Deliberate silence in the recent past. Armand has not wanted to deal with Louis, hear his complaining, his anger, his woe. Nearly eighty years of coddling him as been enough.
And despite that—
Despite it, is there not a part of him that misses Louis? There exists a worn-in shape in his reality that Louis fits perfectly. A familiar companion, and perhaps Armand didn't love him the entire time, but Armand was devoted the entire time. When it was good, it was lovely and comforting, and when it was bad, it was still real. It was still what he had, it was still his life.
'Whole, after such noise?'
Against his better judgement, lingering interest wins out. Daniel had not provided data on whether Louis and Lestat were okay, in fact, had not even conveyed if he himself was properly alright, either, and in retrospect that absence presents itself as something to be picked at. Either he isn't, and did not want to say so, or he does not think Armand is entitled to the information.
Good news for Daniel: this choice of words leads Louis to the conclusion they'd already discussed, that some ripples of conversation had spread in the short stretch of time since their rooftop brawl turned street chase.
No need to wonder if perhaps Daniel was speaking so specifically about their exploits to Armand. At least, so far.
Louis says nothing, lets a minute pass, then another. Maintains the link between them; it is open to Armand, as it has always been. Trace impressions, easy to glean: Louis' head tipping back against the plush cushion of the high-backed lounge he'd been slouched upon, the weight of the tablet in his lap. Aches in his body dwindled down to practically nothing, diminishing further as seconds pass. (A sip only stretches so far, but the improvement is marked.) And indecision, the sense of words chosen carefully.
You heard, is not a question.
A testing quality to the way Louis leans into him now. Not unlike their last attempt at conversation, the suggestion of the familiar. (A defect in Louis, perhaps, the ability to make slivers of space for those who have harmed him.) Testing. Assessing.
What is this, Armand?
Armand, who was his companion for nearly eighty years. Armand, who lied to him in all the ways that mattered most. Armand, who turned Daniel. Who thrust Louis back into the agonizing memory of sunlight.
Armand, who Louis hates and misses and cannot forgive. Touching his mind and asking him this and why? After everything?
Unlike the blank bulkhead wall of their last one on one conversation, Armand feels fine. Gotten the histrionics out of his system, perhaps. An impression, easy as anything, of him sitting across from Louis, one leg over the opposite knee, hands folded, occasionally twining his fingers together as he's prone to do; a little worried, but calm.
It would be a familiar presence. But can Louis trust even such a mundane thing?
'I still live in this world.'
If Louis expects him to just ignore utterly insane, violent episodes in public just because they aren't on comfortable speaking terms, he's not thinking straight. He's looking in on him, because something happened. He's looking in on him, because he's curious. Because he's just that little bit concerned.
He spent so long looking after Louis. It was dishonest, but he was safe.
Was their last conversation the more honest one? Was the trap the more honest thing? This is familiar, how they might have communicated when last their travels separated them. Armand slipping into his mind as he always had. Perhaps as he always will.
Louis offers, at last, I'm whole.
Not untrue, this answer. Bruises fading, signs of his brief captivity ebbing away with only a sip of Lestat's blood. Does not telegraph this to Armand. A thing sunk deep within the recesses of Louis' mind, other impressions floating on the surface: the vanishing weight of the tablet, Louis' head tipping along the cushion to focus on this apparition, on the link between them and what flows freely back and forth.
Worth examination someday, the part of him that still wishes to lean into the serenity Armand projects in this moment. The other part of him that wishes to tear at it, to argue, now that he has a real, tangible sense of Armand's capability for it.
If he says yes, that's all, and vanishes, that's tantamount to admitting he didn't intentionally allow Louis to perceive is nosing around. Armand wasn't trying very hard to go unnoticed, but it still feels like a concession to simply shrink away. Under other circumstances he might congratulate Louis from picking up on such small signs of observation.
It can still be tranquil between them. Peaceful. They've had many years of practice.
For a while, Armand doesn't say anything else.
Eventually,
'You intend to continue on as you are? Risking these encounters?'
Could Louis shut him out? He's never tried, not since Paris. And even then, he had never truly kept out Armand. He had learned enough to keep out everyone else, deemed sufficient without besting his instructor.
It had been enough, then.
They are quiet, linked together. Louis' hand trails the arm of his chair, a motion not unlike how he might have touched Armand, once. When they sat close together, when they were given to small touches, small intimacies.
Eventually, this question. The motion of his fingers continues.
