He was ageless and she was ancient, in blood if not in body. So they had that in common, and it held them apart, in their own ways, from the others, who belonged to a newer world. Aeris listened to the voices of the dead and, in his own way, so did he.
And her people were all dead and so, in a sense, were his. But that in many ways was where the similarity ended. She was bright, and he was dark; her power lay in growing and healing, and his in stasis and killing.
So perhaps it should not have been surprising that they orbited one another, inasmuch as Vincent orbited anyone; he kept himself to himself, drawn close and closed. But he noticed her, because she was impossible not to notice: eyes like new leaves, hair like plowed earth, alive in a way that he was not now (and in a way he was not sure he had ever been, even before). And he felt ashamed for having noticed her, because she so clearly belonged to the light, and he did not.
It would be a poor fate for her, he thought, to be with him: he could be nothing but dark and cold.
"I have nothing to give anyone but death," he said.
She didn't say anything, but she reached out to take his hand. He flinched, but she was persistent, finally capturing his long fingers and turning his hand palm-up.
Where she got the flower, he didn't know, although she never seemed to have trouble finding them on their travels—blooming in the wilderness, pushing up from cracks in the pavement, as though they were following her or springing from the ground for her benefit. This one was a long rangy stem, too scraggly to be a decorous ornamental flower, but exploding with blue star-shaped flowers along its length. She pressed it against his palm and closed his fingers around it. He looked up at her.
"You're not dead, Vincent," she said, "no matter what you might think."
***
She did not think his eyes were the color of murder and demons, as she knew he did. They were the red of the juice of wine-grapes, the red of pomegranate seeds.