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Seeing him, even now, fills his chest with sorrow. Waves of it, hitting him with every passing second that he looks at him, or, in truth, when he occupies his thoughts every so often. Armand wonders if Louis feels something akin to that at the moment. Or ever. If he does, he certainly does nothing to give it away. Although, all things considered, likely not. Rage, perhaps.
A familiar kind of ache blooms in his chest looking at him. Louis then, and Louis now, a mirror of the face that launched a thousand ships herself. Standing with his arms tucked loosely into each other over his chest, with a slight tilt of his head to the side with a soft smile playing on his face. God, when had he last smiled that smile for Armand? Did he still feel something close to happiness when he thought of Paris? Armand did. The name alone, Paris. Paris and all that came with it.
They were at it for a while. Armand and Louis. Pretending the other was not at the premises, in each other’s vicinity. They were always good at that. The gathering, if you can call it that, went on as predicted. Them stealing glances at each other, or, Armand doing that every so often and imagining Louis doing the same. He wished he could stop the world for a beat and just look at him. See him. Though, if he did that, applied that particular gift, he’s not sure if he could ever stop. He might hold, not for long to be sure, with the ancients that surround him, but still. He might hold and look, and look, and look. When at the end, he might collapse and perhaps be ushered somewhere by someone. Perhaps Marius. They had plans, anyway, after all.
He stops looking. An hour passes, two maybe. Armand dances around the little sibling of a palace as if in a ballroom, saying salutations, exchanging hellos and passive aggressive declarations on the situation, avoiding the same spot each time, almost pointedly. He passes on the blood offered now and again. There were quite a few fresh blood sources around, let’s say. Those along with the several hundred candlesticks in every room to illuminate each square inch of the space, and the hundred or so chandeliers that stretched across every room and into every elongated hall, it seemed as if the great conversion had already taken place. In addition, the high ceilings, painstakingly and intricately painted, and every wall and window being bathed in grand sweeping velvet, rich with colour and the Persian, perhaps Alabas carpet covering the floor, rich in texture, only added to the fantasy. The whole thing was a bit ghastly, really. He was quickly loath to stay there a minute more. Armand makes a couple more rounds, gets caught with a few more, before he’s allowed to slip outside.
It is a windy night. The refreshing, cold air hit him with full force, as it often did around harbors. It was exhilarating. The outside, of course, is also prim and proper with sharply cut hedges, and benches of oak every five feet. A fountain in the middle to tie it all together. It was functional at best. He takes a few steps forward and sits on one of the benches, crossing the right leg over the left, the back of his right hand outstretched and resting over the curved bench handle. Some respite, at last. He brings his chin slightly up and forward, closing his eyes and breathing slowly. One of the few steady things in his life, it’s worked in the past and it works now.
“Hello.” Louis. He freezes in his place. He is just standing there. In front of him. What could he say? What was he expected to say? The last time that they ‘talked’, a few years ago now, he was getting pushed into a wall. He almost wishes Louis would push him now so they would not have to engage in this. At the same time, hearing his voice after so long loosened a tight string inside him, and he wondered how he’d survived this long with his insides in such a contortion. Was his mouth open, maybe?
He settles on a simple, “Hello, Louis.”
“How are you?” His face was unreadable, his voice a bit pinched. Why was he here if he did not want to be? Why do this despite himself?
“Well enough. And you?” Armand chooses to say.
“Fine.” He looks as if he is holding back. Why hold back, now? Couldn’t he curse him with abandon?
There’s a pause. This is painful. And surely painful for any potentially interested persons inside the palace to listen in on. At least that brought him vindication of some sort. The pause went on a beat too long to be natural. Louis is avoiding his eyes.
He tries, “Well, this is all perfectly ghastly, is it-”
“Are you going with him?” Louis interrupts.
Another excruciating beat. “...What?” Armand blurts out.
“Are. You. Going with him?” Louis is looking at him now. With barely contained anger, of all things. His mouth made the shape of a line.