Yes.
And then:
You know there's no stopping it now, Armand.
The book has been published. Louis has issued his invitation. All is in motion, offense has been given. Maybe a few hundred years and the furor will ease.
Yes, that. A phantom impression, Armand picking at the knee of his slacks, a small gesture that's parts self-soothing and parts irritation finding an outlet. Things that one upon a time must have seemed coquettish and or shy, perhaps a sign of nervous energy. Now, telltale that Armand is withholding words or actions he understands would not be considered acceptable. And it turns out that he sits on bad reactions
very often.
'You escalated it. And you aren't alone, as you have made so clear to me before.'
Aha. Circling a point, might as well draw closer. Armand isn't sure if it's his actual point, if he has one at all, but he finds himself suddenly curious if Louis even has an excuse for it.
''Leave him to me', was your request, I seem to recall. Is he also whole after such noise, Louis?'
A sharpening of attention, shifting past familiar equilibrium. New intuition that sees these well-known habits and knows them for what they are, instead of what they have been presented to be. Perversely, Louis likes them better now.
Listening to him, the words prickle in Louis' consciousness. So near to the surface always now, this combativeness. Perhaps more urgent, given how long it had been quelled and curated down to near-nothing. Held in check now, as Louis waits for this line of questioning to come to fruition. To see all facets of it, to understand what Armand is chasing.
'Has something happened that would inspire confidence to do so?'
It sure seems like Louis has permitted a number of security incidents while Daniel is in his 'custody', more or less. That Armand was one of those incidents is irrelevant; he still managed it with ease, and Louis was harmed—
And Daniel was harmed, which Armand had not actually anticipated, but that's not Louis' business.
So, correct: the answer is no. But he doesn't have to just say no. He can ask. They can get there together.
A trap. A bar raised so high nothing would clear it, Louis knows. Ignores the question altogether. No, Armand will say. Louis doesn't entertain the repartee.
Points out instead: They're looking at me. They aren't looking at him.
Incentive (unnecessary incentive, but incentive all the same) for Louis to dole out a reminder, perhaps.
I think it's better it stays that way, given what's changed.
Given what punishments Daniel would be subject to right alongside Louis. Unlikely that they'd be permitted to rules lawyer the technicalities of a human writing a book and becoming a vampire later. Louis has found the application of law to be uneven, at best.
'Video phone clips on YouTube of a blond man flying away with part of a van and a woman I recognized as an incendiary voice of the Conversion.'
Very easy to believe that Armand learned of the attack organically, between his tendency to be grafted to his tablet and his tendency to observe Louis from not-that-afar. He decides he will not tell Louis that he and Daniel have spoken about this, as the optics of lurking around after already having had a talk about it are a little more pathetic than he'd like to be seen, but doesn't rule out referencing their other encounters.
'I suppose none of them noticed the third vampire with you, or that he looks quite a lot like the mortal who write the very tome they've worked themselves into a furor about.'
What use is the Talamasca if not to delete vampire fights off YouTube?
But still, a moment of accounting. What Daniel had done, whether it was exciting enough for YouTube. Hard to say, when Lestat was flying and trucks were crashing. It's a high bar for novelty amidst the flashier feats on display that evening.
They're looking at me, they ain't looking at him.
It's not that Louis was ever lacking in motivation, but this is real incentive to stir the pot. Something previously undecided locking into place, for better or for worse.
My story. My transgressions.
Plural. Maybe more, if anyone is counting the vampires Louis has killed since. (Where do the Great Laws stand on self-defense?)
The ones that were there that night are dead, is a passing aside. Confirmation, of whatever Armand gleaned from the noise as Louis marks out their now-dead attacker's allegiances.
They're behind-the-scenes movie clips, Louis, get with the program.
Ain't. Hit a nerve. It riles something up in Armand. The impression of his presence is harder to make out now, though his presence mentally is sharper. Less of a casual looksee, now, he is focusing on the encounter with too much intensity.
Louis wants ownership of all of this, but he wants Lestat, and he wants Daniel, too? He thinks he has a right to be agitated, when he's the one who brought all this upon them? He could have just not done the interview.
(The internal flinch that thought inspires isn't something Armand is willing to confront.)
'Because of you defending yourself, or because of your maker defending you?'
Unfortunate, that Lestat had so effectively twisted that particular knife recently. An apology had come after, yes, but the wound remains. It's easily exacerbated by the question put to him.
Something to sit up with, later.
