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It's odd, Neal thinks, the way things work out sometimes. One minute you're in the MOMA, staring at a Van Gogh, studying it, getting as close as you can, the brushwork starting to come clear enough to your eyes that you can close them and feel the brush in your own fingers, tracing the magic of the lines and colors. Then suddenly it's not enough, Manhattan's not enough, an island thirteen miles long can't contain you anymore and you're at JFK, waiting to board a 777 to Paris.
He spends a week in St Remy, but that's not enough and he still doesn't get it, can't understand at all how Van Gogh went from this town to perfection in brush strokes and brilliant blues. It's February and the nights are cold and when the moon disappears, the stars are scintillating and amazing, but they're still too distant and Neal gets on a train and heads north.
The Netherlands are fascinating, he's never been here before, and the colors, especially the blues and yellows, are a revelation. The language barrier falls to his smile (like it always does) and he eats and drinks and charms his way into new hearts every night for the week that he wanders there.
Farther north still, across the top of Germany, then Denmark, the swaying of the train is soothing and the air is colder yet. He takes the ferry to Sweden and gets back on the train, still northing. He still doesn't understand what's driving him this way, but instinct says go with it and Neal knows how important it is to go with instinct in his line of work. It's saved him, it's saved his friends, not listening to it has gotten him into more trouble than he cares to think about. The train stops in Kiruna, practically the top of the world and everything is reduced to muted colors, whites, and gray and brown. Even the brightly colored hats and gorgeous blue eyes around him can't break the relentlessness of the night.
It's odd, Neal thinks as he sprawls in the middle of the A5, the cold of the ice-covered road seeping into his bones. You run and run and you think you're running from something and you find out that you were running to something the whole time. The northern lights chase each other across the sky, the most brilliant colors he's ever seen, and he laughs out loud to the stars and the aurora and the whole frozen, beautiful world. An answering laugh, light and silvery breaks the spell, breaks it and replaces it with an even more perfect magic. He wonders that he's been hearing that laugh for only four hours and can't imagine how he never knew it was the thing missing most from his life.
"Come on, Neal, let's go to the hotel, I want to find out everything there is to know about you." Kate reaches down and pulls him to his feet. Even through the gloves, her touch is electric, hot and fierce. It's odd, he thinks, that you can be lost and found at the same time, so perfectly caught that you don't mind the trap.