“Who, Louis? Where?” He tries to make his voice small and agreeable, maybe calming, but he isn’t sure it’s working.
“Your maker. And how would I know where?” How would he know of this, in the first place? Your maker. Over the years, they’d developed this unstated regulation of sorts. They wouldn’t say his maker’s name. Or, Louis wouldn’t. Only to be brought out during out of control brawls. They stepped around it almost as if it was somehow a manner of etiquette. Armand wasn’t completely unaware of the way Louis felt towards his maker, it was clear enough. Wouldn’t look at his paintings, such was his disdain.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit.” He says with a mean, unhumorous laugh. A beat passed, when he said nothing, Louis rolled his eyes to such an extent, one would have imagined he saw the back of his head.
“Fine, don't say it. You don’t have to. I know you are.” Louis says.
“What does it matter, if I am or not?” he chooses not to say, ‘to you’. He hopes Louis gets the question.
“It doesn’t. Do what you want, I don’t care.” he says with a noncommittal shrug.
“Louis-” he starts, unsure of where to go with this.
“Don’t.” Louis said, “Don’t go with him. I don't know what he’s told you, but just don’t.” Louis’ mouth is still pinched, but at least looking at him. A strange pained expression painted his face.
This is why he is here. This is what pulled him out of their years-long, many miles long rift. Rage and contempt strong enough to disavow a vow surely held close, and with good reason. To penalize him for his crimes. He’s come home once more, to be Maître once again, however briefly. With one of his feet out the door, still. Armand wants nothing more than to give him what he wants of him regardless of what he’s asking for, he’s not sure he’d ever really stop feeling that way.
“Why?” He’d like to hear it for himself.
Louis looks torn, somewhere between- as if someone asked him why the sky is blue and he knew the sky was pink, and as if he knew the question was coming. “Why. You’re asking me why. You know why.”
He slowly gets up and strolls towards Louis in front of him, he’d like to not be sitting anymore, “A shame that I could not, in all our years, rid you of these notions.”
Seventy years is a long time to not have memories bubble up at the slightest mention of a place ventured before, however mercurial, overcast again and again by the last time one remembered it. It was me he loved! Me! Not them- he never- you cannot-
Louis seems not a touch surprised at that, having had this conversation a few too many times now. “All your attempts to do so, Armand, have only calcified for me what I already knew. And I’m seeing exactly what it is.” How are you not? He doesn’t say but Armand hears it all the same.
“You owe me this much. At the very least, Armand.” he continues, through gritted teeth.
“I know.” He starts, his voice not as steady as he’d like it to be. “I know, Louis. Are you-”
“Shut up. Shut. Up. Once, Armand, for just once, can you not? Can you just listen to me? Is that really so difficult?”
“For Once?” he pauses. “Have I not? Have I not listened? To your every thought and every want?” He doesn’t understand. He never did. Always so obvious to everyone but him.
“Okay, hear me now, then! Stop! You can't- what?”
“I cannot refuse- I need- You punish me!”
They’re speaking over and with each other now, intent on only being heard and not hearing. As soon as there was an end to this, Armand thought, contrition would surely wave hello. Both of them, contrite, for having even tried.
Armand rushes in, “Marius, my brothers, my coven, my theatre. I have lost and lost and lost, Louis. I -” Armand had no words. He had hoped pleading would work, but as it was more and more apparent, sympathy would have to do.
“Oh it was painful, was it? Losing someone you loved?” Louis’ eyes are filled with disbelief.
“I cannot refuse, Louis, even if it is what I deserve.” He can’t. They both know, just as they’ve always known. Yet Louis is asking this of him. To what end?
“I don’t care. It is the last damn thing I’ll ever ask of you. The only thing.” Louis is close to having quite enough, he can tell.
“It does not have to be, Louis. You know that. I will always- You can always-” Back to pleading. He knew he was ugly when he acted like this.
