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@symphonyofmalice
At-a-Glance
I have pages about the Mun, Muse, my tags, and rp rules. This is the tl;dr version. -This is a roleplay blog for Nicolas de Lenfent of the Vampire Chronicles! -I am an adult and will rp with other adults. This blog includes (tagged) NSFW and is not safe for minors -Common themes (hard to avoid even with tagging): Blood, injury, death, alcohol and substance use, abusive family, internalized homophobia, religion, trauma and mental illness.
Mina could've sworn she turned off her alarm the morning that her class was cancelled but it still rang loud and shrill that pulled her out of a dead sleep.
Mina scrambled quickly, on instinct to turn her phone off and looked worriedly at her boyfriend next to her. She quickly checked her messages to make sure nothing had exploded while she was asleep and then lay back down in his arms, dressed in nothing but one of his shirts. Her legs tangled with his and she brushed her fingers down his side.
She'd met Nicki her first day in college and they just sort of stuck together after that first meeting. They'd been dating for awhile, Mina liked him, wanted to take him home to meet her parents. Was he the one? She couldn't say that, she couldn't say she was looking for 'the one'. But they were being young, they were having fun. She genuinely liked him. He was funny, and sarcastic, and loving, but sad. She knew enough about his home life that she was determined to keep him away from it.
"Sorry," she mumbled and slipped her hand around him, "Thought I turned it off."
@symphonyofmalice
There was something so nice about feeling his hands working through her fingers, she could do this forever. She'd need another hair washing before their holiday was done, Maybe she'd draw up a bath and have Nicki really wash it for her.
"I know your'e going to be insistant, that's why I"m not fighting with you on it," she told him, "And I will wear a buttondown too, so you don't get lonely."
She slipped out of the bathroom and went to grab her phone, messaging her parents to look nice as well, so he didn't feel out of place.
"Well, if you're going to join me, we're coordinating colors," Nicolas insisted. If presentation mattered, it mattered all the way. He wasn't going to start cutting corners now.
His own shirts and pants were all tailored, because of course they were. His father's business was in clothing, he couldn't go around in something unfitting.
"I have a black one and a dark blue one," she told him, she'd play along, why not? "But if you have another color, I have a ridiculous amount of blouses I can pull into."
Hers were not specially tailored. But they were washed and pressed. Her mother would NEVER allow her to walk outside in a wrinkled dress shirt.
"Blue is good." A nice, solid color that was almost always available in nearly every style.
"You know, I could make adjustments to you clothes, if you'd like." He didn't know if she hadn't asked because it hadn't crossed her mind, or because she didn't want it. "Not like, right now, we don't have the time. But if something starts wearing out, or is a little too big or too small, or there's something at a store you really like but it's uncomfortable, I can probably fix it." He'd been sewing on his own buttons and mending tears since he was six, and had progressed to more complex alterations as he grew up. He didn't bother making all his clothes from blank fabric, that would be a hell of a hassle, but he could do quite a bit of tweaking.
"Is that vanity?" Nicolas mused. He'd never shared his blood with another either, and he considered himself the lowest of the low. But as Sibella went on, he understood her a little better. She wasn't withholding her blood with the understanding that it was a curse, she thought it was something to be 'deserved'. He felt his opinion of her sour. He had never had much respect for rulers, elders and authority figures, whether as a mortal or a vampire.
"Vampirism is damnation, princess. All your blood could do to anyone is corrupt and condemn, same as any other monster."
As for the finishing school for girls, well, the world was full of surprises. "So even among monsters there is elitism, money and privilege. You'll forgive me for not bowing and scraping. I lived in the age of the guillotine."
"Power does the very same to humans -- my father is an example of both, a warning."
There was never any denying it. Sibella always danced across the line of the spoiled daughter of a very powerful man, someone that had only ever known the ease of life -- even one condemned in darkness -- and the want to experience the world as everyone else, to know it's anger and loneliness. There were times she could come off as extremely snobbish and other times when she could come off as down to earth. Sibella lived in a concoction of both.
"I never asked you to bow. Nor did I ever ask you to call me "Princess". Sibella is fine."
"All us vampires are warnings," Nicolas said. The cult of the Children of Darkness was functionally dead. But he still believed, as deeply as he ever had, that their kind was an embodiment of evil and a warning to mortals. "And what does that mean for you, daughter of power twice over, vampire heiress of wealth and blood?"
𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 (i know we have enough threads, but do we really?)
It'd been one of their holidays to her family when Nicki disappeared. He'd been going to see some friends that were on the other side of London. Mina had gone to bed without him...he would make his way home. He had a key to the house, he'd slip in when he was good and drunk and not remember it in the morning.
But he wasn't home....and he wasn't answering his phone...and their friends said he'd left early acting strange.
They called Scotland Yard, they filed a police report and Mina stopped sleeping. She barely ate. She went out looking for him with her mother or one of her uncles but there were no leads. She was certain he was dead....that any moment any call would be they found him in some trash bin or in the river. Maybe his family had been too much, maybe he'd done something he coudln't take back.