Presently, Louis gives himself the luxury of letting those emotions—not ebb, but calm. Crushes them down into nothingness.
No, stop. (What does Daniel like to say. Get a fucking grip.) (Ugh, he's so annoying.)
Since they are playing question after question, fine.
'Do I not have the right to defend my fledgling, as Lestat does his?'
Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat...
Armand wonders if he can hear the echo of it, like the sound of some electronic thing being turned on in the next room. His name, on a loop. But perhaps Lestat is egotistical enough to assume someone is always thinking about him.
The question draws Louis closer. Almost tender. The sense memory of fingers winding tighter into fabric, knuckles pressed to sternum.
Thinks of the things that could be said. Cruel, the kind that'd take the knife out of Louis' side and turn it back around. Louis is capable of it. They have nearly eighty years together, all weak points mapped. They could hurt each other. Armand could hurt him. Again.
Not a deterrent. A calculation.
In the end, Louis lets the impulse towards a sideswipe pass. Says something else.
Not the way you'd do it, no.
How had Armand defended Louis? What had they done to each other in the process of his protections?
Truly incredible, that Armand still doesn't feel any guilt at all for keeping Louis sedated and wrapped in cotton. But he was happy, and safe. Louis was always crushed by self-loathing and remorse the nights after his temper got the better of him, miserable in his suicidal, Catholic guilt, and so Armand took his anger away. Took his ability to harm himself away. Looked at the declaration that Armand would never make up for his part in the trial, accepted it, and decided to protect him and stay with him anyway.
Childish to look back at it and be bitter. On the inside, Louis was safe. Because Armand protected him, and his happiness.
The anger catches him, white-hot and somehow unexpected.
Louis keeps telling himself he can move past what's been done to him. Reasons his way to the idea that it couldn't have been always, and often, that he doesn't truly have seventy-seven years of missing pieces. But maybe he does. Maybe he doesn't know, because Daniel wasn't there to unravel all of them and the seams are invisible. Louis will never know what's gone.
Waits out the white-hot flashfire of his anger. Makes himself focus on the quality of their connection, the intensity of Armand's focus. A sensation not unlike fingers running along the contours of hand and palm, an idle little game Louis had played sometimes, in public and in private while they were in the midst of some task. A little tic of intimacy, following in the wake of this infuriating declaration.
The rage is wrestled into something manageable. Louis is trying. (Not unaware that the power here still lies with Armand, who will vanish into the air when he pleases. Louis can't hold him.)
Did I ask you then, in San Francisco? Did I ask you to take it away?
Does the question matter? Would Armand ever tell him something true, even when they are so far past the point where he is Armand's to keep?
Somewhere (not too far away), a slow breath, in and out.
Fine.
'I told you so even after you began to remember.'
Self-evident. It would explain Armand's brittle confusion, his uneven strangeness in the face of Louis' anger at the reveal of altered memories. If Armand believed that he remembered all of it, then he believed Louis remembered asking to be spared further torment, and it was incongruous with the way he was blaming Armand as though he'd done something sinister.
'You described the pain of leaving the boy there as worse than your physical suffering. You were torturing yourself over it, even though it was the best path forward either of us could determine. Killing him was not an option, nor was transforming him.'
To call Daniel the boy again is a little strange, but Armand brushes past it. (The, that's the problem, isn't it, the boy, because he cannot bring himself to say our boy anymore, because Daniel isn't, he isn't Louis', not even partially, he belongs to Armand. His.) Instead he lays this out— and Louis should be able to follow the logic with ease, no matter how emotionally stunted he likes to pretend to be. Louis would not permit young Daniel's death, and Armand did not try and force it. Giving him the Dark Gift was also untenable, for a twenty-year-old whose still-forming mind was warped and damaged already from excessive drug use. It would have been hell for him. Even Louis, sentimental and dismayed, would not see someone else too young (even if he was barely too young this time) turned.
This is what Armand is asking him to believe, anyway.
'But you could not move past it. You would not speak to me about the things you said to me, or about Lestat, or about Claudia calling to you, or anything. It devoured your mind. And you could not bear it.'
Weeks ago, Daniel kneeling in front of him, saying "You didn't." Lestat, murmuring, "You would not wish to forget the boy you saved. You would not want to forget me, even this little bit of me." All that they'd said, things that had made sense in the moment. Louis had let their certainty act as a tether, a reassurance.
