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Maelle avoided the streets as much as possible.
As a child she ran away so many times every hiding place, nook and cranny was ingrained in her memory, she felt a lingering sense of safety when she walked on the roofs and sneaked through unknown alleyways. She also collected enough bullies from the orphanage and past workplaces that crossing certain parts of town would certainly result in a fight she could not walk away from without a bruise or split lip. There was nobody on these un-secured rooftops to make passing comments about the unusual colour of her hair, no nosy vendors to snarkily scold her to stop running around and get a job despite wearing the courier armband and clearly rushing somewhere. The rooftop gardens, workhouse service tunnels and back alleys were mostly calm and blissfully empty and those who came here usually minded their business and avoided her which she gratefully reciprocated.
She was half hoping to run into Gustave as she skipped across a strait passage between two houses, sometimes she caught him crossing the nearby street on his way to get his coffee for grave shifts, but he was probably still at work; with the dark clouds casting a dull shadow over everything she was not sure exactly what time it was. She turned a corner, quickly apologised and pushed her way through a group of people to get to an energy rope, ascending to a small platform attached to a balcony repurposed as a seed plot. She carefully walked the thin wood planks dividing the crates, making sure to not crush a single sprout, stopping to balance herself at the end for a jump; she landed on an adjacent roof with a roll, making sure to shield the package with her arm as she did so. There was a clothing line flowing sheets tugged by the sudden winds that threatened to haul Maelle to the streets below, a collection of crayons and wooden blocks left behind by children probably deemed too old to pay; she caught the glimpse of a bakery’s colourful sign on the street, the fleeting smell of cooking meat, the frenzied barking of a distant dog. It was so removed, she felt like an outside observer, like a critic viewing a painting, looking in from the outside, catching the little details. She wandered if the children who left their toys behind felt similarly; growing up in Lumiere was a daunting task, the responsibilities rushed them quickly but the respect and gratitude attached came too late or never. Becoming an adult meant abandoning old habits and weaknesses when ordered so, something that some found easier to do than others.
Ever since Maelle could remember, she always woke up screaming. Little children tormented by the occasional nightmares were looked at with pity and understanding, something Maelle could only remember receiving in her youngest days, before she grew into an age her roommates, foster parents and guardians decided was beyond acceptable – she only got animosity and anger after that. They all accepted her to forget, to still, but they did not understood how real the heat of the fires felt, the feeling of her lungs filling with foul smoke, the terror of running through a convoluted maze of rooms engulfed by roaring fires, yelling out a name that upon waking she could never recall or remember.
She was too old to cry about tiny things like baseless dreams. She started her apprenticeship at six like everybody else, doing jobs that made her run through a city of widows and orphans like a red haired whirlwind, fast enough that she used to think she might be able to shake her problems off and leave it on the cobblestone for somebody else to find. But she never managed to lose it or if she did, it found a way to sneak right back.
She shook these thoughts away, carefully navigated a series of handholds over a gap, holding the package under her armpit and cursing when she always dropped it. The descent back to the street placed her a street away from her destination.
The upside of not seeing Gustave at the coffee shop was finding him at his desk, he was so lost in his schematics that only presenting a letter addressed to him made him realise she was there.
“Thank you, Maelle” his hands blindly scouted the table for a sharp instrument, his eyes still on her, visibly stuck between making conversation and opening the letter. “Is it from…?”
“Emma” Maelle nodded, pushing a pair of scissors forwards, Gustave murmured a string of gratitudes, slicing the envelope open and pulling its contents out. “Something funding related?”
Gustave unfolded a letter, he leaned against the table, his brows furrowing as he read, Maelle intertwined her fingers behind her back and waited. Gustave was the only person who truly liked Maelle’s company; time passed unfairly fast when she was with him, his tone was calm and lacked the condescension of her usual clients, Gustave was the only one who talked to Maelle like she was a ten year old instead of just another employee. He somehow did it in a non-patronising way that made Maelle feel relaxed instead of frustrated. Even when she was running late or brought bad news Gustave never yelled and refused to shoot the messenger, metaphorically speaking.
Maelle decided him and Emma where the only adults she actually liked. She considered adding Sophie and the assistant from the bakery to that list but their status was still pending.
Gustave was still reading the letter, maybe for a second time, he carefully folded it again and slid it into his pocket.
“Who is that package for?” he asked, gesturing towards the box wrapped in brown paper, Maelle patted it absentmindedly before answering:
“The workshop, it sounds like machine parts.”
“You can put them on the table, I’ll sign the delivery form” Gustave suggested, Maelle raised an eyebrow.
“Are you authorised to do that?”
“I am supposed to be the lead engineer here, I might as well.” Gustave reasoned, accepting the paper from the girl and signing it before handing it back.
