la maîtresse

It's no secret that Simon's terrible at keeping secrets —— at least those of his own. To those around him, close to him, he'll hold their secrets to the grave —— but for his own, he's not subtle at all when it comes to things close to his own chest. He usually doesn't even try: honest to a fault, loyal to a fault.

He should have known. He bears a guilt that's a messy, nasty thing, cruel and sharp-toothed, especially when there's part of him that reminds him that he was deluded and intentionally misled, but there's another aching part of him that says he should have known.

Her words are a gentle prod, firm as she always is —— and it's in those moments that he wonders how he could have ever mistaken the other Paintress for her. Ah, but how the unfairness of it aches ——

Here in this room, though, he doesn't quite meet her gaze, which is proof enough of his perceived guilt. Their world as it is has been remade, and they have everything that was taken from them, then, changed as they are. For as much as he likes to pretend that none of what happened before affects him anymore, those who knew him before can see the weight, the guilt, the raw spot so much of what happened during his unmaking and exile that has left on some fundamental part of his soul.

Of course: she, too, has those scars. They both do. The kind of scars that you don't wear openly, but memory has a way of making you remember they're there.

He draws in a breath, letting a hand rest on the back of a chair near the window, his chroma-burned gaze held out the window to the peaceful dark outside. There's an unleashed dog jogging alongside a kid that lazily peddles on a late evening bike ride carrying a heavy package, and he watches them go, briefly envious that their night continues without the weight of difficult questions and past transgressions.

At first, she thought the whole truth somehow superfluous. There was no space for it, no will to even understand it completely in that new world they needed to navigate. One seamless transition, from captivity and torture to an inebriating freedom — though not a day passes without the shadow of the past looming like a blade over Clea's mind. What used to be the most pleasant activities she once enjoyed now feel forever altered, rotten to the core, whenever she performs them.

But now, in the midst of that tremendously precarious balance their new life demands of them, she has understood that the time to come to terms with everything that has happened shall eventually arrive, whether one is ready for it or not. She first learned it when the many nightmares came to plague them both, the reality made clear without the need to voice it; or whenever she'd find her hands dirty with wet clay after a project, and recoil at that sensation. Truth itself has been peeking through the most mundane and simplest moments of their lives, asserting its dread and its presence. She has grown tired of avoiding it, of pushing the thought aside.

She observes him pacing towards the window, plagued by the weight of the past, that destructive wave that comes and goes, always comes and goes. It pains Clea to see him lost in such thoughts — it shatters her heart to ask those questions to him too. But for the sake of their past, that once-perfect life to which they will hardly ever return, she needs to know. Whether it shall prove yet another ghost to haunt her mind, or the next, small step towards the freedom she longs for, she does not hesitate.

❛ Yes, I do. I understand it, and feel the same— ❜ she speaks calmly, her tone flat yet focused. No trace of accusation, no insistence. The choice is his to make, for memories do grow sharper teeth when dragged again into the light. She cannot help but pray that such a sacrifice might one day grant them both solace; a shred of peace to color their everyday life. ❛ I'll be sincere. Not knowing feels worse, ❜ —and how selfish it sounds, in the end — the truth. But he deserves all of it, after the vile way he has been deceived and misled into acting at the Painters' bidding.

Regardless, he's immediately drawn to every detail. If he could, he'd take notes about everything he's seeing. But he feels a little nauseous, unsteady on his legs, and he knows he must take it slow. As far as Felix knows, no Writer has ever entered a Canvas willingly, so there's no procedure to survive in there. No helpful tips, no shared informations. Clea prepared him, and all he can do is rely on what she told him. He's in great hands, though, he knows. Clea is the most skilled Paintress in the country. A legend in the making. It makes him smile that she's welcoming him so giddly into her world.

Felix feels her chroma around him. The air is thick with it, like pollen or petrichor. He understands the source of her power; it's not so different from their ink, after all, but being buried in it — surrounded by it... it's different from anything he's ever felt. It's like he's walking right inside her. Everything there is Clea, and she created it for him. The thought makes his heart skip a beat. It's the most intimate he's ever been with anyone, and it almost bothers him that it won't last long. Not this time, at least.

Clea is all smiles inside her world, and it fills Felix with a joy so deep he thinks he's gonna burst. Her white hair makes her stand out more than usual. He knew it was going to change colour, so he's not surprised, but he is fascinated. It gives her an ethereal look he finds quite fitting, since he just called her a goddess. And she responds with a tease and a smile that he mirrors immediately. "Modesty? Really? I didn't know your personality would change in here."

