THESE CELESTIAL BODIES (Demetre)

Chapter thirteen

"A museum!" She cried, pointing across the street.
     Before Dean had the mind to reply, she had already dragged him across the street and pushed him into the building. The line for tickets were short and once they got to the till, an old, angry looking gremlin for a woman stared them down with dark eyes. All it took from Dean was a single sentence asking for two tickets free of charge. It was like the woman had lost all control over her body, she moved almost robotically as she pushed forward two tickets and told them to have a nice day.

"That's terrifying." Rose cringed.

He grinned. "Want me to try it on you and—"

"I will gut you like a fish if you ever try and compel me."
He tousled her hair. "So small yet so violent."

~

"It's a blob on a page."
     "It's art."
     Dean pulled a distasteful face. "It's a blob."
     Rose moved along the row of art and stared at a massive painting of Vincent Van Gogh's starry night. The blue in swirls that roamed across the page were the exact blue of Dean's eyes, she realised. She didn't let herself dwell too much on that particular thought. Dean settled beside her and as she did, studied the artwork.
     "Vincent Van guff?"
     Rose snorted. "Gogh, you kind of need to make a gross sound in the back of your throat."
     "He died?"
     "Most great artists die before they get to see their work displayed," Rose said. "Van Gogh was depressed. He struggled with anxiety and a whole lot of mental illnesses during his life, he thought himself a failure. He even cut off his ear in emotional distress."
She thought Dean wasn't listening but when she looked over to where he stood, his gaze was wholly on her. Intensely. So she continued. "He drank yellow paint thinking it would make him happy inside, but it didn't. It's ironic, actually, that he spent his whole life trying to make a name for himself and his art, to sell his work, to be somebody and only when he's gone do people call him a great artist. Why is it that we have to die in order to be seen?"
     Dean turned back to the painting, watching it with a strange satisfaction, a curiosity.
     Quietly, like he had been fighting the urge to speak for a while, he said, "I see you."

I see you. The words wrapped themselves around Rose's heart tightly. Cradling her broken parts.

Rose continued walking through the hall of paintings and sculptures and mosaics. Each one more breath-taking than the last. She used to love museums as a child, even as a teenager. Any excuse to step into a world that wasn't her own. She used to paint too. She remembers the first time she stepped into her fathers studio and being overcome by the smell of acrylic and oils and charcoals. Her first ever master piece was a picture of her little hands pressed in red and blue paint on a blank sheet, her mother was so proud of it that she had it framed and put up in the dining room. She used to want to be an artist like her father.
     Used to became a common phrase when she described herself. She used to smile, she used to laugh, she used to want to live and see and do and become.
     Cold fingers tangled with her own and Rose flinched. Dean's fingers entwined with her own, his grip firm.
     "What the hell are you doing?"
"Those humans over there are doing it."
Rose had to go onto her tip toes to look over his shoulder, and when she said, she saw a lovely human couple walking around with their hands entwined. The sight of them gave her butterflies.
     "That's because they're in a relationship."
     "A relationship?"
"It means they are in love. Eventually they'll get married," she tried to pull her hands away, but Dean didn't let go. He only looked at their fingers, turning her hand around in his own.

"Vampyrs don't have relationships. We meet and marry."

She tried to ignore the coolness of his hands and how it turned to warmth because of her own hands. "What about Kara? You've never just...spent time enjoying her company?"
"Is love an important part of a relationship?" God he was like a child. Not stupid or dense but...lost, hidden in the dark. Asking questions a common person would know. But Dean was not a human, he was a Vampyr, and he was in her world. She shouldn't get irritated or mad at him to asking questions.
     "Yes. If you don't love someone, there isn't a reason to fight for them or care for them. Even marry them. Most people think love is a feeling but it's a choice. You choose to love your partner on their bad days and good days, through better or worse. My mother always told me love makes you do the wildest things, she moved halfway across the world for my father, was disowned by her parents and neglected by her sister all because she loved him. Right until the end."