“And have you engineered anything good lately?” she asked, hesitant to leave. Gustave shot a look towards the open envelope before answering, Maelle suspected whatever it contained was less than satisfactory.
“I’m still trying to finish the lumina converter.”
“Oh” Maelle said, Gustave gestured towards a thing on the table. She looked at Gustave for permission and he gave it with a nod, Maelle inched closer to take a better look at the thing. She heard about the lumina converter, it was quite a hot topic, by people who found it a brilliant invention and those who found it a lost cause and a waste of money alike. From the outside, Maelle found it to be quite unremarkable. It was a nicely machined piece of metal with symbols and what looked like moving parts on it, she jerked back when Gustave reached out, two hands, one of flesh and one of metal, lifting and cradling the things like how a mother might cradle her infant. Maelle mentally kicked herself in the ass, the imagery made her stomach twist.
“Here she is, in all her oily, half assembled glory” Gustave looked like he wanted to throw the thing and hug it against his chest at the same time. “I hope this thing will not cost me an arm and a leg. I am of the opinion that paying an arm for progress was well and truly enough. It’s not assembled, it can’t hurt you” he quickly added when Maelle’s eyes widened and the girl scrambled to take a big step backwards.
“I know” Maelle lied, steadying herself. Her face got hot as shame dug its claws in. Of course it was not working. Gustave was smart enough to do that, it was totally obvious. “I’m not scared.”
“Of course not” Gustave was doing his best to hide a smile, the corners of his mouth twitching, Maelle found the effort he put into not laughing as he put the machine down to be admirable. “You remind me of the people who sets out on expeditions right after they learn to wield a sword. Those who don’t wait until the very last moment to do something.”
“You better finish the lumina converter before I depart” Maelle teased, Gustave jokingly saluted.
“I’ll do my best.” he promised.
Somewhere in the building a chime sounded, they both froze, before Gustave rolled up a blueprint and stashed it away, getting ready to leave.
“Do you care for a pastry?” he asked, and that instantly put Maelle on edge. She considered Gustave a friend and he had invited her to join his quick dinner breaks which she usually accepted, but pastries were different. Even with the aquafarm set up, pastries were expensive. He only ever offered them two times, once when she was caught by some kids from the orphanage and showed up at the workshop with bruises and a bloody nose, and when he stumbled upon her on a rooftop after she ran away from home. Gustave treated her like she was a human being with agency but at the end of the day, he still saw her as a child; a child he could bribe with sugar, to lull her into a comfort that might lessen the impact of something horrible.
She nodded, throat too dry to speak. Maelle tried to recall recent events, anything that could’ve been foreshadowing for something. Maybe she was getting fired – that was always a possibility. The other possibility – something Maelle refused to even think about – was something that happened to Gustave. She dug her nails into her palm until it bled, ordering these thoughts away. He looked tired, terribly sleep deprived and wary, but he was alive and beside the metallic arm swinging by his side, mostly unharmed. She felt her hunger dissipate as her stomach filled with angst and anxiety, she fiddled with a loose string from her jacket as they crossed the streets, the walk to the bakery took an uncomfortably long time compared to the rooftop route she would’ve taken.
The young assistant was not there, she felt curious and disapproving eyes follow her as they retrieved their food, Maelle adjusted her hat to make sure she hid as much red hair under it as physically possible. She was reminded how out of place she felt in Lumiere and it almost soured the taste of the croissant. Gustave sat in front of her, his plate untouched, he watched Maelle take dainty bites out of hers before her hunger came back in full force and she crammed half of it in her mouth, chewing it for way too long to savour the taste. Sometimes she found Gustave staring at her, he looked at her like he did at the lumina converter, thinking really hard to figure something out. She felt surprised when she realised she was not upset about it; Gustave was a problem solver and she was what many people liked to call, a problem.
She ate the last piece of the croissant, picked a few morsels from the plate with her finger and ate those too. Gustave pushed his plate forward, Maelle considered it, her mouth still full, before accepting it and dug into her second croissant. Gustave was clearly preparing to say something, Maelle waited.
“I… heard you’re… “Gustave was picking his words very carefully. “going back to the orphanage.”
Oh.
“Yes.” Maelle wished she had said no to the pastries; they were swirling in her stomach, trying to pry their way back out. “But it’s fine.”
“It’s not, Maelle, it’s- Parents shouldn’t… return a child!” Gustave’s voice was still level but this was the first time Maelle saw him angry. Not just mad or inconvenienced, but truly, blood-boilingly mad.
“I’m just not an easy person to live with.” Maelle admitted.
“You are a good kid.”
