Chapter Text
La fièvre vissée au poing, gueuler debout et fier
Pour qu'enfin se retourne ce monde à l'envers
Noé Preszow, Le monde à l’envers
“Putain, je déteste tellement ces bourges d’artistes de merde !”
Emma’s voice is angry and loud in the small kitchen as she bangs cabinet doors in search of a wine glass. Gustave knows that voice; he knows that the days Emma walks straight to the kitchen when she comes home from work are the bad days, the days she’s called into home situations that are a little too awful, the days she meets families that are a little too good at destroying themselves and everything in their paths, the days everything she learned about being a social worker ends up not quite being enough. It doesn’t leave you unharmed, staring down all the sorrow of the world; Gustave knows that as well as anyone.
“What happened?” he asks, leaning on the door frame, trying to stop the worry from bleeding into his tone.
Emma finally finds the glass and sets it with a thump on the second-hand wooden table. She immediately busies herself with opening the bottle of wine she’s been holding in her hand. Her fingers make quick work of the cork: there have been enough bad days since she started to work for the Aide Sociale à l’Enfance that she could do this in her sleep.
“So we got an anonymous report, about some family in the 16ème. You never know, with those, it’s either someone’s ex-spouse wasting our time, or the worst shit you ever saw.”
Emma pours herself a glass and immediately takes a swig. Her face looks hollow in the dimming light of March.
“It was the second one,” she continues, pressing hard fingers into the bridge of her nose. “I get to this huge fucking manor, and this lady opens the door, looking down on me like I’m dirt on the bottom of her shoe, right? Refusing to let me in, telling me nothing in there is my business, the works. You know it’s bad when they won’t let you in.”
Emma drinks again, too fast, from her too-full glass. She leans against the fridge, staring out of the window. The room is quiet and dark. Gustave turns on the light, bathing everything in yellow warmth. He pulls a chair and sits at the table. Emma exhales audibly before going on:
“I finally get her to let me in, after half an hour. And get this: both of her parents have been in a fucking painting for two months at this point. I know the metabolism slows down when the soul enters a painting, but two months! Can you imagine! And they’ve not got out, Gustave, not even like to eat or shower or anything. They must be half dead if they’re even still alive! No one thought to go get help! The daughter tells me they’re fighting. At this point, believe me, I already knew I was going to need wine tonight. But that’s not the worst part…”
Emma sits opposite Gustave. She fills up her glass again, her hand shaking slightly. The dark liquid sloshes in the glass, drops drip onto the varnished wood. She sighs and wipes it with the palm of her hand.
“I knew they had a teenage daughter, that’s who I got called there for, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Which is strange because I’ve been arguing with her sister for the better part of an hour at that point. So I went looking for her. I found her in her room, door closed, just—sitting there in complete darkness. She wouldn’t talk to me, she didn’t even move when I came in. She hadn’t showered in God knows how long. And—fuck. The look in her eyes. Merde…”
Emma drinks again, blinking away something that glitters strangely like tears in her green eyes. Gustave’s heart tightens painfully in his chest. He hates seeing her like that, he hates the way her anger melts into vulnerability all of a sudden. He’s become all too familiar with it after the accident that killed their parents. The accident that cost him his arm. Every memory of that time is pain-laced and toxic: the heavy grief, the impossible task of carrying on, the fight for getting guardianship of Maelle. He hates that Emma chose to go into social work, forcing her to relive those terrible times again and again and again, grief and catastrophe wearing different faces and different names, but, in the end, always the same.
“...And her putain de parents! Fighting in a fucking Canvas! Like she didn’t exist! And her putain de sœur! Staring me down like I am not worthy of being in their house! Not speaking a fucking word! God, Gustave, I almost lost it. I swear, I almost lost it.”
Emma buries her face in her hands, anger and tension bleeding out of her. Before Gustave can push her wine glass away from her, she exhales sharply and shakes herself out of it. Her fingers curl against the stem of the glass as she brings the rim to her lips.
