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Post by Armand on Nov 25, 2008 9:26:12 GMT -5
Armand frowned at him, skeptical and a little dubious. "I realy couldn't imagine. Tell me."
This wasn't strictly true, Armand could imagine, something about Nicolas in this new century, or about Lestat- probably not Lestat. Or even about Armand, as Nicolas seemed so eager to probe tonight, yes, something abut Armand in the tower or about the two of them. Whatever it was, doubtless it would be an unsettling insight. Nicolas was so very fond of those.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Nov 25, 2008 9:40:29 GMT -5
Nicolas swung his leg back and forth like a child on a swing, slowly, like a pendulum. Even now that he was moving, it was in such a way that it did not disturb the stillness of the surrounding tower, enclosed and quiet. It suited Armand so well. That was what he was like, closed off from outside disturbances and so very silent. For once Nicolas was tiptoeing around that.
He looked at the surrounding room, gazing as though seeing it for the first time. "What do I wonder? You, mostly. This tower, over the years. What was the nature of your friendship with Lestat that he would give this tower to you. What it symbolizes. Why you would be drawn together. It's funny, isn't it? Lestat was always stronger than you, and yet so much more unstable. He must have been wondering whether or not he needed you. He does, you know. It's got to be why he gave you this. I can just picture him hoping you'll open your arms to him next time he comes; even though he despises you, he has this ridiculous need to affiliate." Nicolas pursed his lips, eyes darker and no longer seeing what he was looking at. "You'd think it had died with him. Lestat never had any respect for his own death, and probably no one else's, either."
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Post by Armand on Nov 26, 2008 7:21:14 GMT -5
Of course. Armand's arm dropped a little, slowly, and he tucked it behind his back. Nicolas had a knack for bringing up the things Armand didn't want to talk about- but in a way, his frequent mentions of them had somewhat desensitized Armand to them. He should thank him for that, Armand supposed, that he now had a modicum more control over certain subjects than he would otherwise. Now, more than ever, he could look upon them distantly and uncaring, except for when he did.
"If you wonder so much, go find him and ask him. I can't explain his reasons to you," he said, completely untruthfully, for couldn't he guess? His dark eyes watched Nicolas's incessant movements with a patient exasperation.
It was sort of funny, a dry, dark humor; Armand smiled, a hungry stretch of lips. He'd thought the same thing before, that Lestat had supposed he'd need the Venetian vampire again one day and so had simaltaneously shown a great generousity and a great cruelty in his interactions with Armand. If he was hoping that, upon his return, Armand would greet him with open arms- then Armand couldn't wait for him to try.
"He's a fool."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Nov 26, 2008 12:38:39 GMT -5
It had not occurred to Nicolas that Armand would not want to talk about Lestat - it was a certain amount of arrogance on his part, moreso than his usual lack of conscientiousness, however, in this case. Nicolas himself did not want to think about Lestat most of the time; it was one of the things that was undesirable about Armand for him, that Armand reminded him of Lestat. Not all of the time, mind; but it was as though Armand was a coat with a line of barbed wire underneath the shoulders, and putting him on, he had to move very carefully so as to not let the barbs pierce his skin. Occasionally, if Nicolas took a certain point of view on their conversation, Lestat's memory suddenly came up, and it was wrapped up with such loathing for Nicolas that he lashed out at Armand, perhaps unfairly.
But it was not like this now. At this moment, looking back on Lestat was not painful or distasteful. Nicolas had never given the actual relationship between Armand and Lestat much thought before, a large reason why he never thought Lestat was a subject Armand would rather avoid. He had just known there was a connection, as when thinking about the one, the other was sure to follow.
Nicolas snorted, although it was gently, not an interruption of his rare contemplation. "As though I needed to be told." His voice was low, with dark undertones. It became more pensive with the next turn of phrase. "And I doubt that Lestat could explain those reasons himself. He's blind as a bat, as they say. He probably thinks it's part of his own overwhelming goodness, his greatness of being, that you are small and displaced, and he so great that it is a measure of detachment to give you the tower. He thinks you need him. It's just his way of concealing from himself that the opposite is true." Nicolas eyed Armand keenly. Despite talking about Lestat, who Nicolas felt he knew, it was Armand he was focused on. Armand was the one he didn't understand. "You never needed anyone, did you? You hate Lestat for destroying the coven, but it doesn't mean it was because you needed it. The Theatre is gone, but you don't care."
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Post by Armand on Nov 26, 2008 14:25:52 GMT -5
"Somebody's bitter."