And then a few days after his disappearance, late in the evening, he came back. He was stinking, and ragged and he looked like he hadn't bathed in awhile. And the next thing Mina knew she was hugging him and crying and screaming for her parents.
"Nicki, Oh god," she sobbed.
"Nicki," she said almost pleadingly, "Succeed at what? We're barely adults! Everything's supposed to be just started for us to explore. The future is supposed to be open for us to think about and choose, not....trudge through like it's a certain fate we don't want but have to endure."
He was stubborn, sometimes frustratingly so, but Mina was just as stubborn, "You didn't ask to get made, Nicki! You didn't ask for them to make all these grand plans for you on your behalf. Did they even ever ask you what you wanted to do with your life? Was this ever something YOU wanted? Because last I checked, God gave you free will and he put you in a time period where you could decide what you wanted to do with it."
"Nicki, it's not selfish. It's YOUR life! You could die tomorrow or 50 years from now and will you feel accomplished if you spent decades doing something you hated? No. You'll always wonder 'what if'? and grow resentful. And if things work out and we get married, I don't want you to have regrets when we have the time now to avoid them. I don't want to be the reason you go into law school, because you think I need to be provided for. You didn't even ask ME if not working was something I wanted to do."
But that was getting off topic.
"It's more selfish to shove someone else into a shape they don't want to be in so YOU feel accomplished. Your father will think himself respectable if you are a lawyer, but he will never be respectable, because your accomplishments should not be his. They should be yours.
She was quiet for a few moments, and let her temper cool down because she was getting worked up, "A parents love for their child should not take work from the child, it should just be. What have I done that my parents should be proud of me? But they are. Because it was never hard work. And I know what you'll say, you'll say I was a good kid. but you know better than that. I was a little shit."
She moved back to her side of the bed and folded her arms, staring ahead and off to the side a bit, "I just don't want to see you broken down by something you don't have a passion for. You have to have a passion in law."
She looked to him, "Will you at least talk to my father? And see what he thinks?"
He was a lawyer, he could surely give Nicki some advice.
"That's not what free will means" Nicolas grumbled. He could see the conversation tumbling downhill toward a religious debate, and he didn't know how to stop it. He usually loved debating things with Mina, but it didn't feel fun this time. "It's more like...a test. Like the apple in the Garden of Eden, or Abraham and Isaac. God set out clear rules and made it people's choice whether to follow them or not, and face the rewards and consequences. Free will isn't about 'do whatever you want', it's about 'do you choose the right thing when nobody's forcing you, do you resist the wrong thing even when it's tempting'? The choice between good and evil wouldn't mean anything if you couldn't choose, but it doesn't make all the options equal."
He stiffened further, scowling at Mina. "Don't talk about my father like that." He was accomplished, he was respectable, he had his own business and provided for his family and was a pillar of the church. Any other day, Nicolas would have been complaining about the man to Mina, but now Mina just wasn't getting it.
Maybe she'd never understand. Maybe she couldn't. He had nothing to say, really, about her parents being proud of her. He sighed. "I'll talk to him." Nicolas didn't think he'd change his mind. But Mina's father was a lawyer, he might have some actual advice.
"And why is going to do what YOU want to do evil, Nicki?" she asked, but she knew why he thought so, because his family had planned it all for him and there was nothing that made him close up more than disappointing his parents. They might as well be another God to him
And his scars told thier own story.
But dammit, it was so frustrating, she wanted him to see that this wasn't okay. That he shouldn't live trapped in the very rigid structure his parents wanted. Was he thinking he was going to pull her in on what they wanted too? The stay at home mom with the kids? Were they going to override all Nicki and her's decisions over what they should do with their life?"
Or would Nicki snap out of it?
Though she knew when he stiffened when she insulted his father, she had gone too far. She went serious, and looked like she regretted it, "I'm sorry."
It was still his dad.
But at least he agreed to talk to her dad and maybe that could help him.
Without much else, she crawled to her side of the bed and pulled the covers up, "Goodnight."
It'd been a long night and she was exhausted.
But she didn't sleep much. And when morning came, she got up and showered and went out with her mom to a breakfast and to spend the day relaxing after a hell of a week.
Alex meanwhile, made him and Nicki breakfast at home.
"Because it's selfish!" he repeated. Wasn't she listening? "It's not just about me, everyone owes something to the world. My parents owed their parents for raising them, people owe their teachers, we all owe society for keeping us alive until we could contribute in kind. That's what growing up is. When you're a child, you're helpless and other people invest in you. And this is the time we're supposed to develop the knowledge and the skills to pay it back. And becoming a musician? That's not paying it back. That's like getting a ten thousand dollar loan and wasting it all on booze and junk food." Everything was so financial in his family. Every penny accounted for, everything parsed in terms of debts and worth.
At least Mina sounded serious when she apologized. She wasn't a bad person, she just... didn't get it. She went to sleep, and he tried to, too. He stewed in his own thoughts for a while before tiredness finally kicked in.
In the morning he got up, refreshed the bandages that needed it, and got dressed. It was good that Mina was with her mom right now. She probably wanted some space from him. Of course, that meant Nicolas would be facing Mr. Murray alone. With the ladies out of the house, he would probably be able to share is real opinion, unleash the anger Nicolas had seen on his face the day before. Well, he had to face the music eventually.