“It sounds like a nightmare,” Gustave tells her.
“I had to make a thousand phone calls right there and then. There was no way I was leaving her in that house a second longer than I had to. And you know that finding a place in a children’s home for a teenager is a process that usually lasts several months, not the two hours I had. I was lucky Lucien owes me a favour. He found me a spot in the Foyer de transition Berthe Morisot.”
Emma air-quotes with her fingers, mockery dancing on the edge of her voice.
“Fitting name for the daughter of two people who abandoned her in favour of losing themselves in a fucking piece of art, if you ask me. It’s not going to be long-term, but at least she’ll be fed tonight. At least, if those cassos d’artistes want to kill themselves, she’s not going to have to watch.”
Emma runs a hand through her hair. The glass in her fingers is as empty as her stare as she looks through the window to the darkness that descends on the roofs of the city. She looks like she’s gone through hell, and she has, Gustave knows, in more ways than one. She knows every terrible shape grief can take. She knows how it feels to get hurt in the wake of someone else’s suffering.
“It’s all you could do, Emma,” he tells her. “You did good. You got her to safety. We both know it’s going to be a long way from there, but you made that first step happen.”
“Yeah,” Emma sighs. “It’s just hard, you know? She reminded me of Maelle so much.”
Gustave stands and picks up her glass, washing it in the sink. He wishes he could do something else for her, something that is bigger and better than that mundane task. He wishes he could take the burden from her shoulders, make her smile, take back all the pain she had to endure alone. The water that runs over his hands is warm and grounding.
“It’s hard,” he agrees, drying his hands on the dishtowel. “It’s hard when it hits close to home. I know.”
The staff room is bright with noise and the smell of coffee during the morning break. Gustave navigates the queue at the coffee machine as he watches teenagers pour out of the doors like a noisy, agitated flood.
“I just sat with her for an hour—useless, she wouldn’t talk,” Sciel, the school social worker, is telling Lune as Gustave sits down at their table. Lune sighs.
“Your new student?” Gustave asks Lune, his cup of mediocre coffee warming his hand.
“Alicia, yes. She’s going to be a handful. She refused to work all morning. I don’t know what I am going to do with her. And, I mean, I’m not even the problem here. Claude teaches French in my class this year…”
Lune doesn’t finish her sentence, she gestures in frustration with her hands instead. Sciel stifles a nervous laugh.
“Oh shit, he’s going to blow a fuse…”
Gustave pats Lune’s elbow. Claude is well-known for being one of the most uptight teachers in the school, and the year he taught French in Gustave’s class was one of the worst of Gustave’s career.
“And he thought he was going to be rid of all the problem students now that he’s not teaching in your class any more,” Sciel continues. “I told Alan it wasn’t your class that was the problem, it was him! But, of course, headmaster or not, he can’t do anything about it, so we’re stuck with him…”
Gustave lets out a bitter laugh. He knows that Claude is not the only teacher at the school who views special ed classes as the landfill of education, full of students who are too stupid or too unkempt or too broken to be worth anyone’s time or energy. It infuriates him, but it’s still a fact he has to stare in the face almost every single day.
“I’m so sorry, Lune…” he tells her, fishing a piece of early Easter chocolate from the glass bowl on the table and handing it to her. “Next beer is on me, you’ll need it. Maybe we can workshop ways we can push him down the stairs or something?”
Lune makes a face, but unwraps the chocolate and stuffs it in her mouth. Gustave knows she loves her students just as much as he does, even if they teach in very different classes. Lune’s students all took the notoriously difficult chroma studies elective, they're the brightest kids in the school. And yet, between perfectionism and controlling parents, she deals with her fair share of problems, too. She’s worried about Claude’s reaction, Gustave knows, and what it will mean for those of her students who are already constantly on edge.