Armand's smile hovered again, a ghost of the real thing. There was a very mortal aspect to liking someone when they agreed with you, a shallow, egotistical fondness that Armand would not think of himself as possessing. Nevertheless, it did not displease him to hear Nicolas's dark avowal, even if he understood the words as to have been created by Nicolas's own experiences and not his own. To Armand, it had been the gift of a a child, absent and pitying and wanting to do something good for poor lost Armand, to cover all the bases, so to speak. There had been arrogance in it, yes, but there had also been detachment- what did Lestat care for a tower if he was leaving?
But again and again it was the pity that struck Armand, a pity that he couldn't stand to receive from Lestat because, with Lestat, he felt as though he hadn't earned anything from it. It was one thing for Armand to use what he could against an idiot, to get what he wanted and know that idiot felt pity because he was easily tricked and didn't understand a thing. It was one thing, in a case like that, for Armand to use himself against someone who didn't matter. But it was another thing to have the pity to be real, and disgusted, and knowing. Lestat knew him. He thought he knew him. And Armand hadn't won a thing.
Armand pressed the fingers of one hand to his lips thoughtfully- maybe he was getting excited by this after all. Enough thinking of Lestat. He tracked his own reaction dispassionately and shut it down.
"On the contrary, I needed them very much." But it was a hard thing to believe when Armand said it so utterly without conviction, dead, heavy-lidded eyes gazing over at Nicolas. "Vampires need other vampires to keep from going mad."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Nov 26, 2008 14:38:23 GMT -5
Nicolas stretched his legs, incredibly limber, as all vampires were, but, like the fledgling that he was (even after a century), possessing a strange need to flaunt it even when in the privacy of this tower, alone with another vampire who had long since outgrown the vulgar need to show off, if he had ever possessed it. Nicolas could not imagine Armand as anything other than the still mannequin he knew him as. Certainly he could not imagine Armand behaving as he did, teeth clenched and gleaming, lips drawn back from them as he played the violin, manic, as though possessed by the devil. Yet it made him wonder, suddenly, about what Armand's role had been like in the Satanist coven. Had he been still all the time? Had there been any dancing there? He remembered suddenly, in a flash of memory, playing the violin for Lestat, them both perfectly drunk, dancing around like fools where they'd burnt the witches, both so alive and vulnerable, so unlike what they'd become. Nicolas suddenly felt a prick of pain and brushed at his eyes, surprised to see streaks of blood on the back of his hand. He wiped away impetuously, determined not to break down in front of Armand. He was not so mad as that. Armand would never let the matter lie.
"Where does that place me, then?" he almost demanded, impatient-sounding. "The more of your old coven there were around me the madder I became. I suppose I could use a little solitude to keep my sanity."
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Post by Armand on Nov 26, 2008 21:17:39 GMT -5
Slowly, Armand's head tilted to the side. His lips parted as he stared curiously, almost hungrily, at Nicolas. He hadn't missed the movement, the wiping away of the blood tears. Was he thinking about Lestat?
"You've always been a solely unique sort of vampire, Nicolas. I would hesitate to compare you to the usual standards of normalcy."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Nov 27, 2008 15:27:32 GMT -5
Nicolas looked at him rather sharply, more sharply than he might have under usual circumstances. He felt wary of Armand, suddenly, but had nonetheless let his guard down, and seemed to suspect anything possible of him. All in all, he could not imagine Armand capable of hesitation. Stillness was not tentativeness. It made him wonder what Armand was really saying.
"No," he said. "Just a new kind, like Lestat is a new kind, from a new kind of human society. The industrial revolution purged us of our literal dependence on other people even if it only strengthened the emotional need for it. You old ones might suffer the covens and the gatherings, but you don't need each other, whereas we stay away from society and starve for it." He looked away, at an illustration on the wall. It seemed blurred to him, but it wasn't for poor eyesight. "I wonder if I do need other vampires, as you say I do. It's true I don't like them, but we don't always like what we need, do we?" He looked back at Armand, and seemed to be implying something mocking about him, rather than admitting something vulnerable of himself. "In fact we very often despise what we need, don't we, Armand?"
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Post by Armand on Nov 27, 2008 22:40:34 GMT -5
"I disagree. It's arrogant to assume that this revolution or that renaissance changed completely the human psyche in one fell swoop. Time changes things- events only help."
