The Player

by ugly_bad_good (JJPOR)

Summary:

The things we have to do to uphold the Masquerade…

Notes:

Written for the L.A. by Night Vamily Fan Fest 2021. Prompt: “The things we have to do to uphold the Masquerade…” As I write, Season 5 is bearing down upon us – I predict pain! L.A. by Night, Vampire: the Masquerade and these characters very definitely do not belong to me!

When he has sent Temple and the others on their way, Isaac sits alone for a moment in his tastefully cluttered office.  He looks around at the polished wood and leather, the gleaming brass, the mirrors and potted ferns.  He wistfully considers the industry awards and antique curiosities ranged on every ornate side table, the movie posters that hang in gilt frames upon every wall.

He is a collector by nature, by blood, an aesthete by instinct.  He craves beautiful things in a way any not of his clan simply could not understand, the same way he craves the hot red sustenance that fuels his immortality.  The same way the kine crave food and drink and air.

His senses drink up the treasures that surround him; eagerly, greedily.  An elegantly designed line, an exquisitely angled corner, a particular sheen when the warm lamplight hits a certain surface, the glint of a painted eye behind glass; all of these things calm him, soothe him, ease his aching Toreador heart and slow his racing mind.

And there is so much for his mind to race around.  More worries, more questions, piling up night after night. 

The invaders from beyond the ocean, they seem to have gone very quiet recently, but the Tower’s jackbooted thugs are back in force.  He does not know exactly what happened in San Francisco, and quite honestly, he is not sure he wants to know, but he knows the refugees from whatever it was are now crowding at his gates.  A Prince without a crown is looking to forge a new one, on his turf.  And they are not the only problem he faces.  Disturbing murmurs make their way to him with dizzying regularity, wars and rumours of wars.  The Inquisition’s zealots are waging their crusade again.  That mess in San Diego continues to run and run like the Ziegfeld Follies, just as tacky and twice as irritating.  Worse, there are mutterings these nights of the Duskborn, of the girl marked with the crescent moon, demented prophecies about the rise of the Red Star.  Threats gather like storm clouds on every horizon.

And pressing on his consciousness more than any of them, always there during his waking hours like the memory of a pulled tooth…

Sun-bleached stones shining bright in the darkness…

He feels the strange yearning more strongly every night, it sings in his very blood.  He remembers when he thought the Beast’s whisperings were the worst thing he had to guard against.  How quaint that seems now.

His collected mementos feed more than his desire for beauty.  They strengthen him.  They remind him of what it was to show up in this phony town with nothing more than a cardboard suitcase and ten bucks burning a hole in his pocket.  They remind him of how he fought, all the things he sacrificed, to become a player around these parts.

That poster over there was the first picture he ever put his own money into.  It flopped harder than a landed fish, but it taught him the things he needed to know to make sure the next one broke the box office wide open.  That brassy statuette, that was when he knew he’d made it.  There is a black and white photograph beside it, showing himself and a collection of similarly tuxedoed men posing after the ceremony, looking pleased as punch with their award. 

And after the ceremony was over…

The painting hanging behind his desk, the one that hides his private safe, looks like a reproduction of an old master.  It shows an angelic blond boy kneeling in an attitude of prayer, an ominous winged shadow looming over him.  Something about the brushwork, the composition of the figures, the muted colours, places it in a bygone age.  It is an original, however, and it is not even that old, except for its style.  Nobody else alive or undead knows that it is the last painting his sire ever completed.  His sire who ruled this city even if none knew that he did.  The painting reminds him of that night at the Sunset Tower Hotel, the afterparty he thought he was attending, which turned out to be anything but.

He glances back at the photograph, at the tuxedoes and cigars and self-satisfied expressions.  He still looks the same now as he did that night.  Those others in the picture are all long gone into the ground. 

And his sire?  Gone too, doomed by age and the potency of his blood, the same potency that now dooms his much younger childe to the same fate.

Toppled columns litter the floor of the empty amphitheatre, beneath the burning stars…

No.  He will not follow his sire across the sea, into the East.  He cannot.  Not yet.  Too much to do.  Too many things to nail down first.

His eyes alight on a signed headshot of Ash, poor long-lost Ash.  He has collected more than artworks and awards in his time in this modern Babylon.  And Ash was more beautiful than anything he had ever seen.  The photo is placed unobtrusively on a side table, disguised as an afterthought, but in fact it is one of the most precious items in the whole collection.  Only the painting, perhaps, is more dear to him.  It is another reminder, more recent and much more bitter than most of the others he keeps.  It reminds him of what happened when he let himself get soft, let his grip falter just for a little while, because he’d got old, got jaded.  Never again, he tells himself.  Not ever.

He needs to keep fighting.  However much the clouds may gather, however deeply the yearning bites, he has a legacy to uphold.  He has to keep his grip tight as a vice, until he can let go without the whole thing slipping through his fingers and shattering to pieces on the sidewalk. He is a survivor, and he is a survivor because he deals with problems, learns from setbacks, does not let them overwhelm him.

He leans across and stabs a decisive finger at the old-fashioned intercom on his satin-shined mahogany desk: “Fiona.  A moment of your time.”

“Of course, sir.”

