ground despite the fire curling around her ankles and calves, reaching and clawing up and around her waist. A long, silver rapier was grasped in her hand, Virtuose stance just as her father had taught her, ready to strike at whatever came next. Her outfit was more akin to the one she’d been wearing when she was forced from the canvas. Alicia, even if her stance was all Maelle. She was both of them, all of them, her own person who’d risen from the ashes and continued fighting, even while the flames continued to burn.
Her mother’s fingers gently traced the half-finished lines of the fire, pausing where colors bled together. “You mixed your paint in water.”
“Papa helped find the right supplies.” Aline watched the movement of Alicia’s hands, and there was little recognition in her eyes. Alicia simply nodded before letting her hands rest in her lap once more.
“Hm.” Her mother hummed, and the both of them looked back to the painting on the page. It was so different from anything the rest of her family would paint, another thing that set her apart. With Aline’s fingers tracing gently over the page, however, Alicia didn’t feel so distant. She felt like she was ten years old, sitting on a stool and awaiting her mother’s next lesson, feet kicking impatiently against the wooden legs. Aline’s eye was critical, a master at details. Her creations were– Well, Alicia knew well how real her mother’s creations could feel. They were people, jumping out of a canvas. People who could feel, laugh, grieve, love.
Of all of the Painters whose art graced the walls of the Dessendre Manor, Aline’s were Alicia’s favorite. She turned her attention from her little painting, to her mother, who was taking in every detail in her own time. She watched each emotion play across her face, the tiny twitch at the edges of her lips, the way her eyebrows would occasionally press together. She was a hard woman to read, but Alicia had a lifetime and a half to learn.
“Have you ever heard of John Singer Sargent?” Alicia shook her head. A lesson, then. “He’s an American artist. He studied here, in Paris, and he is quite prolific. His methods are…”
Aline trailed off, and Alicia fidgeted on the bench.
“Unorthodox, not universally agreed upon in Painting communities, but. Beautiful.” Aline gripped the edges of the journal again, and the expression on her face was soft in a way Alicia hadn’t seen since she was very little. “He’s an outstanding watercolor artist. I have a book in the library on his works and methods thus far. You might enjoy it.”
Aline looked up, then, and Alicia suddenly felt like a canvas under her mother’s watchful eye. Her breath stalled. Her fingers curled into the fabric at the hem of her shirt. “Is this how you see yourself, Alicia?”
There was a still moment before Alicia nodded, tipped her head and turned back to the painting. The woman there was grounded, fierce but not untouched by the fire around her. Hurt, but determined. She wasn’t reaching for the sky, she wasn’t black and white in a canvas of color. Her feet were planted, her stance was set, and she was the color. She owned the space in which she stood. In many ways, the depiction felt like a dream, but then Alicia would remember she’d lived through so much; her body knew that stance, it knew those flames, and here she was. It wasn’t how she saw herself, it’s how she was.
“She looks strong.” For the second time in the space of a few quiet moments, Alicia startled. Her gaze flicked back to her mother, and there was a warmth growing in her chest. Aline lifted a hand and brushed a thumb gently across Alicia’s scarred cheek before tugging her close and pressing a kiss the crown of her head. Quietly, “It is my favorite depiction of you yet.”
PART FOUR: ALICIA
Aline was the best Painter Alicia knew. She could remember the feel of the cobblestone beneath her palms when she sat at the harbor, legs dangling over the ocean below, heels kicking against the crumbling overhang. Lumiere was as alive as it could be behind her, and the ocean stretched endlessly in front. The breeze coming off the water was rich with salt and brine, and the tangy undertone of sea life. It was real, it was so real.
Alicia thought of it, as her family shuffled through setting up easels on a grassy knoll overlooking the Normandy coast. Clea was quick and efficient. She was seated before anyone else, spreading paint on her palette before her family could even decide on a place to sit. Renoir was next, taking only a moment of quiet contemplation before settling in. He cast a half smile at Aline and Alicia before he effectively lost himself in his art. Alicia looked at him for a moment, then Clea, and back again. They were both so focused.
