Chapter Text
The pain had been but an instant; a breath. The cold shaft of the cane pierced right through his heart, that much Gustave remembers, but he failed to recall anything beyond that.
The blood, the screams, the fear that should have followed, all missing. Everything felt so distant, so empty. Was this what death felt like? Probably. There was never going to be any other outcome against the stranger. Gustave couldn't see, there wasn't anything left to see, but still the face of the man on the cliff remained as clear in his psyche as when they were standing in front of each other. A visage of pity. A man far too used to putting down people, like he would for wounded animals beyond saving...
A sound snapped him out of his reflection, a hushed whisper, a sob heard through a closed door.
Then a heartbeat, his own.
Thump
He felt his body once more, incandescent heat searing his skin.
Thump
He sensed his voice return, filling the void with screams that had to be his.
THUMP
He opened his eyes, only to see flames.
***
"Thou art... not Uncle Gael."
The small voice, likely that of a younger woman, greeted him as he awoke. His head was spinning and he could almost taste the bile rising in the back of his throat. He managed a grunt as he painstakingly raised his head towards his interlocutor. On a stool tall enough to reach his shoulders were he standing rather than laying on the floor, sat a girl. She wore robes that were clearly oversized for her petite stature, a set that consisted of a dune colored dress that ended right above her ankles hanging from the stooltop and a hoodless cloak of dark gray tones with a red-orange hue. Her long ghost white hair loosely tied into a ponytail still reached the floor despite her seat's great height and was adorned by a small charcoal grey hat. But what stood out to Gustave the most was her eyes. Her pupils were vertical slits, as would a reptile's, and the iris of each eye was a bright amber that glistened with an orange hue. Pale lips upon paler skin parted to reveal the same voice heard a few moments before.
"Forgive me, Painted one. I have mistaken thee for another." Her tone was still gentle, but the confusion that had been part of her previous words had now been replaced with sadness, disappointment. "I believed those tears would be meant for him..."
"W-what? Wh-where? And who? I—I— Augh!" His attempt at lifting himself from the wooden floor ended abruptly as his face reconnected with the board. The cause of his failure quickly became apparent to him : his left arm, the mechanical one, was nowhere to be seen.
"Maelle." The word came out of his mouth as naturally as it always had, but the feelings attached to the beloved name quickly turned sour as he remembered where his arm had been left. The cliff. He remembered the wind screaming. The blood. He remembered Maelle’s eyes as the cane impaled him. The man — no, the executioner.
"I-I need to go back. Maelle, she's-! I can't- I have to!" His second shot at leaving the ground went much better. Despite the sharp pain that he could feel running through every fiber of his being, he now stood face to face with the girl. She stared at him with a poised look on her face. From this close, it became obvious that what he assumed to simply be dirt on her ashen skin was actually scales.
"Painted one, I implore thee to calm thyself. No harm shall come to thee in this place." The reassurance wasn't enough. He wasn't the one he was scared for.
"Please, I don't know who you— and what is— but you need to send me back I beg you! I need to save my family, she's in danger! Every second counts!"
"..."
Her silence was heavy, and her eyes shifted from Gustave. She must have been thinking about what to answer, but the lumièrian was anything but in a patient mood. As he was about to reprise his demand, she spoke quietly.
"I know not exactly of thy circumstances, Painted one, but I fear there isn't much left for thee to return to." She lazily waved her hand towards the room they occupied, which made Gustave he hadn't really paid attention to his surroundings at all. He now saw that the girl sat in front of a giant canvas, at least three times her height. He saw that he was in an attic most likely accessed by the ladder behind him and that had a small window to the all-white exterior. And he saw that the room he stood in was currently being filled with flames. It didn't sound like the inferno it looked like, however, more like the quiet crackling associated with a campfire. "Much like thine, this is a world that hast been painted and then set ablaze. It is why they connected, and why thy path hast led you here, Painted one."
"H-hold on a second. Ablaze? My... world is burning?" Every time it seemed like he could start calming down, panic would once again take over him. How could an entire world be burning? Was it a fire like the one around him? Strange flames that appeared ungrowing and unconsuming? Or was it an inferno that ravaged all, a painful twist on the gommage? His eyes darted all over the place, questions piling up in his mind. But one of them stood out to him, one thing that bothered him since the start of their short conversation.