Maelle felt like the world was melting. She wanted to stand up and yell, to tell him no, that she was not, she was always running away and failing her apprenticeships, she was unreasonably afraid of fire and she woke people up with her screaming, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not be the person the foster families wanted her to be. She couldn’t not be Maelle.
But she closed her mouth closed, lips pressed together in cold desperation, wanting to preserve whatever image Gustave had of her in his head, an image that was clearly better than the reality. He saw her as something else, not Maelle who cried every single night until her family had enough of her shit, not Maelle the orphan who was only ever tasked with simple things because she always messed everything up. He liked an image of her that, at the end of the day, was not true, the pastries, the conversations, the encouragements were for what Gustave thought Maelle was, not the girl sitting in front of her.
“I mean that, you know.” Gustave slowly reached into his pocket, his movements calculated and even like he was afraid that she might spook, run away and never come back. “You deserve better.”
“I’ll be fine. Really, I’m not even that devastated. Thank you for the croissants, I enjoyed them and your company but I really need to go ho- to the orphanage. I need to get back in time.”
“Maelle.”
“I really need to…”
“Maelle” Gustave’s prosthetic hand wrapped around Maelle’s arm, she froze halfway between sitting and standing up, she weakly pulled against his grasp and it slowly, but relented. He handed her something and Maelle, still dazed and petrified, took it reflexively. She recognised it as the same paper she delivered to the workshop, she recognised Emma’s handwriting at the bottom too, but the letter was inked by a typewriter, the thin black lines reminded her of fishbones. It took her a moment to get her mind bridled again and to actually process the words and read.
She had to reread it multiple times, her stomach stopped hurting by the utter shock.
“We still need to do a few things.” Gustave whispered. “To make it official.”
Maelle’s fingers crinkled the paper, she held onto it so hard she was afraid it’s going to tear, like it will turn into smoke and disappear if she relented. It took a while for the blood thundering in her ears to quiet down, she suddenly realised Gustave was still talking.
“...and you don’t know Emma well but you will get along. She already cleared a room out for you, it does not yet have a bed but Emma is working on it and she’s very persistent…”
The nausea was back, Maelle’s head was spinning.
“...I am not the best next door neighbour to have, apparently. But I think we will figure that out.
“No…” she whispered. Gustave looked at her questioningly, the letter slipped from Maelle’s shaky hands and pirouetted down into a puddle. No, no, no, no, no no, no, no…!”
She wanted to say too many things and had too little time, her head hurt and her heart was beating against her ribs, she opened her mouth to say something, her throat throbbing with the pain of withheld tears, but ll the words she know were gone.
She turned and ran. She heard Gustave yell out her name but she was not stopping, she was running too fast to stop, she didn’t even know how but suddenly she was on the roof, on the very same roof she traversed earlier, sheets billowing in the wind wildly as the first raindrops began to fall. The rain fell quickly, fat droplets hitting hard enough to hurt, washing away the colourful crayons until nothing but faded puddles of colour remained. Maelle crawled into a ball, the cold slowly melting through her clothes as she watched the storm siege the city below, like it could wash it all away if it tried hard enough.
She reasoned it was for the best, that Gustave would’ve grew to hate her eventually. They always did. It was easier this way, severing what she thought of as her only real friendship before she could lull herself into false hopes that this time it could be different.
A pathetic whine escaped her mouth and she was too devastated to care. She sounded like a kicked dog and that’s exactly how she felt, the goosebumps now covered most of her body and the shivers were not just under her skin but deep inside her flesh too, trying and failing to fend off the cold. She came to rest her quivering jaw on her knees, making herself as small as possible, not a hard task for a ten year old. She wanted to disappear, for the rain to wash her away like unsettled paint.
A white hot thread of lightning split the sky in two, illuminating Lumiere before plunging it back into darkness, the thunder that followed was ear piercing.
“Maelle!”
She shuddered, looking up from the crayon stains, a silhouette loomed over her, clothes yanked by the wind, hair stuck together with rain water, an arm that reflected the brilliant light of the storm so sharply Maelle’s eyes hurt.
“G-Gustave?”
“We need to get down!” he yelled over the thunder, his face was slick with rain and he had to squint to see. “Come! Before I get struck by lightning!”
That made Maelle jump to her feet. If Gustave actually got hit by lightning it will be her fault and she could never forgive herself.
“This way!” she yelled, pulling him towards an energy rope. The tiles and planks were slippery under their feet, she had to catch Gustave once, he just cursed and continued to run.
At street level the chaos was less primal, the wind broken by walls and death by falling no longer imminent. Gustave pulled her in the opposite direction of the orphanage, Maelle tried to argue but Gustave was persistent and the rain started to fall even harder, so she stopped and followed him, sidestepping people trying to find shelter from the rain.