In the end, it was Aline and Alicia who were left standing, looking out over the coast. Alicia stood close enough she could lean her head against her mother’s shoulder, if she wished, the warmth of her warding off the chill, coastal breeze. She wondered what Aline saw. Was she taking in the details, the way white foam bubbled at the crest of each wave, then scattered over the beach? Was she mapping the crevices in the rock archway that arced over the water? Could she see what Alicia saw?
A harbor, a ship. An engineer and a smile. Hope where hope shouldn’t exist as another expedition set sail. All of this, juxtaposed over the reality in which she found herself settling. She thought, perhaps it wasn’t so different, after all. There was color and wonder all around her. There was still hope. Hope in her little family, who had suffered through so much, but still found a way back to each other. Hope in the sister, who was still scraping the blood from beneath her fingernails, who was learning to stand still and feel for the first time since disaster. Hope in the father, who was learning to see his family for who they were, and accept all of their aches and nuances. Hope in the mother, who found it hard to pull herself out of bed in the mornings, but still looked at the coast with wonder.
Hope for the youngest daughter. Alicia pulled in a breath and filled her lungs with salty sea air. Some days were easy, and others were harder than they had any right to be. Some days she could keep up with Monoco the Third as he ran through their gardens, and others her body ached so much even the stairs felt like an accomplishment. But each day, she found more reasons to smile. More reasons to keep trying, no matter how hard it was. Renoir could almost keep up with her signing, and Clea hadn’t completely torn apart her last painting. And Aline was looking at her again. There was a softness in her eyes past the guilt and regret; she’d been studying sign.
She bumped her mother’s shoulder gently, “He would have loved this.” She signed, paused, tipped her head with a smile. “He would have loved the train ride over, more like.”
Aline huffed a small laugh, and there was a hitch at the end of it. Alicia pressed closer, allowing her mother to have the moment without comment. Finally, “He would have.”
They stood there for a moment longer before Aline nudged Alicia out of the way. Her spot, apparently, would be right where they’d been standing. Alicia shuffled to the side, waiting until her mother was properly set up, before plopping down into the grass at her feet. Aline scoffed, affronted, as Alicia leaned back against her legs. “You’re going to stain your trousers, you foolish thing.”
Pointedly, Alicia wiped the dew from her hands on said trousers before casting a sideways glance at her mother. She was shaking her head, but Alicia swore she was fighting off a smile. It was enough to count as permission, in her mind, and she allowed herself to get properly comfortable. She pulled out her own supplies from the small, leather duffel Clea had hauled up the hiking path, spreading them out in the grass in front of her. She ignored another huff from her mother, hands working around a quick hush, some of us are working before pulling out her journal.
She opened the journal to a blank sheet, save for one line towards the top left. Her fingers traced the words, staring at them for a moment, before she got to work. Across parchment, a scene took shape. A family on a grassy knoll overlooking the Normandy coast. Grays, blues, pinks laced through the rocky coast beneath, wind-tossed scrub grass took over where sand gave way. There was a father, dark against the gray-blue sky, but soft around the edges. A sister painted in sharper lines than the rest, but leaned ever-so-slightly towards the rest of her family. There was her mother, with one hand gripping a paintbrush, and the other lacing gently through her youngest daughter’s hair as they both worked.
And there was Alicia, with a notebook in her lap, but her gaze turned towards the sea. She looked comfortable, if not wistful, as if she saw something in the water she knew she would never reach. Far, far out in the ocean, there was a small shape. A boat, perhaps. An engineer, a farmer, a scientist, a brother waving from the deck. Too small to make out, known only by one. It was an ode to a fond memory, loved but not forgotten. At the top left, the single line stood out against the backdrop of the sky, the ink bleeding slightly where the watercolor had sunk into the paper.
Alicia leaned her head back against her mother’s knee, eye closing, simply breathing as she listened to her family work. She thought about that line, and how she’d scribbled it on the train ride to the coast. How she wasn’t sure what it really meant. Above her, Aline sighed, and her hand dropped to rest on the back of Alicia’s head. She understood, then.
To Alicia, as you are meant to be.