When she takes a step towards him, Felix feels stupidly surprised. His palm ends up in her hand and there she is, touching him like she would outside, like she didn't just create everything he's feeling and seeing. He blinks a couple times, shivering as her fingers dance on his skin. Blue eyes follow the swirls of the chroma and the petals as his palm heats up only slightly, then move to meet hers as she speaks. Felix licks his lips, unsure of what to say. Despite everything, there's power in his blood, and he cannot pretend he doesn't know. Right now, however, he's simply grateful it gives him the opportunity to enjoy her gift a bit longer.

Clea's tone is lighter than he's ever heard it, and immediately Felix decides he wants to spend the rest of his life making her sound like that. "What?" He asks with a low voice, eyes holding her gaze. "It's true. You're the closest I've ever been to the divine." And in truth, he knows, he'd much rather pray to the altar that is Clea than any other. When she tugs him towards her, Felix almost hesitates for a split second, but her grin is enough to convince him. He lifts his hand and presses it against her cheek, marvelling at how familiar her skin feels under his pads. If he kissed her, would he taste the chroma on her tongue? Would it all feel the same?

She's satisfied with her test and with his words of reassurance; though it's his health at stake, here, instead of hers, she knows better than to overlook the tiniest detail, not to mention how excitement and the promise of adventures in a painted world can blind most people's better judgment. She trusts him as she trusts his familiarity with a type of craft that can transcend its medium — be it Writing, here, or Painting in her case. And at that, a surge of pride and contentment washes over her, coloring the joy at the sound of his words of devotion. Yes, it may be finally time.

After his gentle caress, she gives him a little nod to acknowledge his readiness, the barely concealed impatience that lights up his tone and eyes, one to excite her in contagious return. Though everything vaguely reminds Clea of her and Verso's own joy at their first outings into their parents' canvases, a sense of responsibility and mastery of her own chroma has her on her toes — never to diminish the happiness they both share, but to merely balance it out. One delicate dance. ❛ Very well. Let us properly enter this world, then. Follow me— ❜ she whispers against his cheek, her smile wider.

A hand rises to touch his shoulder, a single tap of a finger — then she takes a step back, turning toward the gilded line that contours the arch. Oh, how the chroma seethes and swirls, so inviting. She has worked on that world for little more than a week, which translates to much longer inside the painting — in the hopes of impressing and enchanting him with her creations. It's been too long since she has Painted something solely for another person's sake; the mandatory projects she must produce for Council matters cannot compare. Her hand moves to close around his, as she leads him to the door.

In a couple of steps, they face the portal together; she glances behind her shoulder, up to his face, in search of hesitation or second thoughts. When she spies none of them, Clea leaps through the veil of gold, blue and white. It's pleasant to feel her own chroma and essence embrace her fully, she's always thought of that sensation as a type of silent welcome. It's her soul-born reality, after all. Its master has come back — and now, with a guest. Her feet sink into thin and white sand, fresh and dry. She's surrounded by the color blue, alive and bubbling vibrantly around her in all its many shades and gradients. Ah, yes— the underwater scene.

She's always liked playing with elements. To have their influence and beauty freely and wildly shape her painted worlds, ever since she was a child. Ice, water, fire, or even rocky mountains. This one too is no exception, for it looks as if they have plunged deep into the heart of ocean itself — and yet breathe as easily as they normally would. It's chroma mimicking the memory of water itself, though — it moves the way the sea does, in its immensity and grandeur, yet yields to her exact wishes and visions. Each rock, each attached barnacle, each long and wavy ribbon of kelp or anemone swaying to the invisible and intangible current has been placed with meticulous care — to dance the way she's intended it to, to be marked by moss or lichen in ways she has learned from paintings and books alike. Nothing is accidental, in a Painter's world.

She turns to look at him then — a few seconds after his entrance, allowing the world to be admired properly by an "outsider's" eyes, before asking anything else of Felix. But it's hard to pretend otherwise: she has been looking forward to his reaction, to his first unhurried glimpse at her Art come to life. She holds her breath at the unrepeatable instant about to unfold before her. She knows what admiration is — she's had audiences before, had her Canvases be judged and scrutinized, had the privilege to flaunt her skill to too many people to count. How different it feels, to wish for a dear one's reaction, compared to the evaluating gazes of expecting crowds.

Clea hears it in her reflection's raised voice, in how she holds herself while retaliating. Of course, it's foolish to assume Clea knows exactly what the real one is thinking. She can surmise it, though. There's little else to think of that isn't creation or despair about the loved ones she's not seen in forever, or this guilt that gnaws at her when the Nevrons return injured and bleeding chroma, knowing her hands perpetuate violence. She too wishes to be able to erase—more than just trimming back mistakes and wounds. Total erasure. To destroy the creatures outright and thus slow down her creation process. But some thread or other stops that. And another demands perfection; thus, she cannot send broken ones back onto the Continent.

