"All those laws, and nobody bothered to outline 'who to eat'?"
That's funny, for some reason. Daniel wrinkles his nose though a quiet laugh. "Actually— no, that makes sense. Those laws are morals handed down on high from someone, or something, else. No room for encouraging penitents to make their own independent moral judgements. But still something of an oversight in the machine."
It's a nice night out. They pass a news stand, a hot dog cart. Daniel thinks it's odd that news stands have survived, but he thinks the few that remain are vanity projects. Adding to a culture, not making a profit. Hot dogs don't smell like anything anymore, meanwhile.
"Anyway, I know that's me prevaricating. Gardening. I kinda like that."
It makes him think of Armand's tree, and a question he hasn't asked yet. Still not yet. Biding his time.
"Is my judgement my own? How much of a product am I versus an independent entity, when it comes to a moral compass? How I was raised, by who, the things I've experienced. How long do I have to live, sectioned off from those foundational influences, to manifest a fully unique moral perspective?"
The book beneath his arm gravitates to being held against his belly, arms crossing comfortably as they go. Armand, having shrugged at all those laws—they should have committed to more, Christianity got away with ten of them—and denying outward sign of pleasure for praise, listens to the rest.
Thinks of being a product. Of being raised, sectioned off, manifested. The pavement underfoot takes on a new kind of quality, like he is simply rolling the whole earth beneath him, pushed along by the press of the toe of his shoe, and he is staying in place.
A vicious and sudden thought: Daniel is laying a trap for him. Only rhetorical, maybe, but a trap nonetheless. But maybe he isn't. He can't read his mind. He can't know.
"Weeds are no more or less evil than the bed of flowers," Armand says, from somewhere slightly behind himself, walking several paces back, it feels like. "And you know them when you see them."
A retreat, from philosophy to metaphor. Embarrassing.
Not every conversational turn is a hit. Daniel is better at asking questions and dissecting the answers later than he is at idle chatter— and better at that than philosophy, too, despite whatever he happens to academically know. He notes the slightly withdraw, but doesn't feel slighted or nervous; impervious to hurt feelings, when it comes to talking. He does so much of it, and it's usually so combative.
"Hey, that's good enough for congress and pornography," he says, clueless of Armand's internal paranoia. Maybe the trap was letting Daniel Molloy talk at all.
"If I'm being honest—"
Wouldn't it be nice if he wasn't? If he could shut up for a minute.
"—I don't know where I stand on morality and judgement, concerning dinner. I trust myself, mostly. I've been calling a lot of quick shots, though, and not following up on whether or not they were the right ones. I can admit that's out of wilful ignorance. I don't want to feel bad about it. So." So. "The best way is to be mindful up front, probably."
The conversation shifts, moves on. The world turns normally. The moment is over.
And Daniel Molloy talking in itself is no prison, even if Armand finds he has to tune back in a little. "Probably," Armand says. Internally guarded, still, more watchful of the possible curves and loops of the conversation ahead of then. Mindful up front. "I've seen many vampires fail to engage with the question at all, or give up after a decade or so."
He could speak a little of Louis, his mindfulness to the point of compulsion, and Armand has a lot of data, but he doesn't feel like it. Doesn't wish to evoke him now.
"I think there is no law pertaining the selecting because it will always vary. The bearable thing," treating himself to a callback. "The pleasurable thing. Do you find yourself hesitating, in the moment?"
Maybe: someday, Daniel will figure out more about what those moments are. Someday, Armand will feel comfortable telling him.
Maybe.
"Sometimes. It's been—" a movement with his hand, up and down, like a rollercoaster, or an unsteady sea. "The out of control desperation at first, and then overthinking how I'm going to get away with anything, after. There are a lot of needles to be threaded. Things to think about. Amazon not selling you blenders."
A callback of his own. Without realizing it, Daniel fails to evoke Louis. That exchange was only theirs.
"How high does 'the pleasurable thing' rank for you, when you choose?"
But then, what else is a conversation. Isn't the best sort of interview a lot like one of those? Armand holds onto his answer for a moment, considering its value, considering where its going, what flaw Daniel might find in it, what criticism might be levied his way, whether he would find the kind of pleasure in it he has before or if it would serve to wall them off from one another. But also, who cares.
"The pleasure is derived from satisfaction," after a moment. "Removing certain kinds of people from the world, that being, the recklessly powerful who answer to none but themselves. Passively and actively harmful to the world's state of affairs. Removing them encourages a different global trajectory. Or so I like to imagine."