But neither of them had been in the room with him then. Lestat, miles away in New Orleans. Daniel, abandoned on a dirty cot with Louis' words as a buoy to pull him out of the dark place they'd left him.
And then it had been the two of them. Louis has nothing for it, no structure apart from the one Armand gave him.
I don't remember any of that.
But the trap is in the aspects of it that ring true. The parts that Louis turns over in his hands, knowing them to be reasonable. To be likely.
I don't remember, Armand.
Frustrated. Louis winding closer, as if proximity will provide clarity. As if he could see into Armand the way Armand sees into him. (Never, he has never been permitted and Louis knows that now, knows it was always a question of what Armand permitted him.) The suggestion of contact, attention narrowed down to what Armand lays out for Louis to examine. Weigh. Test against Daniel's certainty, Lestat's reassurance.
Louis winds closer. Easy for him to do so, because of his familiarity with Armand— he'll probably always be able to find him among the Many, when Armand isn't consciously obscuring himself. He isn't, now, and so there he is, held in his usual mental fortress but available, and faint glimpses can be caught. Frustration. And - even fainter - hurt?
'How convenient.'
(Is it.)
'Perhaps because no third party carried part of the weight. He was—'
Uncharacteristic faltering, trying to describe his now-fledgling. An insignificant mortal, some worthless drug addicted hustler, and yet Armand struggled to get his mind into compliance. Louis remembers that, surely, remembers stuffing more drugs into the boy, and hypnotizing him. Long hours. Over and over. Of course he was the thing that managed to disrupt the calm seal on Louis' mind. Aggravating, frustrating, fascinating.
'Challenging.' There. That word. 'Unlike your own relieved slide into forgetfulness. It wasn't easy for me. I didn't want to go on thinking of that argument alone, my temper shattered, your self-brutality, forever unresolved. I wasn't even sure it would take on you, a vampire, my.'
An awful pause.
'My companion. ... I left you with some memory of him. A mirror to his, as best I could. I could have taken it all away, Louis. I could have taken it all away and gone back to that house and gotten rid of a loose end of a boy, but I knew you cared for him. Even if you didn't remember, I would remember. I would know I did that to you. So I left what I did and I left him alone.'
Louis, leaning into him, reaching after the flicker of emotion in Armand. After that distant flicker of hurt in him. Is it so impossible to understand?
Is it enough for Louis, to feel this in him? To hear that faltering over the choice of word challenging and breathe a laugh into the empty room. (To feel some sickening swoop of uncertainty in his chest; had he been relieved? Had he wanted the brutality of their fight gone badly enough to have sought this from Armand?) As close as he's drawn into the familiar landscape of Armand's mind, the bristling uncertainly as he wavers.
Do you regret it?
A question asked more quietly than it might have been otherwise.
Does Armand regret anything he's done? Any of the ways he's harmed Louis? Louis remembers now, burning on that bed in filtered sunlight, gritting out Sorry as Armand turned from him.
Frustrating to have all the work he does brushed off. Hurtful to have the worst assumed of him, every time. Either he is stupid, or he is sinister. He must beg to be loved. He must beg for everything. He must endure resentment and anger and violence and exploitation. And when he doesn't, when he stands up for himself and says No more and vanishes anger, vanishes violence, makes things serene, there's no appreciation at all.
Regret? Does he regret it? Taking the best road, the best option, silencing Louis, preserving an interesting mortal, sticking a knife into Lestat?
Sometimes—
When Armand draws close, are the whites of his eyes like the flash of a predator before the fangs follow, like a wolf, like a tiger. Or is it the orange, bloody and unnatural, a monster's, a reminder that he's not human in a way beyond how Louis isn't human. A fossil painted to look like a person. Beneath rich skin and soft hair there is a coiled thing that predates all the artwork in the museum Louis was attacked at. A terrible extinct insect trapped in amber.
Blank. True blankness, in a way only someone who doesn't remember what food tastes like can posses.
There you are whispers between them. Recognition of a thing Louis can remember now, caught glimpses of in that room through a haze of pain as Armand looked down at Louis's scorched body.
Not fear. Maybe there should be fear. But no, it is something closer to How good to see you, at last. Louis' fingers, dipped into the ephemeral flicker of Armand's hurt, reach for this too. Knowing. Armand, looking out from behind the facade.
Seventy-seven years together. Seventy-seven years. How much had Armand kept from him, hidden beneath the surface?
Armand is quiet. Louis is quiet. Waiting. Watchful. Connection maintained in comfortable silence.