Clea bites her own tongue to steady herself and not display disappointment nor a tired gaze when the other speaks so... clinically. It's a fearful thought—for she's not ready to accept erasure without anyone knowing of her fate. At the same time, the choice is entirely out of her hands. All of this because Maman might be able to sense Clea and bring her back without these edits.

"You hate the words because they are true. This is cowardice." Her eyes travel upward, to the drafts and copies of other powerful Nevrons floating within the nebulae of colours, waiting to be born once their other selves perish. "Why bother with all these creatures if all you need to do is talk to Maman or help Papa? There are enough of them to wipe out a city."

With how she's been Repainted, it just doesn't make sense to waste so much time and effort making these creatures and watching the numbers go down on the monolith. The sliver of power Clea has given her is great—granting her the power to weave chroma and recreate life on a whim. Able to move Nevrons and act through them. The chaos of the Fracture speaks to their power, so why does Clea utilise such an obtuse method of fetching their mother? Clea can presume something out in the real world keeps her busy—Alicia, maybe, or handling her own grief. The other Clea has been painfully quiet on her reasons when she isn't being patronising.

The last statement is what gets past Clea's measured annoyance, cracking through the restraint and drawing an incredulous chuckle from her. She's not had much reason to laugh in these decades, and perhaps being alone with oneself has a good chance of decaying her usual responses and mannerisms.

"You would chafe yourself bloody if this was reality and you were in my position. Of course I would occupy every piece of freedom you might grant in your generosity. But you cannot fathom making a mindless beast do this work for you. It has to be me." The words are spoken with a palpable bitterness. Damn these threads, making her perform to the whims of this facsimile and forcing her nervous system to mix other emotions together over this emptiness occupying her heart.

Still, Clea closes the distance and moves into the other Clea's space—she hasn't felt fear since the Fracture. Only hesitation when the other Clea has shown anger and impatience with the 'flawed' creations. Clea might as well test the physical limits regarding her captor, since death is not an option. At least Clea might feel something different instead of quietness and the flow her mind settles into when Painting. "I know the decades would have killed you, because Maman is nothing if not honest in her work. You're her creation as much as I am." And Clea isn't foolish; she can assume these threads have either dulled or removed her ability to desire death if all that lingers is apathy.

She studies the other's blackened eyes leveled at her own. At the spark of stubbornness and defiance glinting within, one not even her brushstroke has completely retouched — the hidden though now damaged layer of plasterwork resurfacing at the tiniest crack in the wall. She's glad the creation does not share her same eyes anymore; it's easier to assess her, and to distinguish her from the reflection Clea has spent her entire life gazing at in the mirror. Her mother's work, in a sense, has been thorough in that particular regard — the most uncomfortable one among many equally wrong points, she believes.

On one point, the copy is right. Clea would have willingly and gladly chosen death instead of having her own chroma used against her will, to spread havoc among friends and family; a fate of hopeless, endless captivity would be a far worse outcome, in her head and heart, than even a last moment spent in fatal agony. That knowledge she harbors makes Clea stand as still as a statue; were her copy not imprisoned in that atelier, she'd have found a way to numb that thought and drive it out of her mind in an instant, to paint over that needless concern of hers. Though it irks the girl — and by a lot — she does not act upon such drastic ideas, no preventive measure is taken. For what can it possibly change, for her doppelganger and her captivity — that obscure glimpse into their own hearts ?

❛ Then I shall consider myself fortunate that this isn't my reality, ❜ she hisses, trying not to think too much of it. It's hard — so she resumes, after a moment. ❛ Maman won't listen. The only one who could have talked her out of it was trapped, by her Aline, no less. ❜ She would have taken her out herself, if she could. But the stalemate her parents have respectively locked themselves in prevents them from exiting on their own. Force is necessary, and erasing the canvas with both of them still dwelling inside could prove fatal. How superfluous it feels, to explain the intricate mechanics of a Canvas to a being made of ink— ❛ And I refuse to waste my time in here, when I have more pressing matters to attend to, at home. My creations see to every task I need completed while I am away. You serve as my hands. Unfortunately for us both, no mindless beast can get as close to me as you were once painted to be. ❜

Her hands — just as much as her pets are her eyes, her hands, her tongue and her sharp claws. To erode the world, to erase, to crystallize. To preserve the good the world once meant for her and her brother, before it's forever gone. Each one of them has been born to bring Aline to her limit, until no pure and usable chroma can return to her and she will be forced out of the canvas. And her cracked mirror, the replica — their unwilling regent in Clea's absence.

And she's about to turn and dismiss the matter altogether, when the other's words have her blue eyes flare in incredulity. Indignation steals her breath; or maybe the chroma she's made of is turning heavier, denser, so much so that Clea finds it hard to correctly maintain her form. It comes as natural as breathing — now it requires her undivided concentration. Her hand too, taken and pressed against that chest to gauge the admirable fidelity of the chroma drumming to the rhythm of a heartbeat, disturbs her. She does not move away immediately — she refuses to grant her copy that tell — but her gaze drops once to her own hand, before dragging back upward.