It will take longer than thirty odd years to prove itself. But he's patient when it comes to his projects.
"And," because he isn't a saint, getting ahead of it, "it brings me pleasure to watch them try to survive, and give up the effort. If they could run that little bit faster, draw more air into their lungs. If they were stronger, or more resilient, all the things they believe they are."
He had told Madeleine something like this: all humans think they're the exception.
He could catch on 'the recklessly powerful who answer to none but themselves', really dig in. But this isn't an interview. Instead, it's Or so I like to imagine.
Could be that he is circling back, ever so slowly, to feeling like an asshole for asking Armand if he even likes art. Or, no. Daniel won't feel like an asshole. Takes more than that. More like a recognition that it was a stupid question. Starting to sift through seeing to understanding. A grain of sad in a fucking desert, though.
"Subtle notes of sadism," he observes, but there's an upbeat, game tone to his voice that suggests they are leaving Philosophy Hour and entering Fuck Around Hour. Just a little poke. They're having fun. Did Armand have any fun, then? What did he enjoy, 'sometimes'?
"So,"
doing this a lot, the both of them
"You didn't always run a Millionaire Survivor screening event to pick. Think you can do it right now? Still?"
"Are you attempting to switch our assigned roles?"
Maker and fledgling. Can, and will, Armand choose a sacrificial lamb for dinner? Does he think he can? He has warmed enough to slip a sidelong glance as he says this. Poking back. "Or is this my teaching moment?"
Quietly, a slight unfurling of his consciousness. A broadening radius of awareness, past the street they are in, past the block they are on. He has not spoken yet of his back up method in choosing the ones who want to die, at least a little bit, and reflexively, he browses around for hints of despair amongst the many.
A little like searching out the weak in a herd, psychologically on the fringes of things. Makes his task all the simpler.
Assigned roles. Neatly arranged. Roles have such a strong presence in Armand's life, it seems, and Daniel wonders how exactly he feels about this one. If Daniel should rock the boat and disturb the need for them at all, or if—
It's bleak to think of. Slavery, a fucking cult. Collapsing under the weight of maitre over and over. Is maker easier. Just Daniel, just one arrogant journalist. Does he want it to be easier for Armand, on that note? Does he want to learn from someone who directed the play that executed Claudia and Madeleine? Does he care? He didn't know them. Is he curious? He could find an angle. Within Armand, there seems to be a fucking limitless number of angles and mysteries to untangle. They'll probably all burn him.
"I'm daring you," is what he ends up saying, tipping caution off a ledge. He wants to be angry at him. He wants to understand him. He wants every corrosive angle. How fucking awful.
"I could learn, too. Probably. Maybe. It's been a while since I've been a student."
There is something to it, the revulsion of such a permanent allocation. The terrible power and influence a maker wields. That he would wield. That his own had wielded. The revulsion his own had had of him, that he does not feel towards Daniel, but perhaps will. Perhaps in time, as time stretches on and on.
But it's not always so. He has seen a dozen of these manifestations within his coven, without it, pairs of maker and fledgling, but those ones were not him. Were not Daniel.
Sharper, this next prod.
"I can tell," he says, a gentler batting back of the comment. "How well have you practiced the mind gift?"
"Uh huh." A bit like Yeah, but more teasing. Something he said to his (longsuffering) students, Never too old to be a student, to learn more, and Daniel had hated it. Hated being that person. A lifelong problem with authority makes him feel like a fucking tool whenever he's in a position of power, but more than that, it felt impossible to actually live any truth with that line. Dying. Definitely too old.
Not anymore.
So.
"I've made my assistant get me coffee a few times," he says, which betrays the fact that he's been practicing at all, as he no longer drinks coffee. "But she would anyway if I asked. Once in a while, 'Stop' will work on someone."
Someone that he's eating. This feels strange to talk about. Armand is so, so good at that gift. Which he knows intimately.
Armand is not a teacher. He has never felt the impulse, and teaching is an impulse. A skill, a personality. Maybe Daniel has felt like a tool for it in the past, maybe he hated it completely, maybe something about it drew him in. An empathetic ideal, to pass along the lesson, whether you believe it anymore or not.
