Despite a considerable volume of anxious waiting and assorted phone calls placed to nebulous authority figures, the color had slowly leached back into the world after about two weeks, without further intervention from any of them. Sauvage had the feeling that Jules was disappointed, though she hid it well. She liked to be able to fix things. Hopefully that library would send another client her way soon.
For himself, Sauvage was glad to see the back of the whole business; the shadows had been unsettling, and Roman's presence alone wasn't enough to keep his nightmares at bay, though it certainly didn't hurt. And, more practically, the absence of color had made it difficult to clean the house effectively, a problem he was now remedying in great detail.
He heard Roman walk past the bathroom, where he was scrubbing the shower wall, then come back and lean in the open door. "You don't have to do all the housekeeping yourself anymore, you know."
"Oh, I know. I never did," Sauvage said. "I could do all of this with magic, if I wanted to, but I--"
"You like to do real things," Roman said with bemused fondness. "I didn't realize that extended to all the household chores."
"I enjoy them." Sometimes he was surprised, himself, at how much pleasure he took in simple, menial tasks. Cleaning grounded him in the world, and it made the house feel more his, more permanent.
"Mm," Roman said. "Well, let me know if you ever change your mind." He reached out to ruffle Sauvage's hair, and left.
Impossible to have any sense of passage of time, in a room with no windows and absorbed in his task; but eventually Sauvage became aware of the distant sound of an argument. It was coming from the front of the house. He set aside the brush, washed his hands, and went to see what all the fuss was about.
Kettle was standing just inside the front door. Beside her an akail poked its head into the room--probably the same one, but it looked so different in full color that he couldn't say for sure. Roman was pacing the living room a few feet away. Most of the argument was, in fact, coming from him.
"--can't believe you would have the gall to come back here after the damage you did the first time--"
Sauvage did his best to tune this out. Shouting was...a problem, generally, but this was clearly in his defense even if unnecessarily, which made it easier to will away the tension. Nobody seemed to have noticed his presence in the room.
Well. Only one way to defuse this situation. He clapped his hands together and cleared his throat loudly, theatrically, and couldn't help smiling a little when all eyes went to him. "Is everything all right in here?"