“What’re you gonna do, huh? Oh Master let’s go drink and then maybe you can whip me! Fuck me into oblivion like the bitch I am, and I’ll touch your feet and thank you! OH! Let me call Benji and the other one. Are any of your friends in town?! Maybe we can-”
Armand stares. His eyes wide and unblinking. “At least I did not damn them! I did not curse them! And bring them into this world of darkness for myself! They did not suffer over and over and over again until they were nothing but ash because of me. I am not the one who, after having enough to be buried like a pharaoh, was incessant on stuffing cotton in my ears!”
This felt a little beside the point, Armand isn’t sure what his point is. “Call me a whore and reckless all you want- “
“Are you insane??"
“You, Louis, are no saint.” In and out. In. And out. Strange how breath is the only residue left of the human he once was. At least, the only one that he feels as though, is his still.
“How bout you shut the fuck up? I don’t understand what’s gotten into you.”
“Hm.” A hesitation. His voice grows louder now, with each word, with each syllable and with each space in between them. “I imagine so, Louis. Too much Armand. Not enough Arun. For your tastes.” He says as if reciting something from memory. As if he’d tried to convince himself of how untrue this was for the millionth time. Cold and unyielding. Was there any other way to say it? Just then, he didn’t think it was possible for Louis’ eyes to get crueler, and yet there they were.
“That’s not fair.” Louis hisses, breathy and loud. His eyes dance wildly with hurt sewn in them, “You asked for it! You threw yourself at my feet and begged for it! A prop! A toy, Armand! A toy you molded to your liking and now you decide it wasn’t for you? Fuck you.” He might as well have spit at him.
They were both thundering now. Trying to will the cacophony into sinking the indignation away. What a pretty picture they always made. Armand loved it when Louis roared with his hands dancing all around him. As if a conductor of an orchestra.
“Ah, yes, how kind of Louis! To give and give ad nauseum, and get nothing back! To not take any pleasure in the act and do only what is asked of him!” Armand moves towards him as he says this, his eyes boring into the other’s, and his voice barely a whisper now, "How generous it was of you to say yes to being looked after. And cleaned up after, when you were done being cradled by your melancholy.”
Louis is blinking rapidly, chest heaving slightly. “Well, you didn’t hesitate to contribute your fair share, did you? Even as I drowned in it.” He continues, breath coming faster, “Wanna make someone keep you around like a pet? Fucking cripple them!”
“You did that to yourself, Louis. I had no hand in it.” Armand’s voice had a sort of finality to it at that. He would not have the last word.
Pointed words flow out of Louis, like a dam breaking, “If you can’t move, how can you lea-”
And the carousel comes back around again. Except they were in it, and the vertigo of you did this to me never wore off, and so, round and round they went. Except, of course, when the wires were yanked right off. Before Louis could finish his next accusation, Armand snapped his neck to his right, his eyes strangely at a distance. As did Louis, on instinct. Armand was unclear on what it was. A sensation. A connection, a calling?
Marius. They spotted him standing as a sculpture might, a good distance away from them. His face unnaturally stony and smooth. His keen eyes as if a hawk’s, understanding and all-knowing and passing judgement, as a god might. His calm fingers intertwined in front of him, his platinum hair glistening in the moonlight, his expression giving away about as much as it always did.
It had an effect on him. Just the sight of Marius, it always did. There wasn’t anything to be done about it, he could see now. How gratifying it was, after so long to not have to pretend that it wasn’t so. The feel of his eyes on Armand like the finest of velvet covering every inch of his skin, made his only sustenance. His attention on him as if basking under an exuberating light, being chosen among all, for the rapture about which the people of today speak of with such astuteness. How, after all, is a creature of need like Armand expected to deny this? Is he to blame for saying of course when a saviour asks something of him?