But no, Armand has been director, dictator, and for longer than that, a symbol of something, and has he had conviction in those things, even then? Did he ever guide the vampires beneath him, or simply set the terms and wait? How well did he teach Louis anything that wasn't, also, his own way of leveraging an advantage? What did Lestat do with his lessons, but run off with them?
But Daniel is here, listening to him. Daniel is here because Armand put him here. A punishment.
"Directives are useful," he says. "But not everything. Your assistant will obey you because she's your assistant. Your prey will stop, because part of them would like to as well."
A nod—let's cross here. Through the gap in the traffic.
"But we're speaking of selection, not just subdual. I know in the interview, there was some talk of seeking the sin. Weaknesses. I can show you something else."
He walks after him, listening, and compartmentalizing. Watching the decisions he's making and putting pins in them. As if perhaps he's planning a revised autobiography, preparing to explain himself. Physician, heal thyself; insufferably combative investigative journalist, interrogate thyself.
(A Biblical quote regarded as being about criticizing of hypocrisy. Maybe his train of thought should give it a rest.)
"I'm listening."
It's his job. Ha ha. But he sounds more open here, less hostile. They aren't opponents sitting across a table from each other— Armand has made him something else. Put this strange obligation between them; Armand, obligated to explain, Daniel, obligated to hear.
He thinks they're both learning. Armand hasn't done this before, he's certain. Because even if he's ever helped a 'young' vampire before, it was never a vampire whose mind he couldn't read. Who he created.
Across the street, and over a block. A little park in the middle of the city.
The ways he has helped fledglings who stumble into his hands has been different. Show them how to hide, how to behave, and then burn them to nothing if they refuse. If they fail to adapt, or fail to break it all like a single one of them had managed. If he had burned Lestat too, would he be living, still, in squalor beneath the streets of modern Paris? Probably not. Part of Lestat's charm had been the impossibility of such a thing as the world became brighter and brighter.
Pointless. They arrive at a park bench, and Armand sits, making room for Daniel to sit along beside him. He doesn't feel nervous for this most unusual lesson, detached from the possibility. They adapt or they fail. They change him or they don't. And Daniel already has.
"That building," he says, a nod. Across the way, a tall apartment complex, midrange rentals, some permanent residencies. "Focus on it like a single object. You'll sift from the rest of the world the minds within it."
A park bench in New York. They're really doing the thing.
"Okay," Daniel says. He can do that. Well. He can do the focus part of it, who knows about the rest. But he's very curious about all this, and the mental powers aspect of this life are undoubtedly the thing he finds most alluring. Parts defensive, never to be fucked with that way again, and parts because he already has a knack for getting into people.
Perverse to have a lesson from this person, considering.
He lets it all go. A slow breath in, and out, as he stares at the building. Considers the shape of it and the people inside. Allows everything else to become unfocused; he slips away from the crush of human minds milling around the city, and glances into the bright spots within the bottle of the apartment complex.
Nothing else. Just the building. And, aha, Armand beside him.
"A little over one hundred souls, by my estimate. As you grow, as you practice, you can broaden the amount of data you're willing to receive without doing yourself harm. In a high density city like this, you needn't reach further than a block to find a viable mark. But, for now, a building."
The book is kept balanced on his lap, Armand gazing up at the structure, casting out his awareness. There is no chance of overlap. They will not be able to feel each other drifting over the same minds. They will make do.
Armand has, for now, disconnected from any sense of appropriateness. Who they are to each other, the things they have done—his sins, titanically outweighing the ways Daniel has transgressed against him, and the ways in which those sins were done. It doesn't matter. Daniel has dared him.
"I find the one who can't stand to be in the place they are in," eventually. "Or the one who thinks they can never leave it. I take my time, doing it. And then I invite them out."
Doing yourself harm. Louis describing Lestat with blood streaming out of his ears. Notes, notes. Daniel observes. He can't see into Armand's head, but he can, if he tries, perceive what he's doing outside of it. Difficult to fix his awareness on, like a psychic magic eye picture.
But he's patient. Attentive. Curious about it, and eager to learn this even as it feels like a sinister caress against nerves left raw by the past so recently remembered. Daniel leans with his elbows on his knees (posture made youthful again, almost looking like a young man wearing a costume). Armand wants his victims to ask for it.
Is this 'sin', to be sought? Or is it just another kind of vigilantism? Mercy? If you must kill, might as well kill those who deserve death. What about those who want it? I like my life, from 1973, from an hour ago. Daniel watches Armand weave this spell of a lure, and his unease blooms into determination. No one will be able to pull anything like that on him again. No one will do this to him. He'll see it from now on.
