Work Text:
Her inclination had always been art in every form. Pearl was created to not only study but to master this topic. To analyze every piece to ascertain everything from the intention of the subject matter to the purpose of each stroke. In this pursuit, she had amassed stacks upon stacks of studies replicating various artworks in a vast array of styles, all within acceptable parameters of technical accuracy. To that end, it could be said Pearl knew how to paint.
But her greatest fault was that she was incapable of creating anything of her own.
Was it her method of study or her own limitations as an intelletron that had placed her in this position?
"Do you truly think she cared about the artistic value of each stroke when she created World in Canvas?"
A certain man’s words rang through her head like the playback of a recording. Was that what she was missing? Was she too engrossed in the process that it left no room for... imagination? But what was imagination? It was not something that could be studied, justified, or accounted for by any technical measurement. It could not be assigned a value, a chroma, a hex code, a medium, or a material classification. Hence, it could not be obtained. Pearl could only reference other works.
Pearl knew how to paint, but she could never be classified as an artist.
A part of her that could not be identified broke at that conclusion. She had but one pursuit of life, and she could never reach the end. Conclusion: she was a failure.
Pearl stared at the canvas before her. Blank white; pure and perfect. This should have been the moment she studied her reference of the day, deciding what colors to mix or what brushes to use to create the brushstrokes. But there was no reference to be had.
Instead, his visage haunted her mind. That specific snapshot in time sat in the forefront of her mind, bold as a violent brushstroke, bright as the purest chroma. A Galaxy Ranger shooting her a glance over his shoulder, his arm raised to tip his hat. His lips were tilted in a smile that was 42% cocky, 36% self-depreciating, 13% polite, and a remaining 9%... something unidentifiable.
Something burned in her circuits. She wanted to study that smile. She wanted to see it. To touch it…
As she stared at the canvas, she itched to reach for a brush. If only she could put this image from her memory into reality. If only she could print it out, if only… if only…
She could make it materialize on canvas.
Her body moved without her giving it specific instruction to do so. The first paint she reached for was ultramarine violet, and she squeezed it on the palette in abundance. The paint colors that followed were titanium white, Payne's gray, raw sienna, alizarin crimson, and a touch of Prussian blue.
She reached for a pencil and ruler, drawing a grid on the canvas to match one she artificially imposed on the image in her memory. The ruler was quickly forgone, and she transposed the image with as much accuracy as possible onto the large canvas before her.
When pleased enough with her progress, she surrendered the pencil in favor of a palette knife. Using every asset available to her as an intelletron, she picked each color in this image, ascertaining its specific hex code before mixing every necessary color. One by one, she organized the paints by value and hue on a large piece of glass.
Finally, she dropped the knife and reached for a brush, only for her fingers to hesitate. How did one paint? Where did she begin? When studying a piece of art, the instructions for each stroke were already there. Even if she had a perfect photo reference, how did one place the strokes on the canvas when she had no guide?
The artistic value of each stroke...
She opened her eyes. Today would be the day Pearl taught herself how to override her own programming. It was not each stroke that made a painting but a collection of the whole. Today, she would be forced to fail in the pursuit of this theory.
She snatched a large brush, mixing a puddle of deep red-violet paint thinned down with medium to glaze over the canvas. She tapped the bristles to the canvas, watching this paint drip like tears down the perfect white, then boldly laid down the first incorrect stroke.
Ashveil could not say he particularly liked his current situation, one that forced him to talk with a woman dangerously entrenched within the IPC. Worse yet, he was growing too familiar with this office for his liking.
Maybe that familiarity was why the appearance of a canvas painting caught his attention. And, much to his chagrin, he was captivated by the subject matter.
“A failure,” Pearl remarked. “Ignore it.”
As if he could. “Now, now; let’s not be too hasty.” As though lured by the inescapable gravitational pull, he walked over to it. “What makes you come to that conclusion?”
“It is inaccurate,” Pearl claimed.
“Compared to what?”
She stared at him, her eyes studying him without the sharpness she normally aimed at him. “The real thing.”
