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Post by Armand on Mar 15, 2009 20:04:08 GMT -5
(( This would be a good time for us to bug Vincent to come in, yeah? ))
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 15, 2009 20:07:34 GMT -5
((Well. Yes. But Nicolas will leave shortly after that, so why can't it go on a bit longer?))
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Vincent
- Ingenious Pilot -
Me here at last on the ground, you in mid air%\0\%
Posts: 245
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Post by Vincent on Mar 19, 2009 15:03:13 GMT -5
((You two go on. Let me know when you're ready to have Vincent sent in.))
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Post by Armand on Mar 19, 2009 15:20:16 GMT -5
(( Shall do. ))
Armand was not entirely sure what Nicolas was doing, raising his hands as if in supplication to some merciful God, but he was in a good mood now, warmed despite himself by the unexpected gift, and he'd humor the violinist. Armand turned his head to regard the rings again, all of them, so many, and wondered if that was what Nicolas had been doing all week. Then his eyes flickered down to the emerald one he'd chosen to wear now, the fingers of his other hand adjusting it, lingering on it, and then finally he looked back to Nicolas, rather content to just watch him, conversation unnecessary unless Nicolas wished it.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 20, 2009 13:07:53 GMT -5
After a moment, Nicolas stood, the knees of his fine black trousers now thoroughly white with ashy dust. He moved to another chair in the room as though very aimlessly, seeming for once thoroughly content with something or other, and sat down, looking over at Armand with relaxed features. It was not a smile; perhaps it was better than one.
"Do you miss the theater?" he asked after a moment. It might have seemed poignant small talk at first, but it was intricately tied to the tower. It could be easily translated to: "Do you miss the theater, because were it still here, I would be there, and you would be here alone, without need of my company?"
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Post by Armand on Mar 20, 2009 17:02:45 GMT -5
"No," Armand answered him easily, not slouching- Armand did not slouch- but leaning rather absently and heavily against the back of the chair. "You would not know, but it had become full of unpleasant parasites and their gaudy performances. You wouldn't have recognized a single face. I don't miss it."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 20, 2009 21:21:43 GMT -5
Nicolas made a face, in his thoughtlessly manic, vampiric way, a sort of quick, bored grimace, except that he was not actually bored, not really. The Theater and gaudy were not words he thought belonged in the same paragraph together.
"Why on earth did you let them in?" he asked, not accusingly, but in genuine puzzlement, a crease to his eyebrows as he regarded him. "Why didn't you leave, like... everyone else must have."
The unpleasant thought of what had happened to everyone else, that Nicolas would not recognize a single face, struck him quite suddenly. It did mean, after all, that they had chosen to leave. Perhaps they had been driven away by the aforementioned parasites. Nicolas was left with the prickly sensation over his scalp and the backs of his hands that accompanied the grim thought that had he actually found the theatre, as intended, he might have been met by a sort of ghastly dreary aristocracy that would turn him away in a moment, jeering. Vampires who did not know him, and who did not care for his legacy other than the comfort it afforded them in their jaded eternity. He hunched his shoulders absent-mindedly to ward off that shiver of discomfort.
"Would you have welcomed me back?" he asked very softly, eyes settled on something in the shadows now, and seeing nothing.
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Post by Armand on Mar 21, 2009 9:02:30 GMT -5
"You say that as though I would have or could have turned them away. I was not the coven master, Nicolas, it was not up to me to keep them from coming. Did you know me to interfere so blatantly while you there, except when it came to you?" Armand did not mean that in a complementary way, but it was entirely possible Nicolas would warm at the thought of Armand's largest role being for him.
Armand turned his head to look out the window, thinking for a moment of the killings on stage, smiling, pale-cheeked puppets rising from the grave to devour a caricature of innocence, Death personified, Disease and Vanity and Mortality personified, all the dark, macabre things of the recent theatre de les vampires. "Then again, you might have liked some of their plays, Nicolas." Either that, or he would have been revolted by them. There was no cleverness in the new plays, only sensationalism.
"Had you behaved yourself, you would have been a welcomed respite."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 21, 2009 12:42:48 GMT -5
"You could have destroyed them," said Nicolas, not at all casually or sarcastically, not at all cynically. In fact, he looked almost innocent, even when speaking of such ghastly goings. His eyes were wide and it was obvious the sentiment was genuine, the surprise that Armand had not done so, when Nicolas knew Armand was more than capable of it, and clearly imagined Armand did it at will. "But if you so disliked them, and if there was no one left with whom you had once shared a past, and if you never interfered... why did you remain?"