Another steadying breath. He looks through these minds, careful, gentle.
There's no rush. Dawn is miles away. And there is plenty to listen to.
Idle thoughts, dreams, murmured conversation, the buzz of the television, the single mother pacing a room anxiously while she tries to get her crying infant to sleep and not disturb her neighbours, disturbed neighbours, a dog scratching at a bathroom door, one couple making perfunctory love, a woman practicing her acoustic guitar, and
come to me
a lonely soul. Watching television, preoccupied with past bad decisions, a recent breakup, a job he doesn't want. He is a little nexus of ordinary melancholia, this man. The stress of a decent, even remarkable salary and rising costs of living. He knows he has to downsize. Pare down, cut down, slice and slice.
"Have you found him?" Armand inquires. He cannot direct Daniel's focus, but he has his own set on this mortal, gently encouraging this unspooling of despair, watching it grow colder and colder, denser and darker.
The man decides he has to get out of his head, out of his apartment, or he'll go nuts.
A siren luring sailors to the rocks. He can see Armand that way: ethereal, closer to divinity than humanity, talons like a predatory bird, delicate, decorative feathers. Something beautiful and something wrong. A haunting, alluring voice that wants you to die. Get out of the apartment. Sail into the rocks. It's better. It's what you want.
A mother thinking of smothering her infant. A guy shaking with post-rage adrenaline, terrified of what he just did to his girlfriend. Somebody who's voting conservative and leaving anonymous hate speech on social media. And, yes, a man with a bad job and a recent ex.
"Your guy? Yeah."
The temptation is there to interfere. He wonders if Armand can tell— even if just because it would be typical of Daniel to shove his fingers in where they shouldn't go, ask a mean, biting question. But here maybe there'd be a nudge. Yeah, but tomorrow will be fine. Hasn't he been this guy? Wouldn't he still be this guy, if not for Louis?
He doesn't push. He watches. Armand can do this to mortals, and to other vampires. Daniel wants to see it.
What is a victim of a vampire's appetite if not a human on a bad day?
Armand is aware of the ways Daniel could dissect this moment, any moment, in the way he is aware of gravity, of the sky above them. It is simply a constant. Daniel chooses not to and Armand nods once at the words he says instead, acknowledgment. They can watch together as the man throws on a jacket, heads for the elevator, slips down the spine of the building.
The mother with her child does not answer his call, preoccupied with her own ill-feeling, her awful sense of responsibility. The man, enraged with his woman and himself, does not listen for the quiet being promised. Armand doesn't offer it to them.
Out the front doors of the building, the man turns a corner. The bodega for smokes, he is thinking. Then, Daniel will probably be able to tell, secondhand, the way he changes his mind: no, let's go for a walk.
Little nudges like a psychic sheep dog. It's interesting. A silent interrogation, carefully moving a person's whole mental state around to find the answer being shielded. There's a keen familiarity in it. Conversational fencing is similar.
Armand accused Daniel's work of being no different than killing. The connection is instantaneous, a tiny, clear spark of a reveal. Oh.
"You're the boss, boss."
Motherfucker. There's a ruefulness in his voice. No mind-reading, but he wonders if Armand will connect what he's connected, or if he's too out of practice to regular-read. He gets up when his maker does, and walks with him, to—? Who's leading, here, what's the lure?
The lure: the man starts seeking somewhere quiet. A suggestion, like calm black water, like when he and his friends would go to the seaside back home in Maryland. It might put him at ease.
And the way Armand can't read Daniel is beginning to madden him.
But they walk. It's an ambitious walk, nothing this mortal would seek to accomplish on his own if he were in his right mind, if he weren't following an impulse. He will seek the water and realise there is no coming back to the things that made him happy, and this is where selection is subdual. They will drink his blood, slip his body into those black waters. The hunt will be over.
Would it be more fun, if it was a chase?
"We have some time to kill," comes out a little sharp. Probably not a purposeful vampire joke. "If you would like to speak your mind."
Time to kill. Blenders. Armand's a funny guy, though he doesn't seem to know it. The sharpness is also funny, in its way, and Daniel has to put a conscious effort in not to smile. Aware that Armand has noticed him processing something, and that, apparently, Armand can't begin to guess. A total lack of ability to read people? Or just Daniel?
