It's alright, because they're not alone. It's a Saturday afternoon and the museum is busy. Tourists, mostly, and the two sorts of art lovers. Firstly, there's the sort that are here to be seen, who appreciate every sculpture and painting equally and for equal lengths of time and who will leave this place entirely unaffected a few hours from now. Secondly, the sort who are here out of love. Not everything stops them. Then one piece will and they'll sit all day, if that's what it takes to get to the bottom of their fascination. Those are the people who will leave changed, when they're finally ready to leave.
"And which are you, Doctor Bloom?"
Will's voice catches her off guard. It's not just because she wasn't aware she was talking out loud, either. That much, she could dismiss. She was talking because he seemed so determined not to talk until now. But it's the tone of his voice. There's an edge on it that stops short of playful, but isn't quite serious. It's the closest he ever gets to a joke and she doesn't hear it often enough.
While she's stunned and mute, he moves on. Casting his eyes over the very same crowds, he sees something very different to her. "Look at them. They have no idea. They're probably standing on top of it and they have no idea."
"Quiet," she tells him. "Stop thinking about that."
Just around the corner from here, there is a coffee house, and in the basement there is a body that has had the flesh boiled from its bones. She took him away from there. They were finished with him anyway, needed him gone so forensics could get to work, and Will wouldn't move. Alana took him away. It's always been her policy to limit her involvement, especially at the scene of the crime but… But she took him away from there, and that's all she really knows about it.
His eyes are still flickering over the others. People who aren't them. People who hadn't seen the things they have. There's more in his expression than the confusion, the anger she's come to expect. There's a sadness today. And envy. She doesn't like the idea and won't dwell on it. It hurts her to think of him longing for a simpler mind.
"Would you mind if I showed you something?"
In the beginning it was just something to say. But as the words leave her the idea strengthens, takes form. He shrugs and tells her, "I assumed that was why you brought me over here." That's enough for her. She starts to lead. It's a long time since she was in Boston, but now that she knows what she's looking for, Alana's steps follow thoughtlessly one from the other.
Will Graham follows thoughtlessly too.
"No. I brought you over here because I thought it might relax you."
"I never paid all that much attention to art."
As lightly as she can manage, "You surprise me." She watches him walk, while he tells her he always preferred detective stories to classic literature, comic books to art history. Thrillers to any other sort of movie. His hands are in his pockets, and for the most part his eyes are on his feet. He only glances at the paintings on the walls, but there's a deference in those looks. A respect, like he's addressing each of them personally, saying hello.
"My parents always said I had a morbid imagination. They didn't know how right they were."
"But that doesn't have to be self-fulfilling, does it? What's to stop you paying attention to beautiful things too?"
"Beautiful? Alana, what percentage of well-known, household-name paintings would you say depict, oh, say, a crucifixion? Or a matrydom? Wounds, deaths, illnesses, executions-"
"Oh, then you ought to feel right at home, no?"
In another life, what crosses his face might have been a smile. That's enough for her.
They climb the stairs to the second floor in relative silence. There in one of the gallery rooms, with ten or twelve paintings lining the long, airy hall, she settles on a bench and waits for him to join her. He sits down heavily, sighing. He doesn't believe in this. Doesn't believe there's anything here she can show him that will change anything for him. But still, with a flick of her eyes, she guides him, and she gets him to look.
To try.
That's all Alana wants, is for him to try. Not to be so sad, so without hope.
It's alright, because the museum is busy, and they're not alone.
The painting in front of them shows an elderly fisherman, rowing, borne up on the crest of a terrifying wave. He's looking over his shoulder to an ominously dark horizon, to a larger boat darkened down to silhouette by the coming storm. But the sense she's always gotten from it is not of danger, but of understanding. Solidarity. The name of the piece is 'The Fog Warning'. The boats and their boatmen are communicating, keeping each other safe. "It reminds me of you, in a way," she says, to fill another silence. It's alright to say a thing like that; they're not alone.
"I'm cold," is his response, as if he didn't hear her. "Is it cold in here?"
Confused, trying to settle him, "I think it's the air-con. It protects the canvas."
"The humidity can't be good for them."
"What?"
