Chapter Text
> Be Rose Lalonde.
Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you are a student at a college for the arts. This is your third year at the school, and you are a Drawing major.
You have always been an artist. From little doodles in your journals to large-scale oil paintings you spend weeks on, you are entranced with art. It is your raison-d’être, your calling. Your mother hates it; she could never understand why it means so much to you. She hates the smudges of graphite and charcoal you leave on the doorhandles in your house, and she can’t stand the smell of turpentine. It caused you more than your fair share of grief when you were younger, but you have almost completely divorced yourself from her as a concept. It feels like breathing.
There is a statue at the museum you like to frequent. Her plinth only reads, The Virgin, Kanaya Maryam.
There is nothing fundamentally different about her that should make her unique. There is nothing that separates her from the other statues in the museum, nothing that should make her a singularity. It is just a statue of a woman. She is unclothed, but that has never been the point of your interest in her.
It’s the look in her eyes, you suppose, and the pose she finds herself in. Her arms are wrapped around herself, one hand resting tenderly over her left breast, one bare foot placed delicately in front of the other, foot arched as if mid-step. Her eyes are downcast, almost closed, but her head is raised, her lips tenderly parted as if awaiting a kiss. Her cheekbones are set high in her face, and her nose has a bump on the bridge. Her hair spills around her shoulders, flowing like water, the ends gently kissing her collarbones. You wonder what color it was when she was being sculpted, wonder how soft it must have been. Her body is nothing like yours -- you, short with curves and soft hips. She is tall, with long, lean lines and a deep hollow in the base of her neck. Her ribs are visible beneath the marble skin, her wrists thin and delicate.
That doesn’t make her any less lovely to you. Of course it doesn’t.
Every time you look at her, your chest aches. You can’t, however, deny the pang of jealousy toward the sculptor who created this holy woman’s image -- and, if you’re being honest with yourself, a shameful curl of something in the pit of your belly.
You can’t admit it out loud, not to anyone but yourself; but you have fallen in love with her. Deeply, and irrevocably, you are in love with her.
Since you saw her in the museum, no woman has compared to her -- and you really have tried to find someone who has, someone who could. You’ve gone on a few dates in hopes of finding a woman who could replace your fixation with the statue. One of them, you recall, had long, flowing black hair and tattoos that curled along her arms in spirals. You only realized, in your room after the date, that she bore a striking resemblance to the statue. Those same high cheekbones, the hollows in her throat and collarbones, even the fullness of her lips and the length of her eyelashes.
In your room after the date, you don’t glow. Not the way you do after you’ve been at the museum. So you end things with her -- and you don’t recall any of the women that come after. No names, nor faces. All you can recall of them are the features they shared with your statue -- every woman is a blur of flowing hair, long lashes, high cheekbones, and full lips. Maybe this makes you an awful person; or maybe it just makes you a person in love with someone you can never have.
Either way, you couldn’t care less. You know what you want, but you also know this is the closest you will ever be to having it. You can find your love in the singular features of other women -- and maybe that is what you will have to do for the rest of your life. It’s a miserable way to think, you’re painfully aware.
You are working on your latest project now, sitting on the bench in front of your statue. Your pencil traces over the page of your sketchbook. It is almost habit now to sketch her, to trace out the bump in the bridge of her nose. Most of the pages in your sketchbook are covered in her, if you’re being honest with yourself, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.
The museum is open twenty-four hours, so you like to come here late in the evening to spend time with her. Tonight, the clock ticks midnight as you finish your umpteenth sketch of her. There isn’t much different about this drawing than the others; perhaps the lighting is different, the moon bathing her in its glow. She looks especially beautiful tonight, you think, and you set your sketchbook aside to gaze at her. If you imagine hard enough, you can picture the rise and fall of her chest beneath the moonlight. You stand, leaving your cane behind you as you walk over to her with your slight limp.
Your heart pounds as you step up onto the plinth she stands on, bring your face to hers, reach out to her. This is a line you’ve never crossed before; you have never touched her, never dared to touch her before. You have to lean upwards, standing on your tiptoes to touch her cheek. Your hand shakes as you reach, and stills for a moment before laying to rest. You don’t know what you expected, but her marble skin is cold beneath your touch. For some reason, something in your chest falls -- but it almost emboldens you, the fact that she’s not alive.
Your other hand cups her other cheek, thumbing it and feeling it beneath your palm. Her eyes remain downcast, of course, but you imagine her lashes fluttering as you touch her.
ROSE: You’re beautiful.
The words come whispered and unbidden, almost involuntary. You want to tell her all the things you’ve been thinking, all the things you wish you could say to her. And you’ve done it before -- talked to her, that is. You’ve told her your name, about your life and your love for her.
You repeat yourself, as if that will make her hear you.
ROSE: You’re beautiful. I’ve spent more time than I care to admit longing for you.
You think back to the first time you saw her. It was on a visit with the rest of your Greek Sculptures class; for some reason, you remember clearly that it had been raining outside that day.
When you saw her, you stopped dead in your tracks. The rest of your class seemed to move past her as if she was just another piece of art to glance at, just another statue in the museum. And you suppose logically she is, but you couldn’t understand how they didn’t have the urge to at least linger long enough to study the lines of her face, to memorize the curve of her jaw and the bump in her nose.
You had stayed right there, on the same bench you sit on every time you go to visit her, until your friend Jade had tugged your sleeve and told you it was time to leave the museum. She had looked concerned. Maybe that was ridiculous of you, but you hadn’t cared about either of those things.
And you still don’t.
You recall this as you gaze at her, stroking your thumb across her cheek, and come back to the present moment. Your voice cracks when you speak.
ROSE: You’re so entrancing, Kanaya. I love you so much.
Your breath comes in shuddering exhales as your fingers trace her skin. Your pointer ghosts over her eyelashes, your thumbs cupping her cheeks. She remains motionless as ever beneath your touch. Her lips remain full, slightly open, as if to allow her to breathe. She looks so lifelike, you could almost convince yourself she is alive. You could almost imagine her breathing, speaking, laughing -- loving you back, maybe.
The pad of your thumb traces her full lower lip. You almost expect to feel warmth when you touch her lips, but you don’t. The ridiculousness of what you’re doing strikes you; you are ever self-aware, after all; but you can’t bring yourself to care. No one is around but you and your lover.
You exhale softly through your parted lips, your eyes fixed on hers. She remains still as ever, unfeeling, unmoving, unblinking. But you are captured, suddenly, with the urge to kiss her.
Resisting is almost impossible. You do attempt to, of course. You know how foolish it is to kiss a statue. They cannot kiss back, nor embrace, nor love or hold -- but maybe that’s part of the draw for you.
Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, and you lean in. You stop before your lips meet hers, gazing at her for a long, long moment. Her downcast eyes, the high cheekbones; it’s all so familiar to you, and your resolve to kiss her solidifies.
Your lips meet. Your mouth fits over hers perfectly. Your heart lifts, your heartbeat quickening. The kiss is better than you could have constructed in your wildest and most fantastical dreams. Your lips move against hers, and hers are perfect, warm and tender and soft against yours --
Warm? Soft?
Your eyes snap open just as you feel an exhale ghost over your lips.
KANAYA: Rose
KANAYA: I Love You