He considers the amount of time Armand spent as a mortal compared to the length of time he's been alive. Even if Armand had been a very keen observer, had honed his ability to predict people as a self-defense mechanism like many abuse victims do, it's been centuries since he's had to bother with it. Daniel makes a note of it. Cheat less. Don't lose this. Fuck eating a mortal meal once a week, practice humanity by continuing to be good at poker without telepathy.
But Armand asks, and this strikes Daniel as a good thing. Even with the edge. He's being invited to share, to engage. And so: he does.
"Back in Dubai." Striking this match. Talking about then, out loud and deliberate, instead of alluding. "When you were still wearing the costume. You accused me, in my capacity as a journalist, of doing the same thing as killing. Got a little dramatic. But I see what you meant, now. You were looking at it like this, weren't you?"
Armand listens, and does so by watching Daniel as they walk rather than playing at aloof. Back in Dubai, and the natural twinge towards anxiety is matched only by his interest in the thread being taken back up. Masochistic, maybe. He has his tendencies.
A hooded lowering of his eyes before his focus goes back to where they're going.
"I wanted to provoke you. You were being judgmental."
He pauses for the span of a step or two, and then bids, "Elaborate," because it hadn't been that simple, either. Maybe Daniel sees more of himself in this than Armand did in Daniel's work.
A note of interest, about provocation, and judgement. Daniel gives him a look, but doesn't follow up. (Yet?) Might be fun to dissect who was being provocative because it was his job, and who was being judgemental. Another kind of conversational fencing match.
One thing at a time.
"When you want to interview somebody and make it real, get to the truth of why you're there, you have to get past the first answer, and the second answer, and the third. You have to redirect and argue and provoke until you get to the truth. Usually it's not because people are lying to you. They're lying to themselves, or they just don't realize they aren't going far enough. Nobody wants to say the embarrassing thing, the worst thing. You do have to talk them up to the ledge, and then get them to walk off of it. Whether it's in confession or anger."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
That's funny, for some reason. Daniel wrinkles his nose though a quiet laugh. "Actually— no, that makes sense. Those laws are morals handed down on high from someone, or something, else. No room for encouraging penitents to make their own independent moral judgements. But still something of an oversight in the machine."
It's a nice night out. They pass a news stand, a hot dog cart. Daniel thinks it's odd that news stands have survived, but he thinks the few that remain are vanity projects. Adding to a culture, not making a profit. Hot dogs don't smell like anything anymore, meanwhile.
"Anyway, I know that's me prevaricating. Gardening. I kinda like that."
It makes him think of Armand's tree, and a question he hasn't asked yet. Still not yet. Biding his time.
"Is my judgement my own? How much of a product am I versus an independent entity, when it comes to a moral compass? How I was raised, by who, the things I've experienced. How long do I have to live, sectioned off from those foundational influences, to manifest a fully unique moral perspective?"
no subject
Thinks of being a product. Of being raised, sectioned off, manifested. The pavement underfoot takes on a new kind of quality, like he is simply rolling the whole earth beneath him, pushed along by the press of the toe of his shoe, and he is staying in place.
A vicious and sudden thought: Daniel is laying a trap for him. Only rhetorical, maybe, but a trap nonetheless. But maybe he isn't. He can't read his mind. He can't know.
"Weeds are no more or less evil than the bed of flowers," Armand says, from somewhere slightly behind himself, walking several paces back, it feels like. "And you know them when you see them."
A retreat, from philosophy to metaphor. Embarrassing.
no subject
"Hey, that's good enough for congress and pornography," he says, clueless of Armand's internal paranoia. Maybe the trap was letting Daniel Molloy talk at all.
"If I'm being honest—"
Wouldn't it be nice if he wasn't? If he could shut up for a minute.
"—I don't know where I stand on morality and judgement, concerning dinner. I trust myself, mostly. I've been calling a lot of quick shots, though, and not following up on whether or not they were the right ones. I can admit that's out of wilful ignorance. I don't want to feel bad about it. So." So. "The best way is to be mindful up front, probably."
no subject
And Daniel Molloy talking in itself is no prison, even if Armand finds he has to tune back in a little. "Probably," Armand says. Internally guarded, still, more watchful of the possible curves and loops of the conversation ahead of then. Mindful up front. "I've seen many vampires fail to engage with the question at all, or give up after a decade or so."
