After all this time? After all the days and years and decades, c'est-à-dire, all the centuries that allowed you to distance yourself so conveniently? To forget?
I recall with perfect clarity every hour spent walking this cursed, interminable path you chose for me. I once feared the darkness I saw in myself; I clung desperately to your light to keep the looming shadows at bay.
How many minutes in two hundred years?
As many minutes as I've been cut off from the last vestiges of light, every agonizing second revealing to me deeper shades of blackness beyond anything my undamned mind could have imagined. I have been consumed by the very pit that haunted my mortal nightmares, my only solace found in discovering my true capacity for pure, unadulterated hate.
So yes, lover, after all this time I resent you more devoutly than ever. Can you be so surprised? After all, was it not you who gifted me with all the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, decades, centuries in which to hone my bitterness down to something so sharp and unyielding?
[In the end, it's not the rant that shows how far gone Nicki's mind is; it's how he took the time to type it all out into a text. It's the fact he's been presumably waiting for centuries to type that unapologetic wall-of-text without a hint of irony. Because apparently this is what's important to him even after all this time.]
[Lestat just...lets Nicholas talk. It doesn't occur to him to do anything else but stand there and let wave after wave of revulsion spill forth, crashing into him like an ocean's tide worth of resentment. He can feel his heart crack open anew as he listens, old scars tearing out into new wounds.
How do you answer to two hundred years' worth of anger? How do you fold madness back when it is so frozen into a person's undeath?
Lestat's voice is quiet, pained, but utterly sincere.]
If I could bring you to a place of light, to a place without bitterness or pain, I would do so without question. Whatever it cost me, I would. It is an idea that has haunted me since we parted, that there would be some way I could undo it all for you.
I know such a path may not exist, but I do wish for it all the same.
Dated to sometime after Claudia's death/being thrown off the tower
Lestat wasn't a stranger to physical injury, nor to the agonies of recovering. New Orleans felt like a lifetime ago in many ways, but the memories of his wounds were still stark in his memories. Still, this was a new, fresh state of awfulness, the initial pains now coated with many new ones that spread throughout his body like a web.
He'd dragged himself into a basement somehow. A basement to what, he wasn't sure. That could be figured out later. He needed to conceal himself, to rest, to think what to do --
(Except he doesn't want to rest, not really, because resting will mean his mind is clear to remember the tidal wave of tragedies being held at bay. Claudia on trial, Claudia dead, Louis gone, Armand's sneer.)
It's a dizzying array of thoughts, and his whole body is weak enough that his senses are not what they once were -- so if there were to be footsteps, the arrival of another, he might not notice.]
[There's no question it's Lestat's pain that finally draws him out.
Nicolas has been a passive observer for nearly as long as he's not been alive -- almost two centuries now he's spent building layer upon layer of bitterness around himself like an armor, silently watching from the shadows as the world and all its former beauty, all its former meaning passed him by. He can hardly blame Lestat for reaching that tipping point... that point Nicolas himself had reached far sooner, it seemed, than most of their kind.
Perhaps this fresh anguish will finally bring Lestat down to the circle of Hell that Nicolas has been condemned to wandering alone for the past two hundred years.
Perhaps Lestat will understand now why Nicki can never forgive him.
It's all so familiar, when at last he can't resist the draw Lestat never ceased to have over him: cradling Lestat's head in his lap, carding his fingers through gleaming blond hair, the words of some French lullaby tumbling from his lips before he even realizes it's his voice murmuring softly into the dark silence. They've been here before, long ago. Back when they were lovers and Nicolas didn't trace his fingers over the angles of Lestat's face hoping to memorize every instant of misery that would never leave its mark on that perfect, flawless skin.]
[Lestat has felt so weak and pained that there is a long, peaceful moment when he thinks he may be going mad. And if he is, perhaps he welcomes it, if this is to be its form.
The feel of Nicki's fingers in his hair, his voice gently rolling through his ears, is like being pulled underwater by a siren. He thinks for a moment that he has conjured Nicki from a dream, dragged him forth in the form of a hallucination to be both an angel and a demon at once. He could be both, in his way, a reminder of fonder days and of horrific regrets, singing sweetly even as he memorizes Lestat's pain.
Lestat lays there, his thoughts dulled for a long while, willing to accept that he is conjuring ghosts in his darkest hour. The only thing that needles him otherwise is the feeling of his head in Nicki's lap, the angle of his neck and the feeling of legs beneath him. A dream could not hold him in such a pose, could it?
His voice is low and rough when he finally speaks.]