"Good morning, sir," Nicolas said, coming down for breakfast with Alex. He was braced for a lecture at best.
❛ Who am I ? Why am I here ? ❜
the last unicorn rp starters
@symphonyofmalice
This must've been one of the bad days he'd warned her about. "Your name is nicolas. You're my friend and you're here because this is where we're both safe."
"Great. Than I can look forward to things getting worse." Nicolas grumbled. Sometimes, if one caught things early, one could head the worst off at the pass. But he had very little idea what that would look like in this scenario. What would even help? A meal seemed a safe first bet. He did not ask why Claudia was the one stuck taking care of him. Outcasts always had to look out for one another.
He held on to her hand as they walked out. He could walk fine, but it helped having her presence. And it would help her to seem like she was walking with a family member. He wasn't sure he could pass for her father, but 'adult' still helped. "Let's go together. You want to share?" he could probably bring out a drunk on his own, but no bar would let her in.
"Hopefully not that much worse." Her only hope that his sickness wouldn't put him in danger but if it did she was confident she could take care of it. At least make it so she could drag him outta danger. It's what her fathers had to do with her when she went on her little rampages.
"We'll share on the second one perhaps. I'm always hungry but you need your strength." She was hopeful that the booze would make him feel better. It's what she resorted to when she was her most upset. She sighed softly as she grasped his hand a little tighter. "Since they won't allow me in just let me know where I should stand to wait but don't take too long."
"Are we feeling hopeful?" he asked, dry tone already revealing his answer. Far, far easier to believe everything would get much worse, even if he didn't actually know what worse could look like, at the moment. "If it's a danger to you, run. Don't protect me at your own sake."
He nodded. "I'll be quick. Wait in the parking lot." He slid into the bar. This was not a night for long games of flirting and seduction. He found a drunk he could subtly follow to the bathroom, pin against a stall wall, drain, and leave alive but woozy. The blood hitting his throat was ambrosia itself. Life, mixed with beer and whiskey. It strengthened his limbs, softened his thoughts, made everything feel warm and gentle.
More steady now, he made his way back to the bar crowd. He started asking around, spinning a story about a broken-down car and needing to get his half-sister back to her mother. A man with calloused hands said he had a jumper cable and followed Nicolas to the lot outside.
"I am always hopeful. No matter how dire the situation and this doesn't scare me. Not one bit." She was confident in her own answer. "I need to be hopeful no matter how shitty things seem. Otherwise I drown in my own misery and that's how you really become mad. I refuse to throw myself in the fire. One of the good things I kept in this curse was my beauty and they don't get to take it from me. Hope makes enduring more bearable."
The girl nodded at his instructions. Making an effort to look as innocent as possible as she waited. You never knew who was watching and her goal was to always appear like that of a doll. One would never expect a doll to sink it's fangs into their flesh.
She blinked in fake surprise once he arrived with what she assumed was a meal they would share or just one for her. She made an effort to give a polite curtsey at their arrival. "Hello brother. You brought help?"
"How brave of you," Nicolas commented. Better 'brave' than 'naive'. He had given up hope a long time ago, or so he liked to think. But he didn't want to infect this girl with his own despair. It was nice to bask in someone else's optimism for a bit.
"That's right" he told her, giving her an affectionate pat on the head to sell the family lie. Hopefully she wouldn't mind. "Mr. Stent here is going to help fix the car, and we'll have you back to mom's place in no time." Half-siblings of wildly different appearances and ages, apparently not living together- it was not a hard to imply some common remarriage story between the lines, something people wouldn't blink at.
Nicolas waited until the victim had the car's hood open and was bent over the engine before making his move. He grabbed the man by the throat, preemptively strangling any sound he might have made. "Go for it." He'd share this one with Claudia, but let her have the bulk of the meal. He'd had at least a little already, after all. And she had a teenager's hunger.
“Because I’m a masochist.”
@symphonyofmalice
Daniel raised the glass in his hand, as though he were proposing a silent toast to the sentiment. Masochism is what all the cool kids were doing these days apparently. When Daniel had been younger, masochism and sadism had blend into each other sometimes although he was more inclined towards one than the other.
"Self flagellation has certainly come a long way hasn't it? It used to be whips against the back, did they still do that in your day?" Daniel placed the glass back down on the table and shook his head once. "It's more fashionable these days to do it with words and weeping apologies for the audience that never dies, only grows larger and stronger the more you prostrate yourself before them. I shouldn't have done this shitty thing, reporting my neighbour for whatever shit I found undesirable , I deserve all your ire please forgive me, I will deprive myself of everything good till you forgive me. Oh, look, there we go. Isn't he so brave for admitting to this and asking for the punishment? Here, we should follow him and his journey to becoming less of a dog shit human being. And round and round it goes, the circus that never ends."
Daniel hadn't intended to go that deep into the subject but when he got going, it was hard to stop. It had been one of his defining features throughout his entire life, bringing him to both ecstasy and ruin in almost equal measure time and time again. It was a way of life he supposed.
"I find masochism far more fun, under the right circumstances."