He could speak a little of Louis, his mindfulness to the point of compulsion, and Armand has a lot of data, but he doesn't feel like it. Doesn't wish to evoke him now.
"I think there is no law pertaining the selecting because it will always vary. The bearable thing," treating himself to a callback. "The pleasurable thing. Do you find yourself hesitating, in the moment?"
no subject
Maybe.
"Sometimes. It's been—" a movement with his hand, up and down, like a rollercoaster, or an unsteady sea. "The out of control desperation at first, and then overthinking how I'm going to get away with anything, after. There are a lot of needles to be threaded. Things to think about. Amazon not selling you blenders."
A callback of his own. Without realizing it, Daniel fails to evoke Louis. That exchange was only theirs.
"How high does 'the pleasurable thing' rank for you, when you choose?"
no subject
But then, what else is a conversation. Isn't the best sort of interview a lot like one of those? Armand holds onto his answer for a moment, considering its value, considering where its going, what flaw Daniel might find in it, what criticism might be levied his way, whether he would find the kind of pleasure in it he has before or if it would serve to wall them off from one another. But also, who cares.
"The pleasure is derived from satisfaction," after a moment. "Removing certain kinds of people from the world, that being, the recklessly powerful who answer to none but themselves. Passively and actively harmful to the world's state of affairs. Removing them encourages a different global trajectory. Or so I like to imagine."
It will take longer than thirty odd years to prove itself. But he's patient when it comes to his projects.
"And," because he isn't a saint, getting ahead of it, "it brings me pleasure to watch them try to survive, and give up the effort. If they could run that little bit faster, draw more air into their lungs. If they were stronger, or more resilient, all the things they believe they are."
He had told Madeleine something like this: all humans think they're the exception.
"So, to answer your question: somewhat."
no subject
Could be that he is circling back, ever so slowly, to feeling like an asshole for asking Armand if he even likes art. Or, no. Daniel won't feel like an asshole. Takes more than that. More like a recognition that it was a stupid question. Starting to sift through seeing to understanding. A grain of sad in a fucking desert, though.
"Subtle notes of sadism," he observes, but there's an upbeat, game tone to his voice that suggests they are leaving Philosophy Hour and entering Fuck Around Hour. Just a little poke. They're having fun. Did Armand have any fun, then? What did he enjoy, 'sometimes'?
"So,"
doing this a lot, the both of them
"You didn't always run a Millionaire Survivor screening event to pick. Think you can do it right now? Still?"
no subject
Maker and fledgling. Can, and will, Armand choose a sacrificial lamb for dinner? Does he think he can? He has warmed enough to slip a sidelong glance as he says this. Poking back. "Or is this my teaching moment?"
Quietly, a slight unfurling of his consciousness. A broadening radius of awareness, past the street they are in, past the block they are on. He has not spoken yet of his back up method in choosing the ones who want to die, at least a little bit, and reflexively, he browses around for hints of despair amongst the many.
A little like searching out the weak in a herd, psychologically on the fringes of things. Makes his task all the simpler.
no subject
It's bleak to think of. Slavery, a fucking cult. Collapsing under the weight of maitre over and over. Is maker easier. Just Daniel, just one arrogant journalist. Does he want it to be easier for Armand, on that note? Does he want to learn from someone who directed the play that executed Claudia and Madeleine? Does he care? He didn't know them. Is he curious? He could find an angle. Within Armand, there seems to be a fucking limitless number of angles and mysteries to untangle. They'll probably all burn him.
"I'm daring you," is what he ends up saying, tipping caution off a ledge. He wants to be angry at him. He wants to understand him. He wants every corrosive angle. How fucking awful.
"I could learn, too. Probably. Maybe. It's been a while since I've been a student."
no subject
But it's not always so. He has seen a dozen of these manifestations within his coven, without it, pairs of maker and fledgling, but those ones were not him. Were not Daniel.
Sharper, this next prod.
"I can tell," he says, a gentler batting back of the comment. "How well have you practiced the mind gift?"
no subject
Not anymore.
So.
"I've made my assistant get me coffee a few times," he says, which betrays the fact that he's been practicing at all, as he no longer drinks coffee. "But she would anyway if I asked. Once in a while, 'Stop' will work on someone."
Someone that he's eating. This feels strange to talk about. Armand is so, so good at that gift. Which he knows intimately.
no subject
But no, Armand has been director, dictator, and for longer than that, a symbol of something, and has he had conviction in those things, even then? Did he ever guide the vampires beneath him, or simply set the terms and wait? How well did he teach Louis anything that wasn't, also, his own way of leveraging an advantage? What did Lestat do with his lessons, but run off with them?