“I can’t say I’ve missed him kicking down my door and informing me it’s my fault the students can’t behave because I listen to them too much and what they really need is more discipline,” Sciel quips. “I look forward to hearing his opinion on the fact that social workers don’t belong in schools… Again… He’s only told me so five times this year, I think. Wait, six. I heard he told the parents of his students during parents’ evening. I think that counts…”
Gustave slides a chocolate her way too. She’s invaluable, Sciel. She has a way with teenagers, she gets them to trust her, no matter how angry they are, no matter how bad their home life is. She helps them make good decisions and intervenes when things go to shit too spectacularly. She also stops Alan from expelling half Gustave’s class on a regular basis. Gustave is glad he can count on her.
“Maybe I can ask Alan to tell him to back off?” Lune suggests, carefully smoothing the glint-green metallic wrapper with her nail. “It might work for a couple of weeks. Maybe that’ll be enough for her to open up?”
Before either of them can answer, the bell rings. Sciel fishes a handful of chocolate from the bowl and stands up.
“Let me know how it goes, yeah?” she asks Lune as she hurries out of the room.
Lune gathers her copies, and Gustave watches her make her way through the flow of students in the hallway, confiscating a football before disappearing.
Gustave’s coffee has gone cold in his chipped Ikea cup. He drinks it anyway to give himself the courage to tackle the pile of dreadful maths tests awaiting his correction.
Emma is already home when Gustave arrives. She’s sitting in the living room, reading a book. Maelle is lying next to her on the sofa and welcomes Gustave by dramatically complaining loudly about the amount of homework Lune gives.
“Try to do some of it, yeah? Instead of staring at your phone?” Gustave tells her.
Maelle groans and doesn’t move.
“Come on, Maelle,” Emma tells her, “we said you could take a break until Gustave came back. It’s time. Come show me your English exercises if you need help, okay?”
Maelle mutters something about life being hard and being overworked like a slave, but she gets up and disappears into her room, dragging her school bag on the floor behind her.
“Hey,” Gustave tells Emma, sitting next to her. “How was your day?”
Emma sighs and rubs at her face with a tired hand.
“Shit,” she says, barking out a nervous little laugh. “Yeah, I think that covers it. It was shit.”
Gustave sits back against the cushion and looks at her in silence. She looks small and fragile in the crisp, white blouse she usually reserves for the days she has to appear in court. She’s not drinking, at least. However shit her day was, it must have been the kind of day she knows how to deal with. It’s a small relief, that, but it’s a relief all the same.
“Remember the family from yesterday?” Emma adds when Gustave doesn’t answer. He nods.
“Well, I had to go in again. Léo thought the parents might have come out of the painting, with what happened yesterday. Well, spoiler alert, they didn’t! Can you believe this shit? I had to take their daughter away, and it still wasn’t enough for them to get it together!”
Gustave sighs. He knows that particular feeling of frustration all too well.
“I got some background info on the whole shit story too,” Emma continues before Gustave can think of something useful to say. “I think it makes it worse somehow. Putain, I didn’t think it was possible, but it is. There was a fire a few months back, the family lost their son. Their daughter—the teenager, not the posh one who stares me down like I’m a piece of rubbish every time she sees me—was caught in it as well, but she got out just in time. That’s what the parents are fighting about in their painting, I think… But, merde, their teenager is probably traumatised and right there and—”
Emma stops and shakes her head. It’s hard for her, the topic of grief, Gustave knows. It’s harder when teenagers are involved. It’s harder when it makes her think of Maelle, of how things could have gone for her. He sets a hand on her thigh.
“That’s rough,” he says softly. “Poor kid. I feel bad for the other sister, too. Even if she’s an awful snob, it can’t be easy for her either.”
Emma exhales and leans against him. She’s a warm weight at his side as he puts an arm around her shoulders and squeezes her gently.