Nicolas nodded. "Whips, switches, paddles, hands. Spanking has probably existed as long as humanity has. Though the tone of pretend-torture in the bedroom was a little different when you could step out and watch real torture right in public at the Place de Grève."
But it was clear, the more he rambled on, that Daniel wasn't just talking about the fun kind of masochism. "See, I don't think the social media types do it out of masochism. It's the sadism of the audience. Finding every flaw, digging through years of old posts and messages, dredging up something said once out of context a decade ago, finding all the ways using the wrong word is actually a sign of being secretly evil. Last week, I saw a video of some singer being forced to shave her head as an apology. Was that masochism? Did she want it? No, it was the hunger for punishment in the audience. The public display of torture. The Place de Grève all over again."
And then, the conversation pivoted back to the more fun variety. "Oh yes. Though I was never fond of whips, myself. I prefer roughness. Going too hard, too fast. Blasphemy, degradation. I liked knowing I was being ruined. Even the music was a way to hurt others and disgrace myself."
❛ Who am I ? Why am I here ? ❜
the last unicorn rp starters
@symphonyofmalice
This must've been one of the bad days he'd warned her about. "Your name is nicolas. You're my friend and you're here because this is where we're both safe."
"Great. Than I can look forward to things getting worse." Nicolas grumbled. Sometimes, if one caught things early, one could head the worst off at the pass. But he had very little idea what that would look like in this scenario. What would even help? A meal seemed a safe first bet. He did not ask why Claudia was the one stuck taking care of him. Outcasts always had to look out for one another.
He held on to her hand as they walked out. He could walk fine, but it helped having her presence. And it would help her to seem like she was walking with a family member. He wasn't sure he could pass for her father, but 'adult' still helped. "Let's go together. You want to share?" he could probably bring out a drunk on his own, but no bar would let her in.
"Hopefully not that much worse." Her only hope that his sickness wouldn't put him in danger but if it did she was confident she could take care of it. At least make it so she could drag him outta danger. It's what her fathers had to do with her when she went on her little rampages.
"We'll share on the second one perhaps. I'm always hungry but you need your strength." She was hopeful that the booze would make him feel better. It's what she resorted to when she was her most upset. She sighed softly as she grasped his hand a little tighter. "Since they won't allow me in just let me know where I should stand to wait but don't take too long."
"Are we feeling hopeful?" he asked, dry tone already revealing his answer. Far, far easier to believe everything would get much worse, even if he didn't actually know what worse could look like, at the moment. "If it's a danger to you, run. Don't protect me at your own sake."
He nodded. "I'll be quick. Wait in the parking lot." He slid into the bar. This was not a night for long games of flirting and seduction. He found a drunk he could subtly follow to the bathroom, pin against a stall wall, drain, and leave alive but woozy. The blood hitting his throat was ambrosia itself. Life, mixed with beer and whiskey. It strengthened his limbs, softened his thoughts, made everything feel warm and gentle.
More steady now, he made his way back to the bar crowd. He started asking around, spinning a story about a broken-down car and needing to get his half-sister back to her mother. A man with calloused hands said he had a jumper cable and followed Nicolas to the lot outside.
(it was so hard to pick one) “Please don’t ask if I’m okay. I won’t be able to lie convincingly.”
Mina watched the blonde haired blue sparkle man gyrating across their screen, "Wait, THAT'S him?"
Nicki's maker, Nicki didn't even have a photo of him. How long had it been since he saw him?
Mina grabbed the remote quickly and switched channels to women's basketball instead of the concert that was on the news.
She looked at him and tried to think of something to say, "he's....shorter than I imagined."
Hi there, grandpa.
She always imagined he was larger than life and ridiculous like Fabio. Well, it WAS ridiculous in a different way. Seeing him as him felt like near grounding in it's way.
Mina went to kneel in front of her maker, "Look at me."
@symphonyofmalice
"Of course I mean it. You know how much I despise lying, Mina." He was often wrong. The sea changes of his mood could mean he said exactly opposite things between one day and the next, but he always meant them. He was brutally honest with friends and enemies alike, and there was no one he trusted like Mina.
Romance was the last thing on his mind. He'd had that, with others, and look how that worked out. As for his madness, he'd mostly given up on the idea it would ever pass. It was a part of him, and one Mina handled better than anyone else ever had.
He hugged her back, holding her close. "I've made plenty of my own mistakes. I'm just refusing to repeat theirs". Magnus abandoned Lestat as soon as he was made, Lestat did the same to Nicki, Armand had been snatched by force. It wasn't hard to see the pattern. He did still think she'd come to tire of caring for him eventually, but she kept proving him wrong so far.
Sanctify them in the truth
There was a ritual element to the murders. There had to be. There were practicalities, like never killing someone that could be tied to his personal life, to keep the police at bay. And then there were Rules, the commandments that came from his soul and could not be bent or broken.
It was two in the morning. Nicolas was in the secret second home of his latest victim. This one had been hard to catch, since he was a priest. Nicolas could not enter a church while he was hunting. He could not kill anyone wearing a rosary or a cross. There were Rules. But here? Where the fire-and-brimstone preacher came to have his affairs? Here, his hypocrisy would be exposed to the world.