Is not surprised by the answer, when it comes. Unlike what preceded it, Louis can hold this in both hands. Trust it without uncertainty. (It strengthens what comes before, this unflattering answer, blunt and unsparing.)
Louis lets it settle between them. Tends to his anger, simmering deep in his body. Anger at what's been done to him. Years lost. Memories lost. The trial. Madeleine.
And Claudia. Claudia.
It takes some time for Louis to speak again. To find his way past the first five things, too hot with hurt and anger for a conversation held in this manner. Louis has to do better than he did before. Cannot indulge himself as he might if they were standing in this room together.
I'm sorry you carried that alone for so long.
Hates himself a little (so much more than a little) for offering this up. An apology for this transgression, this hurt, these things Armand has done that have left deep marks in Louis that will never fade. An apology that may well be meaningless. Armand had dismissed Louis' broken attempts as such in San Francisco. Louis remembers, says it anyway in place of all else swirling formlessly deep in his mind.
It doesn't sound like a dismissal. It sounds like an observation; a truthful offering of his opinion, without any irritating emotion attached to it. Armand is frustrated, and hurt, and Armand can look at those emotions from outside of them like they're diagrams of feelings.
'I don't think you've ever been able to feel empathy for me. And you've always tried to use me to forget something, since the start. That you've decided to be angry about the time it finally worked is ... some kind of comedy, I suppose.'
Are you companions? Yes. No.
Or is it more like rebound of my life, with you two.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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And despite that—
Despite it, is there not a part of him that misses Louis? There exists a worn-in shape in his reality that Louis fits perfectly. A familiar companion, and perhaps Armand didn't love him the entire time, but Armand was devoted the entire time. When it was good, it was lovely and comforting, and when it was bad, it was still real. It was still what he had, it was still his life.
'Whole, after such noise?'
Against his better judgement, lingering interest wins out. Daniel had not provided data on whether Louis and Lestat were okay, in fact, had not even conveyed if he himself was properly alright, either, and in retrospect that absence presents itself as something to be picked at. Either he isn't, and did not want to say so, or he does not think Armand is entitled to the information.
But he wants to know.
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Good news for Daniel: this choice of words leads Louis to the conclusion they'd already discussed, that some ripples of conversation had spread in the short stretch of time since their rooftop brawl turned street chase.
No need to wonder if perhaps Daniel was speaking so specifically about their exploits to Armand. At least, so far.
Louis says nothing, lets a minute pass, then another. Maintains the link between them; it is open to Armand, as it has always been. Trace impressions, easy to glean: Louis' head tipping back against the plush cushion of the high-backed lounge he'd been slouched upon, the weight of the tablet in his lap. Aches in his body dwindled down to practically nothing, diminishing further as seconds pass. (A sip only stretches so far, but the improvement is marked.) And indecision, the sense of words chosen carefully.
You heard, is not a question.
A testing quality to the way Louis leans into him now. Not unlike their last attempt at conversation, the suggestion of the familiar. (A defect in Louis, perhaps, the ability to make slivers of space for those who have harmed him.) Testing. Assessing.
What is this, Armand?
Armand, who was his companion for nearly eighty years. Armand, who lied to him in all the ways that mattered most. Armand, who turned Daniel. Who thrust Louis back into the agonizing memory of sunlight.
Armand, who Louis hates and misses and cannot forgive. Touching his mind and asking him this and why? After everything?
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It would be a familiar presence. But can Louis trust even such a mundane thing?
'I still live in this world.'
If Louis expects him to just ignore utterly insane, violent episodes in public just because they aren't on comfortable speaking terms, he's not thinking straight. He's looking in on him, because something happened. He's looking in on him, because he's curious. Because he's just that little bit concerned.
He spent so long looking after Louis. It was dishonest, but he was safe.
'So. Are you?'
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Louis offers, at last, I'm whole.
Not untrue, this answer. Bruises fading, signs of his brief captivity ebbing away with only a sip of Lestat's blood. Does not telegraph this to Armand. A thing sunk deep within the recesses of Louis' mind, other impressions floating on the surface: the vanishing weight of the tablet, Louis' head tipping along the cushion to focus on this apparition, on the link between them and what flows freely back and forth.
Worth examination someday, the part of him that still wishes to lean into the serenity Armand projects in this moment. The other part of him that wishes to tear at it, to argue, now that he has a real, tangible sense of Armand's capability for it.
