Armand has been physically brutalized countless before. Lestat's treatment is unpleasant, but it is also nothing. So routine and familiar as to fade into the background. Layers of horror that have grown into him like tree rings. A part of the fossilized material that makes him.
Cradling his fledgling's face, he sees something in between; watching him age in blinks, in dust jacket portraits, in lurking visits. Black curls become striped with silver, then it overtakes it, skin sags and stretches and develops cutting character. Daniel continues to shiver and sniffle, eyes wet with clear, watery tears.
Listen.
Since when does Lestat listen to anyone? Why should Armand give him such grace, when Lestat has never given an inch of his own?
But that change. Barely any words. Armand turns his head over his shoulder to look at the other vampire, his expression one that Louis struggled to name, but still managed to sketchily describe; blank and apocalyptic. Is he angry? He must be. Nothing else qualifies. No amount of breaking his shoulder, his arm, any part of him, compares to the feeling of this mongrel anglo impostor daring to utter Amadeo to him, of Lestat trying to mimic a man who was a god, and to hold it over him.
Lestat slams into him. Daniel is ripped away. Falling into the dark like a brick dropped off of a ledge. There's nothing graceful about the plunge into the cold, black ocean within Armand. Does Lestat want a slave after all? Does it all boil down to this? The same brutal balance that Armand first learned when he was still Arun?
Must I repeat myself, Amadeo?
Marius speaks in Latin. He holds his Amadeo by his chin, explains to him again, how the transformation works. He will be drained again, and again, and he will be drowned so he can save himself, so Marius knows it's taken with proper strength. Amadeo has been ill, his body has not fully recovered thanks to the Gift; Marius is disgusted and angry that he managed to get himself so sick (doing the work Marius sent him to do), and he laments losing the stunning gold chip of the boy from the continent, who he can no longer send out for fear of burning in the sun.
They continue to fall.
Tell him again.
He was only ever Amadeo because he was Arun. (Maybe. It could have been Arjun, or Iren, or a dozen other things.) He could only please his god, his Marius, because of Arun. Arun's horror, Arun's suffering, over and over, choking, bleeding, violated, again and again. He is taught by repetition, he is taught by being drugged, he is taught by violence, and penetration, and suffocation, and use. His body hasn't finished growing. He doesn't understand Italian. He begins to romanticize the taste of his own blood in his mouth, because it means it isn't full of anything else, and the beatings are better than the rapes, and even food, which he throws up too often to find relieving.
no subject
Cradling his fledgling's face, he sees something in between; watching him age in blinks, in dust jacket portraits, in lurking visits. Black curls become striped with silver, then it overtakes it, skin sags and stretches and develops cutting character. Daniel continues to shiver and sniffle, eyes wet with clear, watery tears.
Listen.
Since when does Lestat listen to anyone? Why should Armand give him such grace, when Lestat has never given an inch of his own?
But that change. Barely any words. Armand turns his head over his shoulder to look at the other vampire, his expression one that Louis struggled to name, but still managed to sketchily describe; blank and apocalyptic. Is he angry? He must be. Nothing else qualifies. No amount of breaking his shoulder, his arm, any part of him, compares to the feeling of this mongrel anglo impostor daring to utter Amadeo to him, of Lestat trying to mimic a man who was a god, and to hold it over him.
Lestat slams into him. Daniel is ripped away. Falling into the dark like a brick dropped off of a ledge. There's nothing graceful about the plunge into the cold, black ocean within Armand. Does Lestat want a slave after all? Does it all boil down to this? The same brutal balance that Armand first learned when he was still Arun?
Must I repeat myself, Amadeo?
Marius speaks in Latin. He holds his Amadeo by his chin, explains to him again, how the transformation works. He will be drained again, and again, and he will be drowned so he can save himself, so Marius knows it's taken with proper strength. Amadeo has been ill, his body has not fully recovered thanks to the Gift; Marius is disgusted and angry that he managed to get himself so sick (doing the work Marius sent him to do), and he laments losing the stunning gold chip of the boy from the continent, who he can no longer send out for fear of burning in the sun.
They continue to fall.
Tell him again.
He was only ever Amadeo because he was Arun. (Maybe. It could have been Arjun, or Iren, or a dozen other things.) He could only please his god, his Marius, because of Arun. Arun's horror, Arun's suffering, over and over, choking, bleeding, violated, again and again. He is taught by repetition, he is taught by being drugged, he is taught by violence, and penetration, and suffocation, and use. His body hasn't finished growing. He doesn't understand Italian. He begins to romanticize the taste of his own blood in his mouth, because it means it isn't full of anything else, and the beatings are better than the rapes, and even food, which he throws up too often to find relieving.