INBOX

[cache_coeur]

INBOX

”Allô, mon amie! Je ne suis pas disponible pour le moment, mais laissez-moi un message et je vous rapellerai dès que possible! À bientôt!”

CODING

Comments

[cache_coeur]

[She smiles, reaching over to push Maelle’s bangs around the curve of her ear.]

You are. You’re very normal.

[maellum]

You're just saying that because you never had to be my teacher.

[She says with a small smile. The touch is nice.]

[cache_coeur]

[She matches that smile.]

Oh please, I’m lived with you for months and months now, if you were strange I’d have noticed.

[maellum]

I don't know about that. Gustave is also strange. He's made it seem normal.

[You're in it, Sciel.]

[cache_coeur]

[Sciel snorts.]

He is strange, but it’s an endearing sort of strange.

[maellum]

Yeah, the nice sort of strange.

[Not the get returned to the orphanage kind of strange!]

It just feels like... endless problems. No matter what we do.

[cache_coeur]

It is a lot. [She can agree with that.] Perhaps we can think about it differently, though.

We didn't think we'd ever see Gustave again. Now we have him, hale and whole. We also have another opportunity to save our world. I think any other problem after that is pretty manageable.

[maellum]

[Maelle nods and swings her feet under the table.]

It still surprises me sometimes. That he's... really here. And okay. Relatively speaking.

[The same could be said for them, but his death was far worse than the Gommage.]

Does it catch you off guard sometimes, too?

[cache_coeur]

Sometimes. I think a lot about how hard it must be to be the only known person to come back from the dead.

[maellum]

[From being slaughtered. Maelle pushes that specific thought from her mind with a shake of her head.]

... yeah. Losing him was the worst thing to ever happen and getting him back has been the best. It's--a lot. It doesn't feel real.

[cache_coeur]

It doesn't. It's strange –– I keep thinking there must be a reason it's us. Everyone in Lumière, all the Expeditions, everyone in the 33, and it's just us?

[maellum]

Me too. But that's kind of the Expedition 33 theme, isn't it?

[Their Disaster Expedition.]

[cache_coeur]

True. Like it was fate to be us, and Gustave wasn't supposed to die.

[None of them were, but there's a difference, in her mind, between a slaughter and the way Gustave had been taken down. Too methodical, maybe.]

[maellum]

So it's almost like this place is setting it right.

[At the expense of Lumière, maybe. Maelle doesn't fibd herself terribly upset about that. Not with what she has here.]

[cache_coeur]

In a way.

[It isn’t the whole of it. She doesn’t even think of Lumière; she’s thinking of who else she’d want back.]

But whatever it is, or whatever’s going on… we can work through it, yeah?

[maellum]

In a way.

[She knows Gustave misses Emma. She knows he'd be overjoyed to see her, or his apprentices, or Sophie...]

It's a second chance. I'm not going to waste it by not working through it.

[cache_coeur]

Good. I know you’ll make the best of it.