"Why do you keep calling me that? 'Painted one'. You also said something about painted worlds and whatnot, is it related to the Paintress?" His eyes suddenly grew as a thought passed through his mind and his gaze locked on to the child-like figure atop the stool. "Are you linked to the Paintress? Is this all a part of her plans?" He assumed a familiar stance and instinctively tried to summon his sword, but his call received no response and his hand remained empty.
"The word 'Paintress' resonates heavily from thine mouth... Although I am one to paint worlds, I doubt being important enough to thee to warrant such animosity. After all, we have only just met." It was obvious that she had noticed the fighting stance that Gustave had taken, but her voice remained just as soothing and not even a glimpse of fear could be seen through her eyes. "As for thy first question, I call thee 'Painted one' for I have no other name to call upon thee with. All I know is, thou wert but a soul born of painted pigment. One filled with kindness and care."
He swallowed thickly; the flames had made the air unbelievably dry. "Gustave. My name is Gustave." He did not quite know what to make of the emotions he was feeling. Was he relieved that the only person he could see in this unknown place most likely wasn't his enemy? Confused? She said that he and his whole world was a painting, what exactly did that entail? Was he even real? Or did he feel despair? She said his world was burning. Were his loved ones burning too? The answer was a bit of everything. He let himself fall to the ground, sitting as he would when he used to work maintenance on his arm. When he needed a minute to think. "What about you, what is your name?" He asked, hoping that his voice could make him forget the unceasing sound of fire surrounding him.
"I... Do not have one. I am simply referred to as the painter; the one to follow the steps of Ariandel and of Ariamis before them."
"Well I'd rather not call you anything resembling 'paintress' so... Hum well I– I mean, they both start with Aria so, hum, how about I call you that for now?" Somewhere deep inside of him, he was relieved to see that he hadn't changed. That he still struggled to get a full sentence out on the first try.
A look of surprise washed over her face, followed by one of deep thought. When her gaze drifted back to him, she had a barely discernable smile. "Yes, that would be quite an appropriate appellation. I thank thee, Sir Gustave."
"No need for the sir, just... just Gustave is good." A moment of silence. "Is... Is it true? That my world is gone?" As he was calming down from his confused and erratic state, he could feel his tears pushing against his eyes, trying to escape. The panic leaving its place for dread.
"I would not say gone, for still it remains on the easel. Yet it most definitely can no longer harbor any life, and with time will return to nothing but cinder." It was strange. Gustave could almost hear a yearning in her voice.
He jumped to his feet, stepping very close to Aria, to the point where there was but a dozen centimeters separating their faces. "With time? H-how much time? Can it be stopped? Please, I beg you if there's a-anything that I can do to save it- to save them i'll do it! I–I–don't really understand everything you mentioned about paintings but if it was really created then can't the ones that create it help in saving it?"
"That would prove quite difficult, as it was the very beings responsible for thy world's creation that have now set their minds on destroying it." Those words seemed to swallow everything around Gustave, leaving him with nothing but one very familiar emotion: despair.
Why? Why would the ones who created a world want to destroy it? Did they not care for the lives of their creation? He fell to his knees; his strength leaving his legs; his head against the wooden stool. Of course they didn't. That's what he always thought wasn't it? That if there were a god, a creator, then either they were dead and gone or they did not care a single bit about the inhabitants of Lumière. For they would have stood by and watched them all suffer for 67 long years. He felt a gentle touch upon the top of his head. A small hand, gently ruffling his hair. He looked up and met a now familiar pair of yellow eyes.
"Thou need not hold back thine tears, for it is normal to mourn." Unlike her prior statements, this felt like practiced lines. Empty comfort that had been given to her over and over. "But perhaps the world had stagnated, and this was the bett—"
"Don't." He interrupted. "Don't you dare say that, that's bullshit."
The silence went on thicker and devoid of any comfort. Even the surrounding blaze seemed to quiet down.
Aria spoke again. "The world that currently harbors us is the Painting of Ariandel. A world once created as refuge to the forlorn. A place of respite for those who had nowhere else to go. But all paintings eventually come to rot." The speech felt familiar — Gustave had heard it before, similar words that ringed bells in his mind.