Is that all you wished to know?
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It can still be tranquil between them. Peaceful. They've had many years of practice.
For a while, Armand doesn't say anything else.
Eventually,
'You intend to continue on as you are? Risking these encounters?'
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Could Louis shut him out? He's never tried, not since Paris. And even then, he had never truly kept out Armand. He had learned enough to keep out everyone else, deemed sufficient without besting his instructor.
It had been enough, then.
They are quiet, linked together. Louis' hand trails the arm of his chair, a motion not unlike how he might have touched Armand, once. When they sat close together, when they were given to small touches, small intimacies.
Eventually, this question. The motion of his fingers continues.
Yes.
And then:
You know there's no stopping it now, Armand.
The book has been published. Louis has issued his invitation. All is in motion, offense has been given. Maybe a few hundred years and the furor will ease.
no subject
very often.
'You escalated it. And you aren't alone, as you have made so clear to me before.'
Aha. Circling a point, might as well draw closer. Armand isn't sure if it's his actual point, if he has one at all, but he finds himself suddenly curious if Louis even has an excuse for it.
''Leave him to me', was your request, I seem to recall. Is he also whole after such noise, Louis?'
Dear.
no subject
Listening to him, the words prickle in Louis' consciousness. So near to the surface always now, this combativeness. Perhaps more urgent, given how long it had been quelled and curated down to near-nothing. Held in check now, as Louis waits for this line of questioning to come to fruition. To see all facets of it, to understand what Armand is chasing.
Are you considering entertaining my requests now?
No. Louis knows the answer is no.
no subject
It sure seems like Louis has permitted a number of security incidents while Daniel is in his 'custody', more or less. That Armand was one of those incidents is irrelevant; he still managed it with ease, and Louis was harmed—
And Daniel was harmed, which Armand had not actually anticipated, but that's not Louis' business.
So, correct: the answer is no. But he doesn't have to just say no. He can ask. They can get there together.
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Points out instead: They're looking at me. They aren't looking at him.
Incentive (unnecessary incentive, but incentive all the same) for Louis to dole out a reminder, perhaps.
I think it's better it stays that way, given what's changed.
Given what punishments Daniel would be subject to right alongside Louis. Unlikely that they'd be permitted to rules lawyer the technicalities of a human writing a book and becoming a vampire later. Louis has found the application of law to be uneven, at best.
no subject
Very easy to believe that Armand learned of the attack organically, between his tendency to be grafted to his tablet and his tendency to observe Louis from not-that-afar. He decides he will not tell Louis that he and Daniel have spoken about this, as the optics of lurking around after already having had a talk about it are a little more pathetic than he'd like to be seen, but doesn't rule out referencing their other encounters.
'I suppose none of them noticed the third vampire with you, or that he looks quite a lot like the mortal who write the very tome they've worked themselves into a furor about.'
no subject
But still, a moment of accounting. What Daniel had done, whether it was exciting enough for YouTube. Hard to say, when Lestat was flying and trucks were crashing. It's a high bar for novelty amidst the flashier feats on display that evening.
They're looking at me, they ain't looking at him.
It's not that Louis was ever lacking in motivation, but this is real incentive to stir the pot. Something previously undecided locking into place, for better or for worse.
My story. My transgressions.
Plural. Maybe more, if anyone is counting the vampires Louis has killed since. (Where do the Great Laws stand on self-defense?)
The ones that were there that night are dead, is a passing aside. Confirmation, of whatever Armand gleaned from the noise as Louis marks out their now-dead attacker's allegiances.
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Ain't. Hit a nerve. It riles something up in Armand. The impression of his presence is harder to make out now, though his presence mentally is sharper. Less of a casual looksee, now, he is focusing on the encounter with too much intensity.
Louis wants ownership of all of this, but he wants Lestat, and he wants Daniel, too? He thinks he has a right to be agitated, when he's the one who brought all this upon them? He could have just not done the interview.
(The internal flinch that thought inspires isn't something Armand is willing to confront.)
'Because of you defending yourself, or because of your maker defending you?'
no subject
Something to sit up with, later.
Presently, Louis gives himself the luxury of letting those emotions—not ebb, but calm. Crushes them down into nothingness.
Asks, calmly, Can't say his name?
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No, stop. (What does Daniel like to say. Get a fucking grip.) (Ugh, he's so annoying.)
Since they are playing question after question, fine.
'Do I not have the right to defend my fledgling, as Lestat does his?'
Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat...
Armand wonders if he can hear the echo of it, like the sound of some electronic thing being turned on in the next room. His name, on a loop. But perhaps Lestat is egotistical enough to assume someone is always thinking about him.
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Thinks of the things that could be said. Cruel, the kind that'd take the knife out of Louis' side and turn it back around. Louis is capable of it. They have nearly eighty years together, all weak points mapped. They could hurt each other. Armand could hurt him. Again.
Not a deterrent. A calculation.
In the end, Louis lets the impulse towards a sideswipe pass. Says something else.
Not the way you'd do it, no.
How had Armand defended Louis? What had they done to each other in the process of his protections?
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Truly incredible, that Armand still doesn't feel any guilt at all for keeping Louis sedated and wrapped in cotton. But he was happy, and safe. Louis was always crushed by self-loathing and remorse the nights after his temper got the better of him, miserable in his suicidal, Catholic guilt, and so Armand took his anger away. Took his ability to harm himself away. Looked at the declaration that Armand would never make up for his part in the trial, accepted it, and decided to protect him and stay with him anyway.
Childish to look back at it and be bitter. On the inside, Louis was safe. Because Armand protected him, and his happiness.
And Louis isn't even his fledgling.
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Louis keeps telling himself he can move past what's been done to him. Reasons his way to the idea that it couldn't have been always, and often, that he doesn't truly have seventy-seven years of missing pieces. But maybe he does. Maybe he doesn't know, because Daniel wasn't there to unravel all of them and the seams are invisible. Louis will never know what's gone.
Waits out the white-hot flashfire of his anger. Makes himself focus on the quality of their connection, the intensity of Armand's focus. A sensation not unlike fingers running along the contours of hand and palm, an idle little game Louis had played sometimes, in public and in private while they were in the midst of some task. A little tic of intimacy, following in the wake of this infuriating declaration.
The rage is wrestled into something manageable. Louis is trying. (Not unaware that the power here still lies with Armand, who will vanish into the air when he pleases. Louis can't hold him.)
Did I ask you then, in San Francisco? Did I ask you to take it away?
Does the question matter? Would Armand ever tell him something true, even when they are so far past the point where he is Armand's to keep?
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Fine.
'I told you so even after you began to remember.'
Self-evident. It would explain Armand's brittle confusion, his uneven strangeness in the face of Louis' anger at the reveal of altered memories. If Armand believed that he remembered all of it, then he believed Louis remembered asking to be spared further torment, and it was incongruous with the way he was blaming Armand as though he'd done something sinister.
'You described the pain of leaving the boy there as worse than your physical suffering. You were torturing yourself over it, even though it was the best path forward either of us could determine. Killing him was not an option, nor was transforming him.'
To call Daniel the boy again is a little strange, but Armand brushes past it. (The, that's the problem, isn't it, the boy, because he cannot bring himself to say our boy anymore, because Daniel isn't, he isn't Louis', not even partially, he belongs to Armand. His.) Instead he lays this out— and Louis should be able to follow the logic with ease, no matter how emotionally stunted he likes to pretend to be. Louis would not permit young Daniel's death, and Armand did not try and force it. Giving him the Dark Gift was also untenable, for a twenty-year-old whose still-forming mind was warped and damaged already from excessive drug use. It would have been hell for him. Even Louis, sentimental and dismayed, would not see someone else too young (even if he was barely too young this time) turned.
This is what Armand is asking him to believe, anyway.
'But you could not move past it. You would not speak to me about the things you said to me, or about Lestat, or about Claudia calling to you, or anything. It devoured your mind. And you could not bear it.'
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But neither of them had been in the room with him then. Lestat, miles away in New Orleans. Daniel, abandoned on a dirty cot with Louis' words as a buoy to pull him out of the dark place they'd left him.
And then it had been the two of them. Louis has nothing for it, no structure apart from the one Armand gave him.
I don't remember any of that.
But the trap is in the aspects of it that ring true. The parts that Louis turns over in his hands, knowing them to be reasonable. To be likely.
I don't remember, Armand.
Frustrated. Louis winding closer, as if proximity will provide clarity. As if he could see into Armand the way Armand sees into him. (Never, he has never been permitted and Louis knows that now, knows it was always a question of what Armand permitted him.) The suggestion of contact, attention narrowed down to what Armand lays out for Louis to examine. Weigh. Test against Daniel's certainty, Lestat's reassurance.