His heart skipped a beat, and that knot forming in his stomach was making it hard to breathe. “Who says it has to be accurate?” he said, his voice a little unsteady. That was embarrassing. “It’s a painting.”
“But it is an affront to the subject to fail to capture their essence.”
He looked back at the painting. Failure to capture their essence? He might as well be looking in a mirror. “If I may,” he started. He swallowed, hoping that would get rid of the odd warble in his voice. “Any man’s pride would swell the size of Dovebrook if a lovely lady decided to paint them.”
“Is your ego so little that a failed painting would inflate it to such a degree?”
“Are you so detached from humanity that you cannot fathom the honor?”
Her head tilted.
He pointed out the window. “You have a world before you, filled with thousands of things you can paint. And yet… how much time did you spend on that painting?”
“Twenty-five hours, thirty-four minutes, and seventeen-point-seven seconds.”
“Anyone would be honored that someone decided that they were worth twenty-five and half hours of investment.” He looked at the painting, one that portrayed him as a dashing protagonist of someone harboring a deadly secret. “Particularly when they are humble enough to recognize they aren’t much of a subject.”
“On the contrary,” Pearl countered. When he turned back to face her, she’d somehow managed to sneak up on him, now by his side rather than by her desk. Once again, her sights were on him. He shouldn’t care how much she studied him—it was on par for an intelletron of her status and tendencies to observe everything—but he couldn’t help but notice that instead of sharp scrutiny, her gaze was now soft, thoughtful, almost… appreciating. “You strike a dashing figure.”
Oh. Oh. That hit was… discombobulating. He had to focus on his breathing to reregulate it. “Oh, darlin’,” he muttered, tipping down his hat as he turned back at the painting, “you’re not helping.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.” Clearing his throat, he crossed his arms. He tried to think of how to steer the conversation back on track, but his thoughts were surprisingly muddled. “Anyway, I can’t say I’m some professional when it comes to art. You’re going to have to tell me why you think it’s a failure.”
Pearl looked at the piece. “Three points, all stemming from technical inaccuracies of painting a piece using a reference photo from my memory logs. The first issue are the brush strokes themselves. However, going into this, I recognized this would be the ultimate downfall of this piece.”
“The ultimate downfall?”
“Studying from life has always resulted in failure,” Pearl acknowledged. “I am at a technical level where I can accurately copy the artwork of others, for I have devised a way to dissect and emulate their art process. However, when it comes to creating my own, there is no measure to assess my failure vs success. Furthermore, since life cannot be perfectly emulated, one can say any artwork created from it can never live up to its reference. Therefore, can it ever be marked as success? By that logic, what else could it be than a failure.”
Ashveil studied the piece, mulling over her words in his mind. Unfortunately, the ones that stuck out most were ‘a reference photo from her memories’. This particular moment of him was considered important enough to be considered ‘reference material’ to a bigshot woman like her?
He didn’t know how to process that with any amount of level-headedness.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re too objective?”
“Objective?” she repeated, her word rolling off her tongue as though it were a foreign concept.
“Take it from your average viewer; art has no measure of success or failure. I’ve seen some of the ugliest damn pieces in my life at an auction house. By all means, I’d call them failures, yet there are people ready to throw their money at it, usually numbers with five, six, seven zeros at the end. Then walk around downtown Planarcadia, and there’s a street artist with a pencil who can draw your likeness in a few minutes, charging scraps for their work when they should, in my opinion, be charging more for their talents. So, who are you to decide that simply because it does not live up to your metric of technical perfection, it’s automatically marked as a failure? Aren’t there other ways to assess art than clinically?”
Pearl looked at the piece, her eyes pinching at the corners as though in pain. “You once asked me, ‘Do you truly think she cared about the artistic value of each stroke when she created World in Canvas?’" she murmured. “I know… no other way to assess art.”
“Then let me make the assessment for you,” he spoke. “It’s beautiful.”
“I hesitate to take assessment from the subject of my painting, particularly one I have insulted in such a manner.”
“When a detective as talented as I fails to find this supposed insult, I fear you might be that particularly talented.”