First Clea feels her own retouch, then her mother's essence humming underneath it. And in the planned-out harmony of the threads that bind her, she tests the boundaries once more — and successfully, at that. ❛ You do have nerve. Tell me, then: had I never existed— no, had I succumbed to a fever as a child, been taken by the sea, or trampled under hooves yesterday — what kind of pitiful echo would your existence have become ? The face you wear, the voice you use, your heart — all of it has always answered to me, first. And only me. ❜

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Take me away, she says, and he’s ready then to lift her into his arms and take her to safety —— no, no, I should stay, she counters, and he’s ready to anchor himself to this place in the earth until she bids him farewell. He can’t think of anything else: she’s right before him, right in front of him, and if he thinks of the truths that lay behind those terrible fallen doors and crumbled and fractured beams he would collapse to his own knees. 

But that’s for later. Grief will come later, and it will come fierce, but right now he is stone. 

“ We will stay close, just in case, ” he promises, softly. “ But I don’t think we should stay here so close. The smoke, the fire, it’s still dangerous even far away, and we will only get in their way. ” It’s soft, gentle, his voice steady and calm, low and only stretched between them. And it’s a truth, too, but also —— but also he doesn’t want her to have to watch the bones of the place burn to cinder. 

Briefly, he allows himself to look. It’s —— desolation. Devastation. Loss unimaginable! Part of him desperately feels as though he should be part of the crew going in, putting it out, doing what they can —— but god, he can’t leave her here. Not like this. 

Not like this. 

He wants to reassure, he wants to tell her it will be fine. But the words can’t come, because how can they? If what she says is true——

He presses a kiss to her temple, warm and steady, uncaring who sees — and honestly, who is looking? Everyone here is wide-eyed and horrified, and their mundane grief in the face of horror lets them disappear into the shadows. He’s glad, for once. “ Just up the road. We can wait by the main gates for as long as you want. That way we cannot miss it if there comes a messenger or anyone returning. ”

And even as he speaks, he’s urging her that way — his broad frame a shield against the horrors behind. He hears the whines, too, of the dogs, and makes a note to go back for them when she is safe and he can loosen his belt enough to act like a leash. The thought distracts long enough that he’s almost surprised by her words—— 

“ What? How could it not be? ” He’s stunned, quietly, and he knows some of the politics of the Painters, the conflicts with the Writers —— he’s no fool. He’s observant, quiet, keeps his own council. Holds secrets like they are an oath. But he couldn’t imagine it would escalate to violence! To —— murder? 

She lets the man guide her further away from the house, and her mind screams and protests for Clea to act the diligent and ready daughter she's always been; to rationalize what has happened and whatever she suspects might have caused such disaster — but it is too hard. Too heavy. She surrenders to his guidance as she does to the ache rapidly swelling in her heart at the mere thought of what's become of her siblings.

The damage must be immense. There's hesitation at the idea of a closer look, a glance over her shoulder to maybe assess the state of the manor; his physique and firmness prove to be a small mercy in that regard instead, for the way she clings to his arm and side does prevent her from even glimpsing it by chance — the charred walls, that wreckage. The smoke, though — that she cannot possibly outrun, no matter his steady company or their pace. It's painful to think of how much has gone up in clouds of ashes that she once cherished, created, or loved.

But each reluctant step is a much needed one. She does not need any more crowds, any more shouting. Rumors. Arguments. Pity.

The delicate press of his lips against her temple slows time to a halt, a similar feeling to the one she'd conjure time and time again inside one of her Canvases. The flicker of a finger, to bend the world to her will; it's less grand and empowering here, that gentle feeling — but it reaches her just the same, to settle deep in her heart. She doesn't know how to respond in kind to that attention, but simply closes her eyes and imagines how happy and grateful it would have made her feel, under different circumstances.

At the gates, she comes to a stop naturally, as though there is nowhere else to go. It's a good idea to wait for something, someone, a word, over there, by the road — though she silently prays no news of grave and urgent nature will come to find her; what little faith and hope that cursed night has left her with is set on begging that no messenger will come running with further tragedy to devastate her. That she will not be fetched. And that the dark night is meant to fade soon, with nothing else to ask of her family.

His question reaches her as if from an echo. As if he stands distant, untouched by the gravity of her assumptions. Danger— ? ❛ Neither of them would have been so careless. ❜ Not Verso, not Alicia. Even then, they knew better than to idle in the face of danger and of carelessness, at the easy mercy of flames. A fire of this size ignited by a forgotten candle or an overturned lamp is hard to believe. To her.