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The magnolia tree reaches ever upwards for its artificial sun. It is not a young tree anymore but it's still quite small, a stunted sapling from much older roots, thin under this cold star.
If the tree feels the steps approaching, it does not show it. Soft steps, bare feet on cold floors. Louis comes wandering down the hallway still in his sleep clothes. He sits at the edge of the garden and looks up at the tree. If it appreciates the company, it gives no outward sign.
No warmth of sunlight on the skin. Louis turns his palm up, then down, then up. No burn. Did he feel satisfied when his skin sizzled in the scorching sunray? He can remember Daniel's suppressed flinch, he can remember Armand's heavy gaze, but not his own feelings at the time. There was no satisfaction when he clawed his veins open that night so long ago in Paris, he remembers that. There was no relief. If nothing else he had hoped the pain would purify him, he had wanted to bleed until all of the poison in his veins had been purged, poured out. But the poison had spread too far already. In the end, all he'd felt was numb. And San Francisco? He keeps trying to get a hold of that memory, but it keeps slipping from his grasp. Only an echo of the pain, clear as water, lingers when he opens his hand. Did he hope for relief then? Does he hope for relief now? An exercise in self-flagellation, Armand called it. He didn't agree.
Louis feels the steps approaching, hears their heavy, uneven gait. He does not turn to watch Daniel's arrival, but there might be a new droop to his shoulders when the journalist comes to stand at his side, a tilt of Louis's head just so as he sits down with a soft groan.
For a long minute they just sit in silence together. The delayed moment of contemplation they could not afford yesterday, maybe.
"This is what you do when you can't sleep?" Daniel pushes his bare feet into the rocks. "Play with the pebbles in your little therapy pit?"
"You're angry," Louis points out, turning his head, and Daniel meets his eyes with a scowl.
"And you're not." He stares hard at Louis for a moment, deep lines etched around his mouth. He finds something in Louis's face that he's inclined to call resignation. "You remembered?"
Louis purses his lips.
No answer necessary.
"And you believe him? Why would you believe him?" Daniel seems to notice that his voice has risen and repeats, lower now. "Why would you believe him?"
Louis still has that look that looks like resignation, an air of weariness, a slump to his posture that has little of the careful, controlled way in which Daniel usually sees him carry himself. To the expectant raise of eyebrows that Daniel gives him, Louis answers with a small shrug.
"Why did you get high, back when you were using?"
"Why does anyone ever get high?" Daniel asks, and perhaps he doesn't realize that he's quoting himself until Louis smiles. He smiles, and answers by paraphrasing Daniel's own words:
"It promises a way out. Out of the situation you're in, the way you feel, the person you are."
Daniel replies with a low hum and turns away from Louis, to look at the tree. Hot-house flower, he thinks, but he doesn't say it. He considers Louis's words for a moment, a minute that seems to stretch out impossibly, endlessly, in the timeless architecture of the penthouse.
"Couldn't stomach being the kinda guy who'd actually try to self immolate?" Daniel risks eventually, trying and failing to introduce some levity with his half-hearted snark. Louis gives him an unimpressed look, but Daniel doesn't turn to see it. He's looking at the details of the room, eyes now tracing the metal branches that crawl along the opposite wall. "I get that," he says, still not facing Louis. "I might have taken the chance not to be the guy leaving his pregnant girlfriend in bed to score a hit." He hums again, thoughtful. "Not that it's the same thing."
Louis doesn't say anything to that, and they fall back into silence.
Theirs is not exactly what one might call a comfortable silence, but it's not awkward either. There's an unease, certainly, not accounting to their wordless companionship but to something larger around them, and somewhat lessened by virtue of being shared. An unease that Daniel can't leave unaddressed.
"How can you know that he hasn't written out anything else? How could you be sure?"
He does look at Louis now, that same expectant look. These are not questions that Louis hasn't asked himself, but it would be pointless to make a point of that. The answer he offers is the only one he has.
"Can you imagine what living these past seventy seven years with his betrayal has been like? Why would I remember that he sold us out? There would have been nothing for me to forgive if he'd just written it out."
"Maybe it was too extensive a rewrite," Daniel tries to argue. He doesn't sound convinced, and Louis doesn't bother answering. "So you've forgiven him." It's not really a question. Louis makes a noncommittal sound. "How can we forgive ourselves…" Daniel paraphrases.
"You're rushing ahead again, Daniel. We'll get to this part today." Louis purses his lips. "It's not easy to tell."
Louis is right, this isn't their interview. And Daniel, though he has half a mind to pull out his phone and insist they record this next part now that they're alone, doesn't keep pushing. Maybe it'll be better to have that asshole there for the rest of it, he thinks. It doesn't occur to him that Louis might be thinking something similar, that he could also be waiting to hear what Armand has to say.
"So what, you've been carrying that cutting around since Paris?"