Come with me. Won’t you, my child? Let us- How did Louis know-
He winked. Marius winked at him, a small smile playing on his lips. Marius’ startlingly icy, sheer blue eyes locked steadfastly on his own ghoulish ones, pinning him to the floor beneath his lax feet. Pinning him, often, even when there isn’t one. A red dot on his forehead trapping him, grounding him, like a moth in a jar. How desperately he had wished to have eyes like his maker during the event of his turning. I will, without doubt, adore whoever you become, Amadeo. My sweet Amadeo.
He suddenly feels as though he has spent years now, in this very moment, in this very configuration. Marius has been standing a few yards from him for years, and he stood looking at him for those years. Louis has been standing an arm length away from him for years, and he, begging to understand. His Daniel, angry at him for his many transgressions for ages also, and he, out of his sight lest he be subjected to scrutiny so pure, it made his head spin. It was all simply exhausting. He reaches out to Marius. He tries talking to him, as he did sometimes, giving no notice to the architects of their creation. Maestro, maestro- into the void. Louis, no doubt hearing him. No matter, he’s heard it all before. Maestro-
He is turning away now, his velvet robes a part of him, his steps deliberate and heavy in their humanness, leading him back to the palace. Have your talk, my son- the gesture said.
When Armand looks back, he feels something akin to a slap across his face. The kind of slap that left your head spinning and your ears ringing. Louis’ neck was thrown back and he was staring up at the sky. Not entirely, his eyes fixed at a single point. It is a gesture so striking in it’s resemblance to what Daniel took to doing, during their explosions, it throws him back several decades.
“Why do that, beloved?” He’d asked, once when they were off the ride.
“Do what?”
Exasperated, Armand had half-sighed, “What are you looking up at, Daniel? A god you do not believe in?”
“Maybe. Maybe Satan. Anyone who will grant me more patience to deal with your crazy.” his beloved had said with a fond kiss to his temple.
And, now, Louis looked at him with something he did not recognize. He returned it as best he could. All the fight had deflated out of them, resignation settling in. They stand about an arm’s length away now. Apparently, content to stand and stare at the other for the time being, daring the other. Whatever. It was not as if the hour glass was going to run out on them.
Louis starts after what felt like a lifetime, quietly and with even breaths, “If, Armand,” he says his name like a curse. “If a single, a single moment of this was ever true to you, you won’t leave with him.”
What Louis was trying to accomplish here, escapes him completely. To say the least. Why would he say that? Was it vengeance he sought? He resorts to pleading with eyes. “You know it was.” He isn’t proud of how his voice broke at the end. “I do not know what you mean. I do not what you want. I do not know why you ask this of me.” He knows a red line now decorates his eyes. He wasn’t above using it to his advantage. “Louis-”
“Hmm. I should've figured.” he scoffs, avoiding his gaze.
“Figured what?”
“Nothing.” Louis looks at him for an instant and appears to take a long, deep-suffering sigh without actually moving at all, the weariness of it all hitting him like a truck.
Of course. How wonderful. Another mystery, another answer just out of his reach only because someone refused to just tell him. Working on the absurd assumption that he wouldn’t get it. Hadn’t he gotten it up until now? Still, let Louis. Let him hold the cards. He’s survived this long without answers, hasn't he?
Suddenly, then, concern rises up in him like a particularly violent bout of fever, as much as he could remember what a fever had been to him. Marius surely knows every sentence and every thought of this conversation. Of both parties. Even, perhaps, what Armand was going to say before he said it and what he, point of fact, ought to say. Not to say that Marius had actively listened in on them, he wouldn’t, but he had a way of knowing things. A way of knowing or thinking, that had no space in and of themselves for anything other than their veracity. Surely Louis knew this? Surely he had realised?
“I’m going, Armand.” He wants to cry. He wants to cry and cry, and cry until the end of the earth.
“Just please…. just tell me what you want, Louis. Is that really so difficult?” Back to pleading, again. His voice is somewhere between anger and desperation. Armand’s head is hanging, eyes on the ground, well aware of the pitiful image he paints. He’s tired. Two thin hot streaks roll down his face, he can almost feel a frontal lobe pain from where his eyebrows have been pinched for ages. His chest hurts and he wants to bury himself in Mother Earth.