Armand said it calmly, not offensively, but he did wonder. Was that so true? The new vampires came in flocks, bringing new ideas, new fashions, new thoughts- and then disappating like mist. Unstable, easily lead, they nevertheless symbolized the changing times in a way Armand had a hard time comprehending. It was the old vampires that still stood like stone sentinels, living for centuries and passing on only when they felt it could be done. Allesandra had been mad, but she'd stayed with him until she'd decided he could survive on his own. The new vampires came and went like firecrackers, bright and blazing and short-lived. Armand wondered why that was, and if the ages the older vampires came form somehow equipped them to deal with immortality better- they came from short, brutal, violent times. But maybe it was only in Paris the vampires recoiled at the impoliteness of killing.
"But there are, as always, exceptions."
And why did Nicolas think Armand would be so discomforted by this barely-hidden jest? Armand knew Nicolas despised him, and it was only to be expected, but this, this admission of need- was it an admission?- that drew him in.
"A common trend," he said softly, eyes on Nicolas in a way that just begged him to tell Armand more.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Nov 28, 2008 18:09:55 GMT -5
Nicolas didn't realize he was being drawn into the ridiculously cozy phenomenon of conversation even as he settled into a more comfortable position atop Armand's writing desk and listened to him speak a different opinion, considering that opinion for its own merit rather than to try and find out something about him, something he could use or manipulate. He was not trying to wound or even to coax. He only considered what Armand said.
He still believed what he had said. Each generation of vampires depended on the society they'd grown up in. The industrial revolution had fundamentally changed things, and whenever Nicolas passed by a shipyard or a railway station he got a shiver and knew it was true. And Armand was a different sort of vampire from him, fundamentally. He wondered if he thought this made him old-fashioned and outmoded in his eyes or wiser, necessary. One thing did occur to him, that Armand would have seen more civilizations change than Nicolas certainly had, and therefore might have more authority over the subject. But then, what did he know? He'd shunned human society, spent his days in dust and ash in his ragged tunic as though time did not exist.
Nicolas met Armand's eyes, not quite closed to him, but growing more still himself, almost seduced by the silence. There was a lack of time here in the tower, even if it only existed in his mind, but the mind was powerfully persuasive. He leaned back on his hands and gazed at Armand a moment before he began to speak very pensively in a low tone of voice. "I wonder at how I came to be back. I tell you know I can't remember a thing of it. After you didn't scatter the ashes - " was that a momentary scolding? He certainly wouldn't let the subject go - "I can't remember a thing of it. Bits. I know I was there. I know someone aided me, but I don't know who." He sighed, irritably. "So what now? Am I looking for it - him, her? A substitute for him? Hell if I know."
It was not quite an admission of need, and not quite admission of needing Armand, but it admitted he was considering that he might, and therefore treaded dangerously close for him - fortunately he did not recognize it.
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Post by Armand on Nov 28, 2008 19:03:54 GMT -5
Armand too felt the intimacy of the quiet setting, an intimacy he always sought in his personal rooms or resting place. It could be intoxicating to be alone with another vampire and to concentrate on the luster of their eyes or the proximity of their presence. Armand wasn't so easily intoxicated, depending on the company, but it was always a temptation.
But any intimacy or quiet peace was shot through by Nicolas's words. A substitute for him- a substitute for Lestat, or for the one who'd helped Nicolas after his resurrection? Armand was satisfied and curious and wary all at once, and inclined to believe the former. He was even a little repulsed- he did not physically recoil, but he just as easily could have. He hoped that Nicolas did not mean to try and find a substitute for Lestat in him, intentionally or otherwise. The thought made him shudder, although Armand didn't consciously pursue the reason why.
But it did show him that Nicolas still thought of Lestat. Armand hadn't fully believed the younger vampire when he'd professed apathy towards his gregarious maker, and this reassured Armand, calmed him, something about how his expectations hadn't all been proven wrong. To be left floundering was unpleasant and unaccustomed, and Armand couldn't rebuild his view of Nicolas so utterly.
And likewise, he could recognize something in Nicolas's tone he wished he hadn’t. They were very similar in some aspects, he was beginning to realize, primarily in that both of them had experienced the strange phenomena of this lack of memory. Nicolas at least had his second death to blame on it, but what did Armand have? A history of amnesia he hadn’t experienced since he was a mortal? He’d told Nicolas once, and Nicolas hadn’t cared, but this Paris wasn’t the one they were from. He was hoping that was excuse enough, but neither did Armand want to unveil himself enough to use it against Nicolas.
“I can’t help you,” Armand told him, at a loss but appreciative, even in a predatory way, of the fact that Nicolas had admitted anything to him at all. “On the occasion a vampire was allowed to resurrect himself in the covens, I never had a hand in it.”