“I hate it, you know?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper. “The grief, the way they’re all trapped in it. The way they can’t seem to do anything but hurt each other because of it. It’s awful. I know I complained every day about the domestic violence case I had last month, but I almost miss it now. Honestly, anything would be better than this.”
“Yeah,” he tells her, laying his head on top of hers. “I understand. I hate grief too. We’ve had enough to last us a lifetime.”
Emma hums, but doesn’t say anything. Gustave doesn’t let go of her. They stay together in a silent half-hug until Maelle finishes her homework, and it’s time to eat.
Gustave makes it about halfway through his first class of the day before Monsieur Lemaire, the deputy head, knocks on the door.
“I’d like to see Guillaume,” the man says with a scowl. Gustave knows immediately his day has gone to shit.
When Guillaume comes back, he’s angry and sulking and refuses to work. When Adrien complains about having to do maths in maths class, Guillaume bites an angry “Vas-y, ta gueule, frère” at him. He’s looking for a fight, Gustave knows. He recognises that kid: it’s the version of Guillaume that Gustave welcomed into his class at the beginning of the year, the one with the dreadful attendance record that came to school high off his face when he did come because he couldn’t bear to face the day without smoking first. It’s the one Gustave had to gently tame, working with Sciel at every step, until he came to school every day. Gustave hates that ten minutes with the deputy head is apparently enough to erase several months of work, but he’s not surprised. It’s not like he expected anything else.
At the break, Gustave makes a beeline for Sciel as soon as he makes it into the staffroom.
“Putain, il fait chier,” Sciel grits out when Gustave tells her about the morning’s events. “He knows Guillaume doesn’t respond well to the macho posturing he calls authority.”
Gustave sighs. He spends almost as much time trying to manage Lemaire as he does dealing with his students’ behaviour. The man is an absolute idiot, with the emotional quotient of a brick and a laziness that’s the rough size of the département de la Loire. Gustave can’t fathom how Alan hasn’t strangled the man yet.
“And all this because he’s using the fire door to get out of the building,” Gustave complains as he sits, his coffee cup clinking gently between his metal fingers as he adds an ungodly amount of sugar to it. “When he’s come to school without smoking for the past month. I’m so tired of this shit. I’m so sick of them pawning off the problem students to me and then sabotaging any chance I might have at making it work.”
“I’ll go talk to Alan,” Sciel promises. “He’ll listen. He lets Lemaire deal with the day-to-day stuff, but he cares about the kids. I’ll get him to drop whatever punishment Lemaire gave Guillaume, and I’ll tell Guillaume that if he’s going to do stupid shit, he needs to stop getting caught.”
“No, no, you tell him he needs to stop doing stupid shit, caught or not. He’s been…” Gustave starts. Before he can finish, Jérôme sets a hand on his shoulder.
“There’s been a fight. You might want to go deal with it,” he tells Gustave. “Maelle’s involved.”
“Putain…” Gustave groans in a heavy exhale as he rushes out of the room, coffee cup abandoned on the shiny white surface of the table.
“I’ll deal with Lemaire and Guillaume,” Sciel calls after him. “Come to my office at lunch, and I’ll update you!”
Gustave makes it to the hallway to find Maelle standing in the hallway, angrily explaining something to one of Gustave’s colleagues. A boy Gustave recognises as one of Margot’s students is holding a hand to his cheek, a bruise starting to bloom on his skin. There is another girl standing behind Maelle, hunched and visibly afraid, her face obscured by her long, red hair.
“Gustave, he…” Maelle starts as soon as she sees him. Gustave doesn’t let her finish.
“Take the young man to the infirmerie,” he tells his colleague, who nods, visibly relieved to be rid of the problem. “I’ll deal with this. Whatever this is,” he adds, sharply, shooting Maelle a withering look. She has the good grace to look a little cowed.
They find an empty room, all three of them. Gustave sits on a desk and sighs.
“Explain,” he tells Maelle, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. The metal is cool against his skin. He hopes it might relieve the budding stress headache building up inside his skull.