The middle-aged man was bound and gagged on his own bed. Nicolas had drugged him, to restrain him. But he was awake and aware enough to look afraid as Nicolas approached with the needle. They had to be alive when he drained them, he had to stop before the heart stopped. That was a Rule. The first syringe of blood was squirted directly down his throat. He had to taste it, that was a Rule, too. But he had about two liters to drain, and he couldn't drink all of it. The rest was delicately poured into an empty champagne bottle and two glasses, set up in a mockery of a romantic date at the dining room table. Bright red rose petals led from the table to the bed, where he left the man dying, two puncture wounds in his neck.
---
Back at home, he changed out of his clothes, an eighteenth century getup that would have fit a period piece about the revolution. The gloves were practical, yes. But he needed to maintain a connection to his true self when he was hunting. He slept through most of the day. Come evening, he got up, dressed in a band t-shirt and ratty dark jeans, and went out as Nicolas, local musician.
Arriving at the club, he saw Mina already sitting at the bar. He sidled up on the stool next to her. "Hello hello." Mina had an unhappy expression on her face. "What's stuck in your craw tonight? The music's not that bad," he joked. Befriending Mina was the riskiest thing he did, but he couldn't resist. She, like him, was an agent of truth, in a way. He could feel the spark in her.
If Mina had been in a better headspace, she probably would've shut down the conversation then and there, but she wasn't. She was in the mood to be a bit of trouble. And Nicki got invited and he said ht was down.
Really she thought that the benefits outweighed the costs. She trusted Nicki, if something went wrong he would be there to help her out. It never really went wrong per se, but there was always the possibility that it would happen and so she wanted someone there she could trust. Plus, Nicki wasn't one of the weird gay men that hated women. He seemed to really visually appreciate the female form as an art and was it really a big loss if at least SOMEONE did tonight?
"Hell, I'll try most anything once," Mina did and drank her last shot before paying the tab. She showed her phone GPS to the guy, "Why don't you put your address in and we'll meet you there. Me and Nicki should probably go get a couple of things."
Condoms, lube...probably plan B just to be cautious.
At any rate it gave them some time to set their own rules together.
When he put in his address, Mina grabbed her coat and Nicki's hand, leading him outside. She burst out into giggles, "Jesus Christ....At the very least, we'll have something to laugh about later."
She got him in the car, "Okay, if either one of us are uncomfortable, we both leave, right?"
"We don't have to go at all" Nicolas responded, as soon as he and Mina were alone together. "I promised you drinks and bad decisions, but it doesn't have to be this bad decision. I could buy us a round at Matagot. We could go back to your place. Whatever- I'm in your corner no matter what. So if you actually want to do this, let's do it. If he gets weird and you want to leave, we're out like a shot. If you want to blow that guy off and go on a cross-country rip, let's fucking go." Nicolas had been playing, and had not had as much time to get properly drunk. He was good to drive.
Sure, the guy was handsome enough, in a rugged way. But there were lots of handsome guys, and Nicolas had plenty of opportunities to chase his own pleasures. He was here as Mina's friend tonight. He'd have fun no matter what they did.
She was the one struggling with Ecaterina's appearance. A random hookup with a guy in a bar may have been a bad way to process that, but it was Mina's choice to make. And if the guy proved to be a creep- well, hopefully, he'd not try anything since he was outnumbered. But if he did, Nicolas was prepared for that, too.
The good hunter, bad hunter routine was a method that Mina wasn't the most fond of when it came to captured monsters. But it was a method that worked. And it got them results that didn't have to resort to torture and so when Mina was called into play the good sympathetic hunter to a vampire outside Paris, she answered it.
he'd been captured in Paris during one of his hunts, and he'd been blindfolded and whisked outside it far enough away that the vampires he was in a coven with might not be able to find him immediately. Oh they were quite the group. A theatre if one could believe it. Parading their vile acts in front of countless people that came to see them.
The leader was an old one and he would be coming to find them soon if he cared about his coven. Time was of the essence, they needed to get answers and then set it all alight without the vampires going into the catacombs and coming out somewhere else.
But only the vampires knew the extent of the catacombs.
Everything was discussed away from the property. A rough hand wouldn't do, a gentle hand was going to be tried and that's where Mina came in. She was told she had a kind smile when she put some work into it. Enough that someone desperate could be fooled.
The plan was to come in while the roughing up was happening and so Mina walked in with just as much swagger as the 5'4 expert monster hunter had and made QUITE the noise, "What the hell is going on here?!"
They bellowed, they fought, but they let it out quite casually that Mina Harker was here, like it was some big frustrating thing that she was ruining their interrogation. They didn't say how many vampires she killed or that she'd helped mastermind Dracula's death. That wasn't something that would help the character that she was playing for this. Instead she shoved them all out and slammed the door behind her. She heard the lock slide in place.
trapped in here with you.
Mina took a bucket of water from the corner and put a rag in it. She stood far enough away that he couldn't grab her through the chains and offered the rag, "Here. To clean yourself up."