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'How convenient.'
(Is it.)
'Perhaps because no third party carried part of the weight. He was—'
Uncharacteristic faltering, trying to describe his now-fledgling. An insignificant mortal, some worthless drug addicted hustler, and yet Armand struggled to get his mind into compliance. Louis remembers that, surely, remembers stuffing more drugs into the boy, and hypnotizing him. Long hours. Over and over. Of course he was the thing that managed to disrupt the calm seal on Louis' mind. Aggravating, frustrating, fascinating.
'Challenging.' There. That word. 'Unlike your own relieved slide into forgetfulness. It wasn't easy for me. I didn't want to go on thinking of that argument alone, my temper shattered, your self-brutality, forever unresolved. I wasn't even sure it would take on you, a vampire, my.'
An awful pause.
'My companion. ... I left you with some memory of him. A mirror to his, as best I could. I could have taken it all away, Louis. I could have taken it all away and gone back to that house and gotten rid of a loose end of a boy, but I knew you cared for him. Even if you didn't remember, I would remember. I would know I did that to you. So I left what I did and I left him alone.'
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Louis, leaning into him, reaching after the flicker of emotion in Armand. After that distant flicker of hurt in him. Is it so impossible to understand?
Is it enough for Louis, to feel this in him? To hear that faltering over the choice of word challenging and breathe a laugh into the empty room. (To feel some sickening swoop of uncertainty in his chest; had he been relieved? Had he wanted the brutality of their fight gone badly enough to have sought this from Armand?) As close as he's drawn into the familiar landscape of Armand's mind, the bristling uncertainly as he wavers.
Do you regret it?
A question asked more quietly than it might have been otherwise.
Does Armand regret anything he's done? Any of the ways he's harmed Louis? Louis remembers now, burning on that bed in filtered sunlight, gritting out Sorry as Armand turned from him.
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Regret? Does he regret it? Taking the best road, the best option, silencing Louis, preserving an interesting mortal, sticking a knife into Lestat?
Sometimes—
When Armand draws close, are the whites of his eyes like the flash of a predator before the fangs follow, like a wolf, like a tiger. Or is it the orange, bloody and unnatural, a monster's, a reminder that he's not human in a way beyond how Louis isn't human. A fossil painted to look like a person. Beneath rich skin and soft hair there is a coiled thing that predates all the artwork in the museum Louis was attacked at. A terrible extinct insect trapped in amber.
Blank. True blankness, in a way only someone who doesn't remember what food tastes like can posses.
Does he regret it.
Armand is quiet for some time.
'Not really.'
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Not fear. Maybe there should be fear. But no, it is something closer to How good to see you, at last. Louis' fingers, dipped into the ephemeral flicker of Armand's hurt, reach for this too. Knowing. Armand, looking out from behind the facade.
Seventy-seven years together. Seventy-seven years. How much had Armand kept from him, hidden beneath the surface?
Armand is quiet. Louis is quiet. Waiting. Watchful. Connection maintained in comfortable silence.
Is not surprised by the answer, when it comes. Unlike what preceded it, Louis can hold this in both hands. Trust it without uncertainty. (It strengthens what comes before, this unflattering answer, blunt and unsparing.)
Louis lets it settle between them. Tends to his anger, simmering deep in his body. Anger at what's been done to him. Years lost. Memories lost. The trial. Madeleine.
And Claudia. Claudia.
It takes some time for Louis to speak again. To find his way past the first five things, too hot with hurt and anger for a conversation held in this manner. Louis has to do better than he did before. Cannot indulge himself as he might if they were standing in this room together.
I'm sorry you carried that alone for so long.
Hates himself a little (so much more than a little) for offering this up. An apology for this transgression, this hurt, these things Armand has done that have left deep marks in Louis that will never fade. An apology that may well be meaningless. Armand had dismissed Louis' broken attempts as such in San Francisco. Louis remembers, says it anyway in place of all else swirling formlessly deep in his mind.
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It doesn't sound like a dismissal. It sounds like an observation; a truthful offering of his opinion, without any irritating emotion attached to it. Armand is frustrated, and hurt, and Armand can look at those emotions from outside of them like they're diagrams of feelings.
'I don't think you've ever been able to feel empathy for me. And you've always tried to use me to forget something, since the start. That you've decided to be angry about the time it finally worked is ... some kind of comedy, I suppose.'
Are you companions? Yes. No.
Or is it more like rebound of my life, with you two.
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