Utterly guileless and unconscious, the way he drew his knees up and rested his head against them, watching Armand in silence and talking as though, like old school friends, they were catching up on long-gone days.
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Post by Armand on Mar 21, 2009 20:07:43 GMT -5
"Because I, like many of our kind, can't stand to be alone." Armand looked just as innocent as Nicolas, just as guileless, casual honesty written in the downward sweep of his eyelashes.
But then, he always did.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 22, 2009 11:52:29 GMT -5
Nicolas did not doubt Armand for a moment, although there was as great a chance as that being testament to his own loneliness and isolation as to its being proof of his utter beguilement by Armand. Both were well in existence. Distantly, a little dazed, he said, "Not just us..." while nodding a little bit. Agreeing with everything Armand said. Oh, yes. Nicolas knew that very well. And yet...
"But couldn't you have found someplace else? Other vampires? Surely Paris doesn't house the only vampires in the world. Couldn't you have sought them out, the others? Eleni... Felix... Laurent..." A string of endless names. Nicolas would not have. He would have only wanted Armand, although it did not occur to him that Armand would like to hear that. Like Armand's usual bespellments, this facade of sweet innocence had backfired in that it had only made Nicolas feel closer to him, want to draw him close and protect him and adore him and the like. It was apparent in his soft voice. "Did you need them so badly?" Nothing but sympathy there, for the little child who was forced in with those he hated, nothing but the deepest remorse for his position in Nicolas' eyes.
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Post by Armand on Mar 22, 2009 16:19:53 GMT -5
A shrug. "I was learning of this place as I never had before. Besides, would you expect me to leave the theatre to them? They were worse than you. They would have plucked up members of the audience if they could." And they had, Armand remembered, at least once, although he'd ensured that that mortal had been able to step off the stage later that night, or at least, stumble. Too suspicious, too daring, to kill a woman whose many society friends tittered at the scandal when she was picked, but the difference between Armand's thoughts and what he was telling Nicolas now.... was that he hadn't really cared. It had not been pleasant at the Theatre, but Armand was used to unpleasantness. He was not a suffering child who due to his loneliness turned to the only others of his kind who would stand him, not at all. Only to Nicolas, but Armand did not mind it, because that had been his intention. "They were insistant on spitting in the eye of the mortality they'd left behind. They wanted to be the canker in the very heart of the rose of Paris."
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 22, 2009 17:00:03 GMT -5
(( *dies of last line* ))
The flowery nature of the last phrase gave him pause, and Nicolas tilted his head to look at him; but Armand's eyes, so far as they spoke to Nicolas, told no secrets, which he should have expected, really.
"I wouldn't have plucked up members of the audience," said Nicolas, after a moment, without knowing whether or not that was actually true, and not able to care, as he'd never been able to care, really, about how much trouble he had caused Armand at the theater. "What happened, Armand?" he asked, voice tired. "Why didn't it last? Hardly any time had passed, and yet..."
He had been referring to the fact that, although at first, and indeed, for most of their time together in the theater, they had been so personable, and had so enjoyed each other's company and to speak together, as Armand learned of the century and Nicolas of vampiric existence and both discussed philosophy in a rather volcanic fashion, and Nicolas had demanded Armand's attention and opinions on everything. He did not understand why it had not been enough to hold him, why it had not lasted.
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Post by Armand on Mar 22, 2009 17:25:58 GMT -5
"It's a cliche, Nicolas, but for a reason: nothing lasts." That wasn't what Nicolas wanted to hear, Armand was sure, but he wans't the type to sugar-coat. Finally, finally, Armand settled cross-legged on the floor, back very straight, hands limp in his lap.
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Post by Nicolas de Lenfent on Mar 22, 2009 17:31:37 GMT -5
Nicolas watched Armand reassemble his limbs in the sweetest posture, wondering if this was for him, for it didn't seem natural to him, and strangely self-conscious because if it was he didn't know what he'd done to earn it from him. "But we do," he said softly, and then he shut his eyes, and turned his face away, not wanting to look at Armand any longer. He felt suddenly very tired and remarkably complex, like a piece of clockwork in which one solitary piece had gone askew, and the rest, all working quite fine, was nonetheless winding itself up towards inevitable disaster by virtue of not becoming similarly distorted.
"I don't want this to be... just like last time," he said through his teeth, perfectly audible but mumbling only slightly. "But if it is so inevitable, then what can I do to stop it?"
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