@symphonyofmalice
"No pain," the kind mask....if there ever was one, was gone now, "That's what one of your lot said to me...and there was always pain. There's always pain when you do what you do. And tell me, what do you do if they regret what's been done to them and want to live? Do you stop? Do you encourage those lost that this doesn't have to be the end? No, you think you're doing them a favor but in reality you see them as weak so you don't have to endure a fight."
She didn't flinch when he lunged at her, she stood straighter, looking him in the eye, her own rage not hidden, "Feeling powerless? Don't worry, you cooperate, we'll make sure it's not painful. oh...sorry, that doesn't actually make it all better? You're not falling into our arms?"
"If you displayed your depravity, you wouldn't be hiding behind a bunch of fictional plays in a theatre crumbling around you. You'd be walking the streets out in the open."
But they didn't. Because they were cowards.
"Vampires make evil plays?" Mina raised an eyebrow, "Is that so? Because I've been all over the world, and you're the first one."
At his question, she shrugged, "Seems like an easy plan to me. You all hate each other, why not take them to hell with you? Protecting your family...isn't that a concept that good people do?"
She leaned forward, just enough that he still couldn't reach her, but maybe if he looked in the light just right, he'd see the ugly jagged fangmarks in her neck. "Why not be the evil you want to be and betray the people that won't even fight for you?"
'One of your lot'. Had she been attacked by a covenmate? The members of the troupe were generally careful to not leave their meals alive. She likely just meant a vampire in general.
He said nothing, sullen and silent, as she turned the tables and taunted him about his own helplessness. He was a fool. He had let her get under his skin.
"You want me out on the streets?" he challenged her, looking her right in the eye. Oh, yes, he would have loved that. This huntress was right, the stagecraft wasn't working, the audience wasn't getting it. Oh, the things he could achieve if he could take it to the masses, the public, out in the open... Didn't they already watch public executions? What was the difference, really?
A number of retorts jumped to his mind. They aren't my family. I'd let you kill my family any day. Armand is scarier than you. Armand is the only one I'd want dead, and the only one you'll never succeed in killing. But he had said too much already.
"I'm sorry the plays upset you, Madam. But you're right. It's all fiction and stories men tell each other. There is no such thing as vampires."
When her father disappeared, there was so much they had to wrap up. Her father had been seeing to some property for a frenchman in Auvergne and she, her mother and one of her uncles went to the town to find a way to wrap up proceedings.
They had been staying in the inn for a week when the town draper came to them. He had a son, he said, and he would be ever so interested in calling on young Miss Murray.
Her mother had been hesitant. She'd just lost her husband and she didn't want to lose her only child to this stifling small village. Her daughter wasn't in the right mind, you see. She just lost her father.
But Mina, who had been listening to the town gossip this past week, knew of the boy he was referring to. She'd heard he was at least well off, she'd heard other rumors about him as well that she'd rather not say. Mina was practical, the money would soon run out that her father had collected and they would be living on the charity of her uncles until she married.
She wasn't sure why she said she would allow him to call on her. Maybe she was curious at what would happen. Maybe she content to court and marry someone she didn't love so she wouldn't go through the same painful loss her mother did.
Or maybe they would get on, maybe she WOULD love him.
Mina stood next to her mother at teatime the next day, waiting for the Lenfents to enter the parlor. He was a handsome boy, with dark curly hair like hers and expressive eyes. Mina gave a small curtsey as she was introduced, "Monsieur."
@symphonyofmalice
"After days of preparing for our wedding," he argued. "And I still managed to outplay them." He remembered well the frenzy of those few days. He had barely slept, staying up late and waking early, the shop a mess as he added more and more flourishes to Mina's dress. Not that it was the dress's fault. He'd given himself three times more work than he really needed to. He had been in one of his moods; if not the dress, he would have poured the energy into something else.
But all of that hardly mattered now. His wife was challenging him to dance the night away, and he wanted nothing more than to oblige. One arm holding hers, the other at her waist, he began to step in time with the music, spinning and swaying with her.
"You certainly did," she remembered the sheer annoyance that they wouldn't let her help with anything with her own dress. She'd been stuck dealing with the rest of it, which was not so bad in the hindsight of things other than it being Nicki's terrible parents, "They will remember us forever, hopefully."
The dress was still the prettiest thing she would ever own. And she felt herself loving him for the effort he put in to make the day special.
Mina kept up with him, and felt her body starting to delve into the pent up energy she'd had trapped in a jolting carriage for days. It wasn't a perfect dancing floor, nor was she a perfect dancing partner. She was bumped into occasionally. She made the wrong dance move, but the consequences were giggles of laughter and not any sort of embarrassment. She made faces at him sometimes, trying to get him to break.
The night was beautiful and full of a particular giddy energy as she let it sink in finally....
they were going to be alright.
And she knew that, of course, deep down that things would work out. he would be a good husband to her but here dancing with him, a promise of many more night dances and adventures to come, she finally felt....she didn't even know what the right word was? Safe? She'd always felt safe with him.
But maybe tonight she felt like she was finally coming into her own.
Mina didn't know how long they danced together until a policeman came to clear the dancing crowd from the street. And Mina hugged her husband, giggling into his neck. She was warm, she was out of breath and her legs were already starting to ache.