“He started it!” Maelle’s voice is loud and a little hysterical. “You’ve got to believe me, Gustave. He was making fun of Alicia for her scars. They were bullying her, him and his friends! I told them to stop! I did! You know I don’t get into fights like I used to, Gustave! It’s not the same. It’s just—”
Gustave sighs again. After their parents’ death, Maelle got into fights almost every week. It was almost routine, back then, Emma and him sitting down in the headteacher’s office at her primary school, a room brightly decorated with drawings and motivational quotes about growing up, and listening to the same threats of expulsion week after week after week. He runs his hand through his hair, dispelling the memory.
“Is it true?” he asks the girl—Alicia. Lune’s new student.
She stares at him, something bright and burning in her gaze. Close up, Gustave can see scars stretch over her whole face, intricate like Chantilly lace. Her left eye is glassy, but her right is a brilliant shade of blue and fixed on his face. She doesn’t answer.
“She won’t speak,” Maelle says, almost softly. “It’s true, though. It’s not right that they were making fun of her. I wasn’t acting out. I promise.”
She wouldn’t talk, Sciel had told him the previous day. If the girl wouldn’t talk to Sciel, Gustave is under no illusion she will talk to him. Not now, not when he’s clearly angry at Maelle. Not when he’s authority and she might be in trouble.
“Can you nod?” he asks Alicia gently. “I don’t need you to speak if you don’t want to, but it’d help me report the true version of what happened to the headteacher if you could nod.”
Alicia stares at him for a long minute. Then, slowly, she nods. Gustave releases a breath. Good. Maelle will still be in trouble for fighting, of course, but at least it might be fair. Gustave can work with that, he thinks. As her guardian, he can work with that.
“Were they making fun of you?” he asks Alicia.
She nods. Her hands are clutching at her schoolbag so tight the knuckles have grown white. Her eyes wander downwards and stop on Gustave’s metal arm, exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his dress shirt.
“Did Maelle tell them to stop with words before she threw a punch?”
Alicia nods again. Maelle makes a face at Gustave, clearly offended that he hadn’t taken her word for it.
“Thank you,” Gustave tells her. “You can go back to your classroom now.”
“Maelle, a word,” he adds when they both turn to leave. Maelle stops in her tracks. Alicia turns around, a question painted on her face. When Maelle nods a tight it’s okay at her, she steps out, closing the door behind her.
“Maelle, sérieux,” Gustave starts, dropping his teacher voice to become her brother once again. “Punching a guy twice your size? Is this really the best idea you could come up with?”
Maelle stares at the floor, her mouth in a tight line. Now that the adrenaline has bled out of her, she looks tired and sad. Almost repentant. It also brings back memories for her, Gustave realises. Memories of all the times Emma and him were angry, disappointed, overwhelmed. He steps closer and runs a reassuring hand through her hair.
“I’m proud of you,” Gustave tells her softly. “I’m proud that you’re standing up for people who can’t stand up for themselves, even if I’m not too happy about the way you went about it. It was really stupid. You know Lemaire is out for your blood already. I’ll do my best to explain the situation, but that won’t get you out of detention. Which you deserve, by the way, because you were fighting.”
“Yeah,” Maelle answers, tension bleeding away from her. “I know. It wasn’t the best way to handle it. I won’t make a fuss about the detention. I would still do it again in a heartbeat, though.”
“I know,” Gustave tells her, rolling his eyes at her. “Don’t be late for class. Lune is going to kill you if she gets another email from your French teacher.”
Maelle hurries out, the door closing loudly behind her. Gustave sighs heavily in the silence of the empty classroom. He doesn’t look forward to having yet another conversation about Maelle with Lemaire, of course, but he can’t help thinking they’ve raised her right, Emma and him. Despite how absolutely unprepared they were to take on the Herculean task of raising a child when they were barely adults themselves, they must have done okay if that’s who she is today.