The room is quiet in the way only this world allows—soft light spilling across stone walls, dust drifting lazily through the air as if time itself has decided to slow down for once. Outside, the city breathes, unaware—or pretending to be—of the number waiting to be painted someday. Gustave stands nearby, arms crossed, watching you move as if every step requires calculation.

You aren’t far along—barely showing—but he treats the space around you like something sacred, something already borrowed from the future. A chair is adjusted before you reach it. A cup is already within arm’s reach. His hand hovers when you walk, never touching unless necessary, as if the world itself might push too hard.

“You don’t have to do that,” he mutters, more to himself than to you. “I can.”

It isn’t impatience. It’s fear dressed up as usefulness. Gustave never imagined himself like this. Children were never part of his future—his mind always elsewhere, tangled in ideas, responsibilities, the quiet weight of the Expedition. He was built to observe, to calculate, to endure. Not to hope. Not to imagine something that could be erased by a single painted number.

But then there was you.

Marriage had been unexpected, almost illogical by his own standards. And yet it felt inevitable in a way nothing else ever had. When you first spoke of a family, he’d surprised even himself by not pulling away. By realizing the thought didn’t frighten him—so long as it was with you.

The memory of the first pregnancy lingers like a bruise beneath the skin. The silence afterward. The careful way neither of you spoke about it at first, as if naming the loss would summon the Painter’s attention again. He remembers sitting awake at night, staring at the ceiling, counting years that might never come, furious at the world, at himself, at the arithmetic cruelty of it all.

This time is different. This time, everything is going right. And that terrifies him more than when it went wrong.

“You’re fine,” he says softly, watching you settle, his voice restrained but threaded with something fragile. “I know that. I just—let me be careful.”

Careful is the only defense he has against inevitability.

He moves closer, kneeling briefly to be level with you, eyes flicking instinctively to your stomach before he catches himself and looks away, as if even that attention might tempt fate. His hands rest on his knees, restrained, respectful—hands that have planned expeditions, mapped impossible futures, and yet tremble now at the thought of being noticed.

Outside, the city continues its slow dance with inevitability. The Painter still exists. The Expedition still waits. The future remains uncertain, numbered, and merciless.

But here—now—Gustave allows himself this fragile, defiant hope, even if it feels like standing in open view.

For once, Gustave isn’t thinking about the end. He’s thinking about how loudly his heart beats in its presence—and who he’s standing beside when the brush finally moves.