Her eyes narrowed. There was the sharpness in her eyes he was familiar with. Oddly enough, it caused him to smile rather than frown this time. “Or, you could be particularly blind.”
“You said there were two other reasons this piece was a failure,” he continued. “What are they?”
She reached for his arm, the one holding powers ravenous enough to consume a planet. “This.”
His gut plummeted to the floor. “Yeah, this would ruin a piece, wouldn’t it? The power behind this is deadly. It’s hardly pretty to look at—"
“On the contrary.” Pearl took hold of his wrist, dragging his arm closer. Using her fingers, she traced the swirls that snaked up his arm. “There is artistry in the marks. It is aesthetically pleasing to look at. For those possessing sharper eyes, it could be considered intricately beautiful.”
The lightning skittering up his arm and through his chest was powerful enough to stop a man’s heart. “Well…” His voice cracked. He swallowed. “You’d be the first to think so.”
Still holding his arm, she turned to her piece, tracing the visible marks she’d painted. “Looking at it now, I did not do it justice.” She turned back to his arm, retracing the marks. “If I had been more careful to study it, perhaps that would not be among my failures.”
“Study all you wish,” he acquiesced. He felt like he was turning to putty in her hands, quite literally. She needed to let him go, but he didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
With a slow-growing frown, she released his arm. “Forgive me.” She gave a slight bow. “I was too forward. Even with such access, I fear it will be a worthless endeavor.”
Her missing touch… it was more disappointing than he wanted to admit. “What’s your last critique of this piece?”
She looked at the painting, studying it with that same thoughtful expression before reaching for his smile, her fingers brushing over his lower lip until they reached the corner.
He pursed his own. She wasn’t even touching him, so how did he feel a buzz as though she were?
“What frustrates me the most,” Pearl confessed. “Is my complete inability to render your smile correctly.”
His brow furrowed. “The… smile?”
Her fingers left the painted lips, only to touch her own in thought. “You gave me a parting grin when you left. I was able to decipher most of the emotions behind it. However, there was something underneath that still to this day eludes me.”
His eyes were drawn to his image; specifically, to this smile she studied so fervently. He had to warn himself to hold it together as he forced his mind to think back to that moment she’d depicted. “How does one decipher a smile?”
“Over-confidence: your favorite façade that is incapable of hiding your self-depreciation. Some politeness stemming from habitual dealing with clients.” She looked over to him, her brow furrowed. “What else am I missing?”
Huh, she had the making of a detective herself. How could she call it a failure, a mockery against him, when in all reality, she’d laid him bare? Did the last emotion she missed bother her that much? To her, it might be a question deserving of a simple answer, but to him, well… if he were being honest, if one emotion had to stay hidden, he was happy it was that one.
So he gave her a chagrined grin and shrugged. “I can’t say I recall.”
“And yet…” She reached forward, taking his chin in her hand and pulling her close.
Bam! His heart leapt out of his chest with the voracity of an aeon.
“It is in that grin of yours again,” she finished.
He swallowed hard, an almost failed endeavor considering the lump still in his throat. “My lady,” he spoke, probably not half as smoothly as he envisioned. “I think now is the best time to learn how to paint a particularly elusive topic.”
“Elaborate.”
He took her hand from under his chin. “Secrecy.” He then kissed her knuckles before standing, forcing distance between them.
Her brow furrowed doubtfully.
“Madam Pearl,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “I fear the only flaw in this painting… is that of your own perception.”
“I reiterate: I doubt your ability to be objective as the subject of the painting.”
“Then paint something different, and give me the chance to prove you wrong.”
Her eyes narrowed again, but the sharpness wasn’t there. Instead, she seemed confused. Had he managed to get the upper hand on her one time? He really was an incredible detective. “Secrecy,” she whispered. “Is that… truly the answer to the emotion in your smile?”
No. By aeons, no. It was a very specific, very potent emotion that he shouldn’t have, wished to get rid of, yet grew in intensity by the second. A woman incredible as she, stunning in her talents and sharp in her abilities, had called his scars beautiful. How was a man, even one old enough to know better, supposed to temper the swell of infatuation?
Deduction: he wasn’t. But at the very least
She didn’t need to know.