unapparent: (011)
our lady of tears. ([personal profile] unapparent) wrote2024-07-16 06:59 pm

INBOX








WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAMe
@hightower


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nishtha: (pic#17235182)

text - after mermand week

[personal profile] nishtha 2025-03-03 12:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Alicent. I believe we need to talk.
nishtha: (pic#17201909)

[personal profile] nishtha 2025-03-08 03:17 pm (UTC)(link)
I am. What that means, I don't know. But I am restored to my own body and my power once more, as if nothing has happened.

Will you meet me?
nishtha: (pic#17203771)

[personal profile] nishtha 2025-03-13 01:02 pm (UTC)(link)
I do. I will be there this evening.

[ As dusk falls, he's as good as his word. The solarium is warm and gloriously lit by the setting sun, golden light blazing in the glass windows and roof panes, casting long beams across the flagstone floor.

Armand has had the staff set up a small bistro-style table and a couple of chairs in the middle of the space, covered with a tablecloth. On this is arranged a dark bottle of wine, another unlabelled bottle, two glasses, a small cheeseboard arrangement, and a large flat box tied with a dark ribbon. Armand himself is just as immaculately turned out in layers of dark red, positioning himself in the tableau with an artist's eye to how the light falls on him from behind. He sits with his hands folded on the tabletop, displaying the fact that he's wearing both Daniel's engagement ring and Alicent's Christmas gift.

Despite the control in his pose, the expression he turns on Alicent as she arrives is soft and a touch fond. He rises from his seat as she approaches, moving around to pull her chair out for her.
]

My queen.
nishtha: (pic#17235269)

cw: domestic violence mention

[personal profile] nishtha 2025-03-18 04:30 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Alicent's hand is warm on his skin, scented by her soaps and perfumes. It had felt so cold before, in the dark room where she had ended his life, her fingertips trailing icy shadows through his fever-hazed memories of those final moments. He's glad to find her restored to that gentle moral heat, and leans into her touch, looking up at her with gentle affection -- the movement revealing perhaps a little of the dark scar that rings his neck, beneath the red silk neckerchief he's knotted around it. ]

You are not alone in that, Alicent.

[ She would be third on the list, at least, and far from the worst. Louis and Lestat have both left their loving marks on his body and soul -- some requested, others not. But that is in the past; he has learned how to leave those things behind in order to move forward. They're alike in that, the two of them.

He lifts his own hand -- the one adorned with rings -- to touch her wrist, lightly. Not to ask her to stop touching him, but to return the gesture, tracing over the delicate tributaries of her veins.
]

You drank from him. He drank from me. And so we are connected. You have my blood within your body as well as on your hands. Blood of my blood. Blood of my child. Blood of my maker.
Edited (wait I can make it more insane) 2025-03-18 16:32 (UTC)
nishtha: (pic#17203750)

[personal profile] nishtha 2025-03-21 11:16 am (UTC)(link)
[ For a few significant moments, Armand allows himself to feel the urge to clutch at her wrist and bring it to his mouth, to swallow down whatever faint remains of Daniel linger in her blood. He would drink and drink until he was full and she was empty, taking her memories for his own, her fragile strength and her resolve and her broken heart. She would live on in him and he would have a little more of the part of himself he's lost, the part that Daniel took with him, leaving Armand fractured and incomplete.

But he doesn't do it. Instead, he lowers his hand back to his lap, lets her hold his jaw like a benediction and looks up into her eyes. With deliberate intention, he turns his face in her hand so he can brush his lips over the heel of her palm before speaking again.
]

Then we are equals, Alicent.

[ Would she be as happy to descend to him as she might be to draw him up to her? That remains to be seen. ]

Please, be seated. I have a gift for you.
nishtha: (pic#17235178)

[personal profile] nishtha 2025-03-23 12:25 pm (UTC)(link)
For mercy. [ A gentle correction, delivered with a look that suggests he hasn't missed the way her heart constricts over the memory, and is grateful for it. Still, there's a lingering twist to his mouth, almost rueful. Willing to be self-deprecating about it in response to her dry humor. ]

Compassion for a wretched, dying creature, from the hand of a queen. More than poor Amadeo could ever have asked for. Nevertheless -- [ He waves his hand; the ribbon on the box on the table in front of Alicent unties itself and unspools, the lid sliding to one side. Showing off his restored power. Hopelessly melodramatic. Daniel would have rolled his eyes.

In the box, small treasures: a grey button-down shirt; a soft cotton Guns 'N' Roses t-shirt, rescued from the maids before they could wash it, that still carries a faint scent of sweat and cigarette smoke and blood. And, most precious of all, a notebook full of Daniel's spiky handwriting -- mostly observations on the manor, speculation about the nature of the Balfours, and occasional notes to remember. Little personal details, the efforts of his hands. Nothing of Armand himself, or Louis and Lestat. Some secrets are still theirs.

Armand's expression is troubled, complex, distress telling in the way he fiddles his thumbnail under the nails of his fingers. This is more than he's offered anyone, even Louis, who had loved Daniel too. But not in the way Alicent seemed to have loved him. Uncomplicated, innocent of conspiracy or vampiric entanglements.

Jaw working, Armand swallows, reaching for a glass.
]

He would have wanted you to have something.
nishtha: (pic#17340511)

[personal profile] nishtha 2025-03-28 01:49 pm (UTC)(link)
[ The sight of her breaking is almost enough to break Armand, cracking him open all along the fault lines so recently excised in his heart and soul. His hand trembles as he lifts his glass to his mouth with one hand, trying to drown the feeling in bland lukewarm blood. It doesn't work; when he looks back up at her, at her hands clutching Daniel's notebook, his eyes glitter and swim with bloodied tears.

Her fingers are warm on his cold skin. He turns his hand underneath hers to take them, gently, the sympathetic grip of a marble statue, of a creature who shouldn't know grief or heartbreak.

He blinks, eyelashes wet. A pinkish tear rolls down his cheek. In her mind, in his own heart, he remembers Daniel.
]

It's not enough. [ The truth that they both know. Nothing will be enough. But they must hold on to what they're given, the two of them. He takes a small breath and looks down at their joined hands. ]

He loved you very much. You made him feel.. young. Normal. A man, loving a woman.