[Lestat is going mad, though; he has been all along, and that's been the point from the very start, has it not? They've gone mad, the both of them, and perhaps all of this seemingly eternal nightmare has been a fever dream the whole time, one they simply have yet to wake from.
Wouldn't that be nice?]
You are dreaming, trésor. Because only a truly unbridled mind could conjure an endless nightmare so cruel as this, n'est-ce pas? [If he's to believe his own lie that this is a dream, surely he's allowed to give in just a bit and press a kiss to Lestat's lips... those same lips that were warm, once upon a time.]
In the darkest moments, I endeavor to remind myself that... surely, one day, the both of us will wake...
[The kiss is a small blessing, a tiny miracle in the midst of so much torment. His entire body feels like a shattered vessel, and yet the kiss is the warmth of so many nights from so many years ago. It is their conversation, their bond made real, a reminder of something so sweet that had been dragged into the dark along with the sunlight.
He doesn't understand. It isn't possible. Perhaps if he were not so frail, he could fathom it.
Lestat moves one arm -- slowly, stiffly, painfully -- to touch the side of Nicki's face. It feels the same as it did before, eternally frozen in place. He doesn't understand still, but perhaps that does not matter.]
Perhaps.
But if I have conjured you in my dreams, then I do not wish yet to wake.
[Lestat's hand reaches his face, and if only because Nicki's far too drunk on the dream of what might have been to stop him in time, Lestat manages to grace cold, chiseled marble with familiar fingers impossible that they could feel so warm, even now for a mere instant before Nicolas catches his hand. Pulls it away.]
Non, chéri.
[Nicki tugs Lestat's knuckles beneath his lips to press a kiss like they might have shared as dandies centuries ago, but the mirth is lost to time and the gesture seems only melancholy now.]
You mustn't cling to this dream, nor to me. Smoke, mirrors, phantoms in the fog -- all more real than this moment beside nos amours, my Lelio. All to be forgotten when you finally wake.
It's the harsh contrast of affection and rejection, the yank between dreamy reverie and a darkness that could swallow them both whole. Even in its harsh discomfort, there is a familiarity there, an unbalanced sensation that reminds him of decades past and that final goodbye in the theater.
Perhaps it's for the best he is in pain and weak. If he were himself, he would babble questions, ruin the moment with his curiosity and mania. But frailty is an excellent suppressant, tamping down the wild swings of emotion, and all he wants is for Nicki to remain for a moment longer, for another moment after, for as long as he can keep him there. Even if he is truly illusion, even as he chastises him not to.]
Perhaps it will. But I have not woken yet. For the moment, I am here.
[The words make him smile. It's a true, genuine smile of the sort that hasn't crossed his lips in so long -- so long Nicolas had assumed he'd simply forgotten how to smile all together -- but Lestat always did have knack for proving him wrong. Lestat always did have a way of breaking through all his logic and defenses, and he really hadn't thought this through, had he?
It is him, and only Lestat could truly differentiate the dream of what he was supposed to be from the reality of Nicoals de Lenfent in the here and now. Lestat will always recognize him because their conversation will never end.
...and maybe that's why he can't resist rewriting the script he had memorized for this moment.]
Your pain overcomes you, amor. This is not the role you were meant to play, so tell me... tell me why you think the depths of despair will welcome your light? How can you presume to sink so low as this?
[Lestat wears a small, weak smile at such a question. Leave it to Nicki, beautifully mournful Nicki, to question whether he has earned the right to such miseries as this. Even when too broken to move, he must merit his sufferings.]
I am the maker of my own misfortunes. Whatever sorrows I have sunk to, they came about of my own making.
[He wants to touch Nicki again, trace his face, run his fingertips over features that he'd memorized so many years ago. Instead, he leans into the feel of his hands in his hair, the carding movements unwinding tangled strands.]
I do not know if that makes me worthy of misery, or is simply how I wound up in its path.
Right, now I know you've been reading my little book when I wasn't looking. I hope you realize that quoting my own words back to me isn't nearly as clever as you think it is.
Which part? That I'm not good like you? I told you I don't need to read your notes behind your back to know how you feel. You've made that clear. Reading what your thoughts about me would be devastating, I think.
How can it be that you don't realize that that is how I've seen you? That's how I've always seen you, Nicki.
Your light is why the darkness drags you under, why it affects you so much. You feel it so much more. Without you, where would I be? Alone in that cold and barren place.
Oh, my darling, there are times when you make it so difficult not to forgive you.
But look around you, Lelio. You're as alone as I am in that very cold and barren place, are you not? And this is where we'll both remain, eternally. You made sure of that.