But she was so happy.
The cobblestone was not the most even of dance floors, and Nicolas was not the most graceful of dancers. He was a musician more than a dancer. He had a good sense of rhythm, and reasonably coordinated hands, but that didn't translate to always knowing what to do with his long legs. The musicians were little more than average, the semi0drunk gathering crowd messy, and there was nowhere he would rather be.
With each step of the dance, he felt lighter. Mina pulling faces kept making him break his rhythm. The joy that rose up in him became more infectious, and harder to contain, until all it took was a twitch of her eyebrow to make him double over.
He was still flushed when they walked away from the dispersing crowd. "Damn them for stopping the music. Where next? Anywhere calling to you? Not home, yet- unless... shall I play for you?"
"It's a sacrifice, really, what we do here" Nicolas said with a touch of pride, some reverence. The audience might not realize they are a congregation called to worship, but they offer their devotion anyway. Every victim claimed on stage is a black bull on Hades' altar."
"I sympathize completely," Nicolas said, as Lawrence tapped his nose. "The stench of Paris was bad enough as a mortal. And the noise! Infernal, constant noise. It is not so bad underground. Though my aesthetic sense has changed, as a vampire. I can look upon a gangrenous corpse and find beauty in the colors."
What Lawrence did within his theatre was an escape. He'd joined a long while ago to escape friction with his father back in Whales. He had found freedom on the stage and behind the curtain -- preferential to behind the curtain.
"In that way, you are lucky then."
The werewolf wasn't certain that he'd ever find comfort in the form of the dead. Too often, it had been at his hands -- his claws -- that someone had met that death. It was never, ever a pretty sight to see. It was a constant reminder of the beast lurking in him, desiring to take full control.
"I have yet to come to that place in life just yet."
"Lucky? I suppose. Beauty has always struck me as terribly ironic, even as a mortal man. The things that bring ruin and despair are often beautiful. The sinful joys are aesthetically rich, the virtuous ones simple and brutal and ugly. All the evidence one needs is seen in every vampire's face. Ultimate evil, ultimate splendor. So you see, I have an inherent suspicion toward beauty. Strange as it is to say, the beauty of a corpse, to use that example, at least wears it's ugliness on it's sleeve, yes?"
Mina could've sworn she turned off her alarm the morning that her class was cancelled but it still rang loud and shrill that pulled her out of a dead sleep.
Mina scrambled quickly, on instinct to turn her phone off and looked worriedly at her boyfriend next to her. She quickly checked her messages to make sure nothing had exploded while she was asleep and then lay back down in his arms, dressed in nothing but one of his shirts. Her legs tangled with his and she brushed her fingers down his side.
She'd met Nicki her first day in college and they just sort of stuck together after that first meeting. They'd been dating for awhile, Mina liked him, wanted to take him home to meet her parents. Was he the one? She couldn't say that, she couldn't say she was looking for 'the one'. But they were being young, they were having fun. She genuinely liked him. He was funny, and sarcastic, and loving, but sad. She knew enough about his home life that she was determined to keep him away from it.
"Sorry," she mumbled and slipped her hand around him, "Thought I turned it off."
@symphonyofmalice
There was something so nice about feeling his hands working through her fingers, she could do this forever. She'd need another hair washing before their holiday was done, Maybe she'd draw up a bath and have Nicki really wash it for her.
"I know your'e going to be insistant, that's why I"m not fighting with you on it," she told him, "And I will wear a buttondown too, so you don't get lonely."
She slipped out of the bathroom and went to grab her phone, messaging her parents to look nice as well, so he didn't feel out of place.
"Well, if you're going to join me, we're coordinating colors," Nicolas insisted. If presentation mattered, it mattered all the way. He wasn't going to start cutting corners now.
His own shirts and pants were all tailored, because of course they were. His father's business was in clothing, he couldn't go around in something unfitting.
𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 (i know we have enough threads, but do we really?)
It'd been one of their holidays to her family when Nicki disappeared. He'd been going to see some friends that were on the other side of London. Mina had gone to bed without him...he would make his way home. He had a key to the house, he'd slip in when he was good and drunk and not remember it in the morning.
But he wasn't home....and he wasn't answering his phone...and their friends said he'd left early acting strange.
They called Scotland Yard, they filed a police report and Mina stopped sleeping. She barely ate. She went out looking for him with her mother or one of her uncles but there were no leads. She was certain he was dead....that any moment any call would be they found him in some trash bin or in the river. Maybe his family had been too much, maybe he'd done something he coudln't take back.
And then a few days after his disappearance, late in the evening, he came back. He was stinking, and ragged and he looked like he hadn't bathed in awhile. And the next thing Mina knew she was hugging him and crying and screaming for her parents.
"Nicki, Oh god," she sobbed.
"Nicki," she said almost pleadingly, "Succeed at what? We're barely adults! Everything's supposed to be just started for us to explore. The future is supposed to be open for us to think about and choose, not....trudge through like it's a certain fate we don't want but have to endure."