But Daniel is here, listening to him. Daniel is here because Armand put him here. A punishment.
"Directives are useful," he says. "But not everything. Your assistant will obey you because she's your assistant. Your prey will stop, because part of them would like to as well."
A nod—let's cross here. Through the gap in the traffic.
"But we're speaking of selection, not just subdual. I know in the interview, there was some talk of seeking the sin. Weaknesses. I can show you something else."
no subject
(A Biblical quote regarded as being about criticizing of hypocrisy. Maybe his train of thought should give it a rest.)
"I'm listening."
It's his job. Ha ha. But he sounds more open here, less hostile. They aren't opponents sitting across a table from each other— Armand has made him something else. Put this strange obligation between them; Armand, obligated to explain, Daniel, obligated to hear.
He thinks they're both learning. Armand hasn't done this before, he's certain. Because even if he's ever helped a 'young' vampire before, it was never a vampire whose mind he couldn't read. Who he created.
no subject
The ways he has helped fledglings who stumble into his hands has been different. Show them how to hide, how to behave, and then burn them to nothing if they refuse. If they fail to adapt, or fail to break it all like a single one of them had managed. If he had burned Lestat too, would he be living, still, in squalor beneath the streets of modern Paris? Probably not. Part of Lestat's charm had been the impossibility of such a thing as the world became brighter and brighter.
Pointless. They arrive at a park bench, and Armand sits, making room for Daniel to sit along beside him. He doesn't feel nervous for this most unusual lesson, detached from the possibility. They adapt or they fail. They change him or they don't. And Daniel already has.
"That building," he says, a nod. Across the way, a tall apartment complex, midrange rentals, some permanent residencies. "Focus on it like a single object. You'll sift from the rest of the world the minds within it."
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"Okay," Daniel says. He can do that. Well. He can do the focus part of it, who knows about the rest. But he's very curious about all this, and the mental powers aspect of this life are undoubtedly the thing he finds most alluring. Parts defensive, never to be fucked with that way again, and parts because he already has a knack for getting into people.
Perverse to have a lesson from this person, considering.
He lets it all go. A slow breath in, and out, as he stares at the building. Considers the shape of it and the people inside. Allows everything else to become unfocused; he slips away from the crush of human minds milling around the city, and glances into the bright spots within the bottle of the apartment complex.
Nothing else. Just the building. And, aha, Armand beside him.
Again, quieter, decisive: "Okay."
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The book is kept balanced on his lap, Armand gazing up at the structure, casting out his awareness. There is no chance of overlap. They will not be able to feel each other drifting over the same minds. They will make do.
Armand has, for now, disconnected from any sense of appropriateness. Who they are to each other, the things they have done—his sins, titanically outweighing the ways Daniel has transgressed against him, and the ways in which those sins were done. It doesn't matter. Daniel has dared him.
"I find the one who can't stand to be in the place they are in," eventually. "Or the one who thinks they can never leave it. I take my time, doing it. And then I invite them out."
That old refrain. Come to me.
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But he's patient. Attentive. Curious about it, and eager to learn this even as it feels like a sinister caress against nerves left raw by the past so recently remembered. Daniel leans with his elbows on his knees (posture made youthful again, almost looking like a young man wearing a costume). Armand wants his victims to ask for it.
Is this 'sin', to be sought? Or is it just another kind of vigilantism? Mercy? If you must kill, might as well kill those who deserve death. What about those who want it? I like my life, from 1973, from an hour ago. Daniel watches Armand weave this spell of a lure, and his unease blooms into determination. No one will be able to pull anything like that on him again. No one will do this to him. He'll see it from now on.
Another steadying breath. He looks through these minds, careful, gentle.
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Idle thoughts, dreams, murmured conversation, the buzz of the television, the single mother pacing a room anxiously while she tries to get her crying infant to sleep and not disturb her neighbours, disturbed neighbours, a dog scratching at a bathroom door, one couple making perfunctory love, a woman practicing her acoustic guitar, and
come to me
a lonely soul. Watching television, preoccupied with past bad decisions, a recent breakup, a job he doesn't want. He is a little nexus of ordinary melancholia, this man. The stress of a decent, even remarkable salary and rising costs of living. He knows he has to downsize. Pare down, cut down, slice and slice.