And why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I use this gift and bask in all the pain and beauty and pleasures of it? You condemn me as if I had a choice! I was happy in another life, in that theater with you, making art, listening to your music and sharing that room. I would have been content with our life but even then, you were pulling away, putting up walls and sinking into the darkness. I was never going to be enough, my dearest Nicki. You act as if I stole all your happiness, but it was gone long before what transpired between us.
and you wouldn't have been content, Lestat. You haven't been content for so much as a day in your overlong life and you never will be
Of the two of us, you are the only one who had a choice. You chose to rob us both of the simple beauty we had with our frustrating, imperfect, achingly short mortal lives. And now we're trapped, forever striving for an unattainable ideal that will never live up to the fucking fantasy OR the life we already had our chance to live.
I'm sorry that I couldn't be happy like you wanted while we were together. But while I was sinking into my own despair, I never so much as thought to ask for more than the one life I had with you. That was contentment. The mortal, human kind.
You were not content, Nicolas. You know that's a lie. The only time you were ever content was when we were both poor and struggling. When I finally got on stage, finally got to do what we went to Paris for, you couldn't handle that. You wanted to pull me down into your despair so we would both suffer.
You're right about one thing. I never should have turned you. I never should have given you the gift. I was selfish. I wanted to be together. I wanted to share this with you. So many nights I longed for you, I couldn't bear to lose you. I will regret it the rest of my life.
And I never should have left you with him. I couldn't stand your deafening silence or the looks of disgust and hatred on your face. I have wrong you in many ways, Nicki and for that I am sorry. Maybe you're right, maybe I'm doomed to a life of discontentment and suffering, but I won't stop trying. Another difference between us.
I'd be ashes if not for him saving just enough of my discarded pieces to allow us the delightful exchange we're having right now.
I never needed to be content, Lestat, difficult as that seems to be for you to believe. I wanted the life with you, with every flaw and disappointment included. So how tragically ironic that life is the one experience neither one of us will ever have now.
Poetic enough I could almost pick up my violin again.
Another cruel gift from the gremlin himself, then; to deny you an end to your suffering just to punish; to allow you to return to seek your deserved vengeance from me. He would have known the depth of your hatred for me at the end.
You speak as if I had a choice; as if you weren't there the night I was forcibly taken from our room. I think I have mourned you every night since.
Then pick it up! You lament over a life you cannot return to. Embrace the one you have.
Do you use terms of endearment to mock me? If I'm just a mad man raving to a ghost, then I'm afraid you won't get much satisfaction haunting me.
You read it! You don't like that I included you? I never thought-
If I had known, I would have sent you a signed copy.
[Deflecting is easier than facing the maelstrom of emotions threatening to pull him down into the depths at the simple realization that Nicki read his story.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
devilsfiddler) wrote2016-12-30 02:21 am
@ learningcurves
Can you? And what, pray tell, do you see exactly?
of COURSE i want ya goober
maybe the flames of hellbut i think i see those in my eyes too so that might be nothing
but you dont hold back.
no subject
At least I'm honest, n'est-ce pas?
no subject
@ unwillingdevil | it's almost like he's been bottling this up for ca. 200 years
After all this time? After all the days and years and decades, c'est-à-dire, all the centuries that allowed you to distance yourself so conveniently? To forget?
I recall with perfect clarity every hour spent walking this cursed, interminable path you chose for me. I once feared the darkness I saw in myself; I clung desperately to your light to keep the looming shadows at bay.
How many minutes in two hundred years?
As many minutes as I've been cut off from the last vestiges of light, every agonizing second revealing to me deeper shades of blackness beyond anything my undamned mind could have imagined. I have been consumed by the very pit that haunted my mortal nightmares, my only solace found in discovering my true capacity for pure, unadulterated hate.
So yes, lover, after all this time I resent you more devoutly than ever. Can you be so surprised? After all, was it not you who gifted me with all the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, decades, centuries in which to hone my bitterness down to something so sharp and unyielding?
[In the end, it's not the rant that shows how far gone Nicki's mind is; it's how he took the time to type it all out into a text. It's the fact he's been presumably waiting for centuries to type that unapologetic wall-of-text without a hint of irony. Because apparently this is what's important to him even after all this time.]
Nickiiiiiiii ;3;
How do you answer to two hundred years' worth of anger? How do you fold madness back when it is so frozen into a person's undeath?
Lestat's voice is quiet, pained, but utterly sincere.]
If I could bring you to a place of light, to a place without bitterness or pain, I would do so without question. Whatever it cost me, I would. It is an idea that has haunted me since we parted, that there would be some way I could undo it all for you.