"Come on, I'm surprised the damp isn't running down the walls in here."
"Will?" But he's not listening. Edgy again, the way he was in that basement across the street, twitchy. And, as she looks around at him, sniffing at the collar of his jacket. "Will?"
"This can't just be me. You're not getting any of this? The smell, even?"
Alana stands up. In the smallest sort of way she touches his shoulder, bringing him with her. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
He nods, but he's still staring at the painting. Still nodding, "Yeah," but it's another long moment before he moves. She waits that long, but stays a step ahead of him leaving the room, giving him her shape to follow, to focus on. The curious eyes of strangers trail them through the dark, stern door.
In the quieter comfort of the next room, she turns and looks at him. Searching for eye contact, she can't get any. Will is distracted, looking at nothing out here in the physical world. The gaze is inward, and utterly uncomprehending. "Must just be in there," he murmurs.
Alana shakes her head. "Your head, maybe. Not the room." He looks up, without the wherewithal to ask her what she means. "You mentioned a smell. What could you smell?"
He blinks off his confusion. Trying, really trying, to swim back towards her voice. But Will is unsteady, swaying on his feet like… like a man at sea. Alana watches him, and nods along even as he speaks; "Water but… sharper. Cutting. Salt. Sea-water, I could… I could smell sea-water. Alana, what just happened?"
"Well, of course, I can't be sure, but…" But she hates the professional remove on her own voice. With a rare break of honesty she continues, "There's a condition, a hallucinatory disorder some people experience when they're exposed to art, music, so on, known as Stendhal Syndrome."
A harsh, toneless laugh; "Just what I need." Will rolls his eyes, looking at the corners of the ceiling above her head so he won't have to look at her, "Another syndrome."
"It's entirely possible it's just a corollary to what you already live with, except in this case your enhanced empathy is being applied, not to a victim or to evidence, but to what you saw in the…" She trails off. She can only see him from the corner of her eye, but he's trembling. Shaking from the feet up, and as she looks at him he averts his eyes from something over her shoulder. "Are you still cold?"
"I'd like to leave now. I… I think we… I should…" He is shaping the words he can't speak with tense, seizing hands. Before the sound has faded from him he has taken it upon himself to lead, and this time to lead away. He all but runs from her, charging to the next set of doors, on and on until he finds a neutral, undecorated hallway. He's gotten that far before Alana can gather herself enough to follow.
First, though, she turns to see what he was looking at. She's never witnessed an instance of Stendhal personally before today, but it was exactly as she had understood it to be. As soon as Will left the fisherman behind, all psychosomatic experience left him. The smell, the dampness, the cold, all gone. Perfect clarity. So whatever he saw over her shoulder was what changed things again, and made him flee, made it so that even her presence wasn't enough to hold him in reality. Something scared him more than his own mind could.
It's not a large painting, and not a very clear one either. There's a murkiness to the colours, and the execution suggests movement. The angle on the main figure is oblique, and there is no face to fix on. But as she approaches, she begins to see what was so terrifying. There's incredible power here. There's a woman screaming in fear at the bottom of the frame, wound about with the tail of the winged, muscular form in the foreground. The Red Dragon, claims the tag on the wall, and the Woman Clothed In Sun. Figures from the book of Revelation. The end of the world.
Alana turns on her heel and chases after Will.
She finds him sitting on the cool stone steps outside. Still trembling. Like all the other times, everything else she's ever done for him, Alana is gentle and delicate, settling not next to him but one step up. But Will tosses his head, wincing as though the pain is physical. She moves down next to him and that seems to be better. Maybe she shouldn't pick around him. The thing about eggshells is, no matter how careful you are, eventually they're going to be smashed.
Still finding herself filling the silences, "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Will stands. Looks around, getting his bearings. The direction he chooses is the one that will take him back to the coffee house, to the crime scene. Alana doesn't like the last glance he gives her. Doesn't like that the closest thing she's seen to a true smile all day comes with the caveat, "Maybe some people just aren't meant to have beautiful things."
[A/N - Forgive me, art-lovers - I know the Blake painting is at Brooklyn and not Boston (or is in the stomach of a psychopath), but I needed to get the two paintings I wanted in one place.]