"Have you found him?" Armand inquires. He cannot direct Daniel's focus, but he has his own set on this mortal, gently encouraging this unspooling of despair, watching it grow colder and colder, denser and darker.
The man decides he has to get out of his head, out of his apartment, or he'll go nuts.
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A mother thinking of smothering her infant. A guy shaking with post-rage adrenaline, terrified of what he just did to his girlfriend. Somebody who's voting conservative and leaving anonymous hate speech on social media. And, yes, a man with a bad job and a recent ex.
"Your guy? Yeah."
The temptation is there to interfere. He wonders if Armand can tell— even if just because it would be typical of Daniel to shove his fingers in where they shouldn't go, ask a mean, biting question. But here maybe there'd be a nudge. Yeah, but tomorrow will be fine. Hasn't he been this guy? Wouldn't he still be this guy, if not for Louis?
He doesn't push. He watches. Armand can do this to mortals, and to other vampires. Daniel wants to see it.
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Armand is aware of the ways Daniel could dissect this moment, any moment, in the way he is aware of gravity, of the sky above them. It is simply a constant. Daniel chooses not to and Armand nods once at the words he says instead, acknowledgment. They can watch together as the man throws on a jacket, heads for the elevator, slips down the spine of the building.
The mother with her child does not answer his call, preoccupied with her own ill-feeling, her awful sense of responsibility. The man, enraged with his woman and himself, does not listen for the quiet being promised. Armand doesn't offer it to them.
Out the front doors of the building, the man turns a corner. The bodega for smokes, he is thinking. Then, Daniel will probably be able to tell, secondhand, the way he changes his mind: no, let's go for a walk.
"Shall we?" says Armand.
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Armand accused Daniel's work of being no different than killing. The connection is instantaneous, a tiny, clear spark of a reveal. Oh.
"You're the boss, boss."
Motherfucker. There's a ruefulness in his voice. No mind-reading, but he wonders if Armand will connect what he's connected, or if he's too out of practice to regular-read. He gets up when his maker does, and walks with him, to—? Who's leading, here, what's the lure?
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And the way Armand can't read Daniel is beginning to madden him.
But they walk. It's an ambitious walk, nothing this mortal would seek to accomplish on his own if he were in his right mind, if he weren't following an impulse. He will seek the water and realise there is no coming back to the things that made him happy, and this is where selection is subdual. They will drink his blood, slip his body into those black waters. The hunt will be over.
Would it be more fun, if it was a chase?
"We have some time to kill," comes out a little sharp. Probably not a purposeful vampire joke. "If you would like to speak your mind."
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He considers the amount of time Armand spent as a mortal compared to the length of time he's been alive. Even if Armand had been a very keen observer, had honed his ability to predict people as a self-defense mechanism like many abuse victims do, it's been centuries since he's had to bother with it. Daniel makes a note of it. Cheat less. Don't lose this. Fuck eating a mortal meal once a week, practice humanity by continuing to be good at poker without telepathy.
But Armand asks, and this strikes Daniel as a good thing. Even with the edge. He's being invited to share, to engage. And so: he does.
"Back in Dubai." Striking this match. Talking about then, out loud and deliberate, instead of alluding. "When you were still wearing the costume. You accused me, in my capacity as a journalist, of doing the same thing as killing. Got a little dramatic. But I see what you meant, now. You were looking at it like this, weren't you?"
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A hooded lowering of his eyes before his focus goes back to where they're going.
"I wanted to provoke you. You were being judgmental."
He pauses for the span of a step or two, and then bids, "Elaborate," because it hadn't been that simple, either. Maybe Daniel sees more of himself in this than Armand did in Daniel's work.
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A note of interest, about provocation, and judgement. Daniel gives him a look, but doesn't follow up. (Yet?) Might be fun to dissect who was being provocative because it was his job, and who was being judgemental. Another kind of conversational fencing match.
One thing at a time.
"When you want to interview somebody and make it real, get to the truth of why you're there, you have to get past the first answer, and the second answer, and the third. You have to redirect and argue and provoke until you get to the truth. Usually it's not because people are lying to you. They're lying to themselves, or they just don't realize they aren't going far enough. Nobody wants to say the embarrassing thing, the worst thing. You do have to talk them up to the ledge, and then get them to walk off of it. Whether it's in confession or anger."
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