I know such a path may not exist, but I do wish for it all the same.
Dated to sometime after Claudia's death/being thrown off the tower
Lestat wasn't a stranger to physical injury, nor to the agonies of recovering. New Orleans felt like a lifetime ago in many ways, but the memories of his wounds were still stark in his memories. Still, this was a new, fresh state of awfulness, the initial pains now coated with many new ones that spread throughout his body like a web.
He'd dragged himself into a basement somehow. A basement to what, he wasn't sure. That could be figured out later. He needed to conceal himself, to rest, to think what to do --
(Except he doesn't want to rest, not really, because resting will mean his mind is clear to remember the tidal wave of tragedies being held at bay. Claudia on trial, Claudia dead, Louis gone, Armand's sneer.)
It's a dizzying array of thoughts, and his whole body is weak enough that his senses are not what they once were -- so if there were to be footsteps, the arrival of another, he might not notice.]
no subject
Nicolas has been a passive observer for nearly as long as he's not been alive -- almost two centuries now he's spent building layer upon layer of bitterness around himself like an armor, silently watching from the shadows as the world and all its former beauty, all its former meaning passed him by. He can hardly blame Lestat for reaching that tipping point... that point Nicolas himself had reached far sooner, it seemed, than most of their kind.
Perhaps this fresh anguish will finally bring Lestat down to the circle of Hell that Nicolas has been condemned to wandering alone for the past two hundred years.
Perhaps Lestat will understand now why Nicki can never forgive him.
It's all so familiar, when at last he can't resist the draw Lestat never ceased to have over him: cradling Lestat's head in his lap, carding his fingers through gleaming blond hair, the words of some French lullaby tumbling from his lips before he even realizes it's his voice murmuring softly into the dark silence. They've been here before, long ago. Back when they were lovers and Nicolas didn't trace his fingers over the angles of Lestat's face hoping to memorize every instant of misery that would never leave its mark on that perfect, flawless skin.]
no subject
The feel of Nicki's fingers in his hair, his voice gently rolling through his ears, is like being pulled underwater by a siren. He thinks for a moment that he has conjured Nicki from a dream, dragged him forth in the form of a hallucination to be both an angel and a demon at once. He could be both, in his way, a reminder of fonder days and of horrific regrets, singing sweetly even as he memorizes Lestat's pain.
Lestat lays there, his thoughts dulled for a long while, willing to accept that he is conjuring ghosts in his darkest hour. The only thing that needles him otherwise is the feeling of his head in Nicki's lap, the angle of his neck and the feeling of legs beneath him. A dream could not hold him in such a pose, could it?
His voice is low and rough when he finally speaks.]
Have I conjured you? Are you a dream?
no subject
Wouldn't that be nice?]
You are dreaming, trésor. Because only a truly unbridled mind could conjure an endless nightmare so cruel as this, n'est-ce pas? [If he's to believe his own lie that this is a dream, surely he's allowed to give in just a bit and press a kiss to Lestat's lips... those same lips that were warm, once upon a time.]
In the darkest moments, I endeavor to remind myself that... surely, one day, the both of us will wake...
Won't we?
no subject
He doesn't understand. It isn't possible. Perhaps if he were not so frail, he could fathom it.
Lestat moves one arm -- slowly, stiffly, painfully -- to touch the side of Nicki's face. It feels the same as it did before, eternally frozen in place. He doesn't understand still, but perhaps that does not matter.]
Perhaps.
But if I have conjured you in my dreams, then I do not wish yet to wake.
no subject
impossible that they could feel so warm, even nowfor a mere instant before Nicolas catches his hand. Pulls it away.]Non, chéri.
[Nicki tugs Lestat's knuckles beneath his lips to press a kiss like they might have shared as dandies centuries ago, but the mirth is lost to time and the gesture seems only melancholy now.]
You mustn't cling to this dream, nor to me. Smoke, mirrors, phantoms in the fog -- all more real than this moment beside nos amours, my Lelio. All to be forgotten when you finally wake.
no subject
It's the harsh contrast of affection and rejection, the yank between dreamy reverie and a darkness that could swallow them both whole. Even in its harsh discomfort, there is a familiarity there, an unbalanced sensation that reminds him of decades past and that final goodbye in the theater.
Perhaps it's for the best he is in pain and weak. If he were himself, he would babble questions, ruin the moment with his curiosity and mania. But frailty is an excellent suppressant, tamping down the wild swings of emotion, and all he wants is for Nicki to remain for a moment longer, for another moment after, for as long as he can keep him there. Even if he is truly illusion, even as he chastises him not to.]