Emma was waiting for them at the door. She ignored Gustave’s explanation and Maelle’s apology and shoved them inside before shutting the door for good.
“Get dry clothes and warm yourself!” she ordered. “The both of you!”
“I don’t…” Maelle started, Emma nodded, examining a window for possible leakage.
“I’ll lend you some. You need to get into the shower, you’re drenched!”
Gustave slowly herded her up a small flight of stairs, coaxing her to slip out of her coat, they left a trail of dirty footsteps and puddles of murky water in their wake, Maelle felt droplets fall from her hair locks, her stomach dropped when she realised the rain made her worn shirt almost translucent.
If Gustave noticed he did not give any sign, he opened a door and gestured to her to get inside.
“We’ll leave the clothes in front of the door” Gustave promised, Maelle nodded. She pulled the door close, slowly turning around to look at the small bathroom. She peeled the wet clothes off her skin and threw them on the floor, she stepped into the shower and turned the faucet, jumping back in surprise when the water came out warm. In the orphanage such luxuries were first come first serve and Maelle rarely got to see any of it. She tilted her head up, letting the warmth of it replace the cold rainwater in her hair. As she did so, Maelle allowed herself to release a sigh of relief.
She stayed a few minutes longer than she had to.
When she opened the door to a crack the clothes were indeed there as promised, conveniently placed so that she could snatch them up without opening the door any any further, she pulled her prize through the gap before pulling the door close and putting them on. Most of the clothes were laughably oversized on her wiry frame she tried to make them look somewhat decent. Outside the house was quiet; the drumming of the rain melted into a monotonous background noise, almost soothing. She wondered if she should wait here, for Emma or Gustave to come back and get her, but her question was answered when Gustave turned a corner.
“I should really get back to the orphanage now” Maelle was not even sure why she said that first, it escaped her vocal cord before she could think. Gustave tilted her head, once again examining her like she was a mechanical problem he really needed to solve.
“It’s a real mess out there” he said softly. The memory of the rain leaching warmth from her bones was fresh enough to make Maelle shiver in agreement.
“Yeah.”
“As I said, your room does not exactly have a bed yet but you can get mine” Gustave suggested. Maelle wanted to disagree, convince Gustave that she will be thankful and happy with a couch, but her eyelids grew heavy, her limbs were full of lead.
“Okay”
The bed was soft and Maelle felt like she was going to pass out as soon as her head hits the pillow. Gustave turned to leave but Maelle reached out to stop him. There was still a conversation to be had.
“Sometimes” she muttered. “I scream in my sleep.”
The man looked at her, his face unreadable in the dark, Maelle felt an overwhelming sense of dread settle over her. She was offered a loving home and they took her in even after she ran away, if Gustave truly meant what he said, it was over now.
“Do you… want me to stay?” Gustave asked uncertainly. Maelle frantically nodded.
“Please?”
None of them knew what they were supposed to do, Gustave settled beside her as they sat on the edge of the bed awkwardly, Maelle suddenly wanted to lean against him, to crawl into his arms like a small child.
“If you don't want me after this, I would not blame you.”
Gustave was silent for a long time before the weight of an arm settled on Maelle’s shoulder, pulling her closer, into an embrace she did not have the strength to resist and did not even want to try.
“I’m not tired of you yet. I don’t think I ever will be.”
Maelle prided herself in the knowledge she had not cried in three years. It made her feel better about her failures and now she cried, for the second time today, she ugly sobbed in the arms of a suddenly very confused Gustave, she only stopped when she was wrapped in a blanket and actually put to bed, she was fussing and sniffling like a baby and she could not even bother to feel ashamed about it.
“Please don’t leave me” she sudeenly rasped, no longer Maelle the courier but Maelle the girl who was unwanted and oh so alone, a reassuring hand squeezed her own but Gustave’s weight suddenly shifted off the bed and Maelle turn to him in a blind panic. “Please stay, please!”
“I’ll just bring a chair” Gustave promised.
“Don’t, Gustave please” Maelle pleaded and after a terrifying stretch of silence the bed shifted under his returning weight.
“Alright.” he took a moment to get situated, Maelle only relaxed when he finally settled next to her, the hand returning to stroke her shoulder through the blanket. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Thank you” she murmured. Maelle started to drift off, the bed seemed to swallow her, bind her, take her into a soft embrace without the intention to ever let go, she listened to Gustave’s breathing and slowly relaxed into his side.
She jolted awake when she felt Gustave pull away, she was immediately calmed and guided back to sleep by an exhausted but stern voice soothing her:
“I’m still not going anywhere, you know…”
Despite all the day’s events, that finally managed to make Maelle laugh.