He was stubborn, sometimes frustratingly so, but Mina was just as stubborn, "You didn't ask to get made, Nicki! You didn't ask for them to make all these grand plans for you on your behalf. Did they even ever ask you what you wanted to do with your life? Was this ever something YOU wanted? Because last I checked, God gave you free will and he put you in a time period where you could decide what you wanted to do with it."
"Nicki, it's not selfish. It's YOUR life! You could die tomorrow or 50 years from now and will you feel accomplished if you spent decades doing something you hated? No. You'll always wonder 'what if'? and grow resentful. And if things work out and we get married, I don't want you to have regrets when we have the time now to avoid them. I don't want to be the reason you go into law school, because you think I need to be provided for. You didn't even ask ME if not working was something I wanted to do."
But that was getting off topic.
"It's more selfish to shove someone else into a shape they don't want to be in so YOU feel accomplished. Your father will think himself respectable if you are a lawyer, but he will never be respectable, because your accomplishments should not be his. They should be yours.
She was quiet for a few moments, and let her temper cool down because she was getting worked up, "A parents love for their child should not take work from the child, it should just be. What have I done that my parents should be proud of me? But they are. Because it was never hard work. And I know what you'll say, you'll say I was a good kid. but you know better than that. I was a little shit."
She moved back to her side of the bed and folded her arms, staring ahead and off to the side a bit, "I just don't want to see you broken down by something you don't have a passion for. You have to have a passion in law."
She looked to him, "Will you at least talk to my father? And see what he thinks?"
He was a lawyer, he could surely give Nicki some advice.
"That's not what free will means" Nicolas grumbled. He could see the conversation tumbling downhill toward a religious debate, and he didn't know how to stop it. He usually loved debating things with Mina, but it didn't feel fun this time. "It's more like...a test. Like the apple in the Garden of Eden, or Abraham and Isaac. God set out clear rules and made it people's choice whether to follow them or not, and face the rewards and consequences. Free will isn't about 'do whatever you want', it's about 'do you choose the right thing when nobody's forcing you, do you resist the wrong thing even when it's tempting'? The choice between good and evil wouldn't mean anything if you couldn't choose, but it doesn't make all the options equal."
He stiffened further, scowling at Mina. "Don't talk about my father like that." He was accomplished, he was respectable, he had his own business and provided for his family and was a pillar of the church. Any other day, Nicolas would have been complaining about the man to Mina, but now Mina just wasn't getting it.
Maybe she'd never understand. Maybe she couldn't. He had nothing to say, really, about her parents being proud of her. He sighed. "I'll talk to him." Nicolas didn't think he'd change his mind. But Mina's father was a lawyer, he might have some actual advice.
Oh, so now it's a problem when I do it!
What is a problem when you do it?
Everything, apparently. We all contribute to the theater, but when I want to give a pianist the gift I'm not allowed. We all hunt but I can't go in the streets without a chaperone. We all use the stage to present the truth, but when I do a little public advertising, I'm endangering the coven. It's hypocrisy, plain and simple.
Nicolas, you did not simply contribute to the theatre. You were the one to work the dark trick on it. You were the theatre. You gave us the stage and we loved you for it. We love you for it.
My dearest friend. Your safety and wellbeing were always sacrosanct to me. I am sorry that you see hypocrisy where there was only ever loving concern.
You were young in the blood, gifted and brilliant. Shining in your darkness. All of us wanted you safe, wanted you to flourish, wanted to move on stage pulled by your strings. You know this. Do not doubt it now. Any restraint was only employed to keep it all going.
Is this love? Is this how you treat your 'dearest friend', your muse? You understand it, Eleni, I know you do. I know you have felt the call of the Dark God. You all answered the summons beautifully, once, why do you silence it now? I cannot be what the theater needs locked in a cell like some monk. Ours is not an ascetic worship. I must be out among the masses. They must not be able to look away.
Oh, so now it's a problem when I do it!
What is a problem when you do it?
Everything, apparently. We all contribute to the theater, but when I want to give a pianist the gift I'm not allowed. We all hunt but I can't go in the streets without a chaperone. We all use the stage to present the truth, but when I do a little public advertising, I'm endangering the coven. It's hypocrisy, plain and simple.
Encore
The vampire who strolled into Armand's private room beneath the theater was familiar in only the vaguest sense. He had likely been on stage during the performance, in the background crowds of the catacombs. His brown hair, tied back with a black silk ribbon, matched his eyes. Neither Armand nor Louis reacted to his entrance.
As Armand mentioned something about believing he was the oldest living vampire, Nicolas laughed. "Oh! Oh that's rich. Wishful thinking that Santino is dead, then? Every other coven, every other city? What an apocalypse of vampires we must have had. Oldest vampire in Paris, perhaps, but only after Allesandra burned." Nicolas was right up against Armand's face now, his nose practically against his cheek, his breath should have been stirring Armand's hair. Still no acknowledgement.
He began pacing the room. With a violin on his shoulder, he plucked one of the strings every once in a while as Armand spoke. "Bullshit. Bullshit. Absolute bullshit." Come to think of it, where had the violin come from? And the door was still closed. Had he walked or simply passed through it?
@beautifulsavagegarden