Someone is behind Louis abruptly, an unknown, a not-quite-a-fledgling that wasn’t inside. Stop. Armand raises his hand as if he was about to deliver the word of god, and the fledgling stops His body freezing and the air from his throat whisking out as he was choking. His neck, cramping and contorting as the fledgling tries moving forward, almost like a zombie. The veins in his head, red and enormous. Louis whips his eyes back and then forth. All of this elapses in a tenth of a second.
Armand’s hand is now in a fist as he holds the vampire there, still pointedly looking down. He takes a deep breath. A gurgling sound comes from behind Louis.
“Always flexing your power. Look at me.” comes another command.
“Look at me!” Louis hisses as he grabs Armand's wrist and pulls it forward with a force long lost to their history. Armand stumbles forward swiftly, grateful for the touch. They were a breath away from each other now, Louis’ eyes boring into Armand’s with an intensity that brought him back to the last time they’d seen each other. Armand, on the floor, staring up at him, at his mercy. Each moment they passed together was heavily punctuated with various gurgling and choking noises from behind Louis. Which really was getting more distracting by the second with how loud it was getting.
“Do what you want. You will anyway.” he says, shaking him a bit with where he holds him. “But I am asking you, Armand, to not go with him.” Louis’ voice is shaking, his eyes wavering in their determination. Armand doesn’t know why, and he’s not sure he wants to, now. He wants to get away from here and at the same time, cling to Louis for his life. There is distinct shuffling behind Louis, as if someone fell and is struggling to get up.
He continues, his voice like a life raft for Armand, “I know that you love him, I know this much is true. But still.” He whispers, his delivery longing for something. Louis lets go of his hand gently. Lovingly, almost. He takes two tender steps back, green eyes still on Armand. The eyes, steeped in sorrow, pierced his damned soul and spoke. Asked him why he had done everything he did, why he had let the abhorrent things that happened happen, why he wasn’t speaking now. They spoke, too, of knowledge, of knowing and perhaps understanding already that Armand had run out of words. Louis stands for a beat while he puts both his hands in his pocket, and slowly turns and walks away. Towards the palace, moving at a pace slow enough that Armand could follow if he wanted to. Imaginably, maybe they both know that he would not. He looks at him entering the palace, just stands and looks at him, not turning around once to get a glance at him. The colourful shape of him vanishes behind the gigantic doors. (It had warmed his heart earlier to see him not wear the colour black.)
Armand felt loved at that moment, loved beyond what words could articulate. My life, his dead heart chanted, my life, my life. Armand felt loved at that moment, not sure why, not sure how. Question upon question. Mystery, after mystery, after another fucking mystery. The entire way down, riddled with secrecy and humiliation. Something about that feels apt. Deserved. He continues to stand there for a while, not knowing what to do with himself. Wishing someone would come get him. His eyes glossing over, as he watches the vampire convulsing on the floor and dying. He does not care. He lets go. Though, letting go of the vampire now, when he has already crossed the threshold, was pointless. A few useless painful breaths and it would be done.
He turns around and starts walking, again, not knowing where it was he was going. Just that he was going. As he walked, pieces of his life with Louis flashed before him. Talks, arguments, like droplets in an ocean. Coming up and disappearing in their vastness, faster than he could hold on to them.
“You okay?” and,
“I hate it when you get like this.”
And,
“I ain’t fucking worried about you!” and this, precisely, was his problem. Assuming that his lovers, all of them, thought of him as much as he thought of them. That they loved him as he did them. As it stands, having been proven wrong again and again and every single time, did nothing to his hopes as much as it lessened the impact each time.
He had crossed half the garden, the two mile long overlay between the palace and the entrance, already planning to eat, listening out for people who might want him, might want death, when he heard it. Or rather, felt it behind him. He turns around. Just as he suspected.
“Are you alright, my love?” comes his honey sweet voice, still as the world around them.