Perhaps it will. But I have not woken yet. For the moment, I am here.
no subject
It is him, and only Lestat could truly differentiate the dream of what he was supposed to be from the reality of Nicoals de Lenfent in the here and now. Lestat will always recognize him because their conversation will never end.
...and maybe that's why he can't resist rewriting the script he had memorized for this moment.]
Your pain overcomes you, amor. This is not the role you were meant to play, so tell me... tell me why you think the depths of despair will welcome your light? How can you presume to sink so low as this?
no subject
I am the maker of my own misfortunes. Whatever sorrows I have sunk to, they came about of my own making.
[He wants to touch Nicki again, trace his face, run his fingertips over features that he'd memorized so many years ago. Instead, he leans into the feel of his hands in his hair, the carding movements unwinding tangled strands.]
I do not know if that makes me worthy of misery, or is simply how I wound up in its path.
@unpetitcoup
Right, now I know you've been reading my little book when I wasn't looking. I hope you realize that quoting my own words back to me isn't nearly as clever as you think it is.
ty!
no subject
After everything, you still believe that it was I who carried the light into our world?
no subject
Your light is why the darkness drags you under, why it affects you so much. You feel it so much more. Without you, where would I be? Alone in that cold and barren place.
no subject
But look around you, Lelio. You're as alone as I am in that very cold and barren place, are you not? And this is where we'll both remain, eternally. You made sure of that.
no subject
Maybe so, but it doesn't have to be that way. This gift, this dark gift can be beautiful. The shackles are gone. Don't you see?
no subject
If you can keep convincing yourself of that for another two hundred years, amor, I honestly hope that you do.
no subject
And why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I use this gift and bask in all the pain and beauty and pleasures of it? You condemn me as if I had a choice! I was happy in another life, in that theater with you, making art, listening to your music and sharing that room. I would have been content with our life but even then, you were pulling away, putting up walls and sinking into the darkness. I was never going to be enough, my dearest Nicki. You act as if I stole all your happiness, but it was gone long before what transpired between us.
no subject
and you wouldn't have been content, Lestat. You haven't been content for so much as a day in your overlong life and you never will be
Of the two of us, you are the only one who had a choice. You chose to rob us both of the simple beauty we had with our frustrating, imperfect, achingly short mortal lives. And now we're trapped, forever striving for an unattainable ideal that will never live up to the fucking fantasy OR the life we already had our chance to live.
I'm sorry that I couldn't be happy like you wanted while we were together. But while I was sinking into my own despair, I never so much as thought to ask for more than the one life I had with you. That was contentment. The mortal, human kind.
no subject
You're right about one thing. I never should have turned you. I never should have given you the gift. I was selfish. I wanted to be together. I wanted to share this with you. So many nights I longed for you, I couldn't bear to lose you. I will regret it the rest of my life.
And I never should have left you with him. I couldn't stand your deafening silence or the looks of disgust and hatred on your face. I have wrong you in many ways, Nicki and for that I am sorry. Maybe you're right, maybe I'm doomed to a life of discontentment and suffering, but I won't stop trying. Another difference between us.
oh wow i thought i replied orz
I'd be ashes if not for him saving just enough of my discarded pieces to allow us the delightful exchange we're having right now.
I never needed to be content, Lestat, difficult as that seems to be for you to believe. I wanted the life with you, with every flaw and disappointment included. So how tragically ironic that life is the one experience neither one of us will ever have now.
Poetic enough I could almost pick up my violin again.
no worries!
You speak as if I had a choice; as if you weren't there the night I was forcibly taken from our room. I think I have mourned you every night since.
Then pick it up! You lament over a life you cannot return to. Embrace the one you have.
no subject
I will.
Somehow, Lelio, I find myself relieved you're as lost and full of rage as I am.
no subject
Perhaps we will always be a pair of lost children. But I don't think our rage is alike. Then again, rage never suited either of us very well.
no subject
Am I a fool to entertain the notion that our next conversation might center on the concept of rage and how ours might never quite compare?
no subject
My beloved Nicki, we could speak for an eternity about the ways we might never quite compare. I'll entertain the notion.
I wish I could see you. To know you're not a ghost and that I'm not going completely mad.
no subject
And do please tell me you won't be writing a new narrative for publication that includes me in it. Your first book was more than enough.
[Yeah, but he was in line to buy the first copy, wasn't he?]
no subject
You read it! You don't like that I included you? I never thought-
If I had known, I would have sent you a signed copy.
[Deflecting is easier than facing the maelstrom of emotions threatening to pull him down into the depths at the simple realization that Nicki read his story.]