"And so I was charged with a task by mother dearest:
When the world begins to rot,
witness the fire that would return it to ash,
and paint a world anew."
He suddenly recalled his sister, Emma, struggling with the speech she'd give to Gustave's Expedition 33 on the eve of their departure. That's what it sounds like: rehearsed conviction.
"But an Unkindled", She continued. "One who went by the name of Sister Friede, refused to let me accomplish my raison d'être. She preferred to let the world rot than grant it a merciful end, and for that she locked me away and prevented me from painting. Until my Uncle Gael managed to bring yet another Ashen One within the painting. 'When the ashes are two, a flame alighteth', and thus Elfriede was defeated, and I was shown flame..."
A silence once again stretched across the room as the girl stared at her canvas. Her eyes reflected determination, yet Gustave did not fail to notice something akin to doubt briefly cross her gaze.
The paintress resumed her speech. "Thou must believe me; it is a terrible thing to rot. Compared to such, burning is a mercy. Thou may have lost thine home, but I will paint a world. It will be cold, and dark, and kind; it would openly accept thee within its embrace." She turned to face the man as she spoke, her dark citrine eyes offering him a pleading look.
He closed his eyes. "Respite, huh..." he murmured as his head hung low. "I, hum, we—". He clicked his tongue in frustration as the words fumbled from his mind and clumsily escaped his lips. "We were never... granted that. For years, for all my life and just as long before my birth, we've been fighting and fighting and desperately clinging onto any shreds of hope we could grasp." The face of his parents and of his mentors flashed through his mind, their words echoing within the depth of his soul. For those who come after. "So when you talk about m-mercy I just... I just can't agree. Maybe for this world it is, if that's what its inhabitants want and if you make them a new home then maybe yeah, it could be the best option but not for me, not for us. If we wanted a merciful end, all we had to do was to wait for the Gommage to take us, but instead we chose to fight." He snapped his head towards Aria, his now wide open eyes still disturbed, but filled with focus and determination." So I'll ask you once again Aria : please, if there is any way for my world to be saved, for the people, my people, to have a chance at living their lives then please... Please help me."
Emotions passed over her small visage. Surprise, unease, conflict, but perhaps more importantly, Gustave could see compassion. "I... do not know what I could do for thee, Gustave... While ample time we possess as I estimate that a year here would represent a few hours at most, I cannot repaint a world whose essence I have never felt in person; only create one anew from the same pigment and canvas."
""Then— then perhaps you could teach me. Whatever essence there is to know about Lumière I have certainly experienced and I would happily learn how to paint to save my world. W-we could do it together!" His hands were speaking in motions as he quickly paced back and forth in front of the paintress. "We have time, right?" He tried to make his voice sound hopeful rather than desperate.
"The ability to paint worlds is not one so easily taught to one that is not of kin. And even if it was, if thine wish is to revert the world to its previous state, then you would need to channel the flames rather than extinguish them."
"Then that's what I'll do! I'm pretty handy, I'm sure I can build something to do that or something! I'll go to the other end of this world if I need to, but I'll find out how."
"Even if thee succeeded, nothing would prevent thine world's creators from destroying it again; perhaps with more efficient ways than simply setting it ablaze."
"Then help me find a way to prevent it from happening, please I beg you!" He reached forward and grabbed the girl's shoulder as gently as his agitated state of mind allowed him. "There has to be a way, a possibility for them to be saved! I refuse to let go of hope; not now, not while they need me..."
"..."
Aria stared at the man in front of him, then at the hand placed on her shoulder, gentle yet shaking ever so slightly. Finally, she turned her head back to her canvas. Smeared on it was the blood that would make the essence of a wonderful world. The faintest murmur escaped her lips. "Mother, what would thou do?" She closed her eyes, her mind clearly in thoughts. Gustave dared not move or even breathe. Scared that any movement might somehow disrupt any chance of a positive response. After what felt like ages to him, she opened her eyes and spoke quietly.
"Hope… such a fragile pigment. Yet perhaps, in thy hands, it may endure. Perhaps it is what I am missing…" She then spoke a bit louder, a contrasting mix of resignation and determination in her tone. "There would be one way for thy world to be granted salvation."
"What is it?"
"Thou must descend… and become Lord not of flame, nor dark — but of what lies between."