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Nov 28, 2008 19:25:38 GMT -5
Any peace Nicolas had settled into burst with Armand's words, which he found, suddenly and irrationally, to be crippling in their annoyance. Perhaps it was the emphasis on himself, the intrusion of Armand's being and his own personal background into Nicolas' reverie, but that didn't seem to be it. Nicolas had been wanting a glimpse into Armand a moment before. What on earth had changed? It might have been the intimacy of the setting to do it. The moment each began to respond to the other about himself, sharing, so to speak, Nicolas' sense of safety began to fray. He felt irrepressibly anxious and helpless with that sort of thing, and the one thing he knew to do to repel that sort of behavior was to denounce Armand's aid.
"I didn't ask for your help," he said, eyes narrowing, voice touched with disdain. Like a bird smoothing out ruffled feathers, he adjusted his lapel, paying attention to every minute detail, absorbed in this until he felt composed enough to keep his distance and not feel some perverse craving to confide. "It wouldn't matter if I had. You've done all you can to bedevil me. How you must have hated him. I don't make you think of him, do I?"
Even though Armand strangely seemed to make Nicolas think of him - him being Lestat, of course, even though Nicolas did not even realize he was assuming Armand knew that.
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Post by Armand on Nov 28, 2008 21:03:48 GMT -5
Armand laughed, a surprise both to himself and to Nicolas, but it was so transparent, Nicolas's attempt to recover. The effort put into smoothing out his lapel was unnecessary, and so it was a cover; the abrupt, incongruent venom was the same. It was not unlike an animal, a dog perhaps, raising its hackles against a sudden threat in an effort to look bigger and meaner, but regardless, it was nothing more than a dog. Once Armand had thought of the resemblence he couldn't unsee it. His laughter stemmed from that, and from the knowledge that Nicolas would hate the comparison.
"Don't use Lestat as a way to throw me off, Nicolas. I'm not so easily distracted. And no, you don't remind me of Lestat, not in the slightest. I think of him only when you make some reference that makes it impossible not to associate the two of you."
Armand was still smiling, good-natured suddenly, in the face of Nicolas's outlash.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Nov 29, 2008 12:45:46 GMT -5
Armand's laughter was alarming to Nicolas, and he felt momentarily disoriented. Nicolas, of course, did an absurd amount of sudden, shocking laughter, but he expected it of himself, or rather, he expected to do strange things and was not alarmed when he did them. In fact, if Nicolas had been a dog his ears would have pressed flat against the top of his head, but this was not so; nonetheless he seemed faintly chilled by the sound, even though it was almost warm and welcoming. He supposed it was the fact that it sounded that way, but was in reality very much excluding him that made it so alien. He was almost glad of it when he ceased to laugh that he might abuse him further. If he had not been laughing, Nicolas might have cast him a withering look or sulked or even become violent - listening to Armand speak of Lestat so easily brought the vampire to mind even more clearly than Nicolas' speaking of him himself did.
Nicolas brushed back strands of his own hair, glancing over at him, a faint flush stealing to his cheeks in his annoyance (for he had fed not long before, as enthusiastically and messily as he had always fed); but that was all, and Armand was lucky for it. His peevishness faded swiftly into genuine curiosity at something Armand had said, for he assumed that Armand was being truthful and yet this was an unexpected revelation. Strange that Nicolas at his most coaxing could not get Armand to speak to him openly, but a petulant response from him provoked such honesty.
"Are you lying? I always suspected you pictured me as Lestat's errant child first and foremost. That was what you used me for, to lure him, and then when he left he thrust me upon you as though you were a wet nurse and I a newborn," he said, sounding mildly indifferent, although this was not so. Then he smirked. "I could never have imagined we had such history together as would earn me a singular place in your heart. You must be more fond of me than you let on."
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Post by Armand on Nov 30, 2008 9:09:58 GMT -5
His laughter discomforted Nicolas, and Armand could see it; although he hadn’t been laughing to that end, and the curiosity wouldn’t have prolonged or shortened it, he’d wasn’t unpleased with the reaction. He’d wondered how Nicolas would take it, and the way he spoke Lestat’s name when in good humor.
“I am not,” came his smooth reply. Wet nurse and newborn- what an unflattering analogy. Armand had known Nicolas longer, or at least better, than he did Lestat. It was not particularly a striking revelation, but it did make him feel tired. “No, don’t be misled. You are still his errant child. But he never knew you, did he, and you’re not his companion or his lover anymore. Nicolas the human is dead, and you are a familiarity only.”
This was nothing so sordid as a sharing of his feelings. It was only that he was not fond of Nicolas and felt it was imperative to show him such, and that Armand wanted to see if his words made any mark. He had not said it particularly viciously, but then, he never did.
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