He leans back in his huge, thickly padded chair until the rich leather creaks.  Compared to his other problems, the one Temple brought to him tonight is almost trite.  An unintroduced fledgling in his domain?  Is that all?  No harm done, just keep your fangs clean in future, kid.  Moving on…

But that is not the point.  That is not the danger.  The part he cannot move past or let go is the line she let slip, the one he keeps turning over and over in his head like the frustrated screenwriter he has occasionally been:

“We did a lot of research…”

He doesn’t blame the kid.  How else would she have reacted, given what has happened to her?  Even when she had the temerity to try and Awe him – him! – here, in his own haven, he’d found it more amusing than anything.  Kind of adorable, in fact.  We were all baby licks once, right, however old we might have been when we received the Embrace?  And not everyone has the kind of sire who wants to hang around and show them the ropes, teach them what will fly and what will crash and burn.  Or keep them like a porcelain doll and dress them and pose them and pull their strings forevermore, as the case may be.

Awe.  He shakes his head as he sits there, almost laughs out loud.  That sort of chutzpah will get you far in this town, kid, provided you survive your first couple of years swimming with the sharks.

Hopefully her new coterie will be able to help her with that, to wise her up fast, although considering some of the things they occasionally get up to themselves… First things first; let the Witch find out exactly what the deal is with young Annabelle, how she came to where she is.  Proceed from there.

Meanwhile…

The night air is heavy with the scent of blossoms.  A voice whispers from the dry soil beneath his feet…

Not yet.  Not yet.

Just because he kind of likes the kid, despite himself, it doesn’t mean she hasn’t left a mess.  A mess he needs to deal with right now, because he is the Baron.  That is what the Baron does.

“We did a lot of research…”

We.

He looks at Ash again, and remembers the consequences of the only time he has ever allowed himself to forget that fundamental truth.  He bares his fangs, almost snarling in anger.  Anger at himself.

Fiona appears an instant later, through the upholstered connecting door to her own office next door.  When he stepped through to place his call to the Observatory earlier, he told her to listen in on the rest of the messy conversation with Temple, his coterie mates and their new charge.  He may not trust her these nights, but he is not stupid enough to dismiss her insights.  Or to miss an opportunity to stoke her resentment towards his other leading underling.  Divide and rule is not just for Ventrue.

“So, what did you make of that?” he asks her, not bothering to keep up the Old Hollywood charm he lays on those who are not part of his inner circle, or alternatively those who he actually likes.

“A mess,” she opines, like the teacher’s pet, but with just that glint of insolence.  He has indeed collected more than artworks and awards in his time.  She was one of his foundlings, once, before he realised she wanted more than he was willing to grant.

“A mess,” he echoes, nodding along, eyeing her coldly.  “You can say that again.  A new fledgling, left to run wild in Hollywood for more than a week?  Doing all kinds of cockamamie things, I’m led to believe, for nine nights straight?  And I’m only finding out about it now?  From Victor Temple? What exactly do I pay our sweepers for?”

“Well, sir, you don’t pay them,” she interjects, before evidently seeing the expression on his face and deciding now is not the time.  “They’ll be chastised,” she assures him.

“I hope so.”  He pauses.  “Nothing too strong.  Just put the fear of God into them.”  He knows she is good at that.  “And then get them on this…Annabelle, immediately.  Run down her contacts.  We need to find out if she talked to anyone before our people found her.”

We.

“And if she has,” he adds, “I want it dealt with.  Tonight.”

Fiona gives him that feline half-smile that always sets his alarm bells tingling.  If he was still alive, it would make his blood run cold and the hairs on his neck stand up straight.  Yes, she was one of his foundlings, like Velvet, like Nelli, like the Witch.  Not like Ash; none of them were like Ash.  He was a friend to her when she was down, offered his open hand to help her up, offered her his protection, just as he had with the others.  And she had been useful to him in turn.  That was how this town worked, how the whole world went around when you got down to it.  Fiona, though…  He had slowly realised how much she resented the pulled-out chairs, the opened doors, the bunches of flowers, even if he did not quite understand why.  Velvet had never reacted like that, nor had Nelli, and the Witch…well, she was the Witch, and liked things kept strictly business.  He could respect that.

Fiona, though…  It had taken him a while longer to understand that she wanted more than his generosity and friendship.  She wanted his trust, and how could he ever place his trust in her?  She wanted to be his equal.  How could the Baron have an equal?

He sees it in her now, the way she looks around at the office, the desk, the big chair.  She wants them.  She is never going to have them.  Not if he has to chain himself to them when he can no longer resist the siren voice that calls him.

Fiona does not need to know about that, though, even if he would ever consider sharing such secrets with an employee.  In the meantime, she remains useful.  For now.

“How…hard do you want it dealt with, sir?” she asks.

He considers the question for a moment as he gazes at Ash’s perfect face.  “I want it dealt with quickly, cleanly.  Finally.  Normally I’d use Jasper for something like this, but he’s got his claws full at the moment.  Besides, he’s always more effective when he doesn’t know anything about the mark, or why they need removing.”  He looks up at her.  “I worry about that boy.  He thinks too much for someone in his line of work.”

“The hazards of being a Nosferatu,” says Fiona.

“You’re not wrong.”  Although Jasper is, he has to concede, one of the more tolerable sewer rats he has ever met.

Fiona gives him that Ventrue smirk.  He sees it in Temple too, sometimes, even if he masks it better behind his big personality, his ready bonhomie.  As if he would trust Temple either, Temple with his personal hotline to the Almighty Queen Bee of the Camarilla.  And he thinks Isaac, who has spent decades fighting those would-be tyrants, doesn’t know.  You have a lot to learn…“Victor, my boy.”

It goes deeper than that, though; greed and ambition without passion; wanting to possess things just to have them, not for the love of them, not out of any appreciation of their artistry or beauty.  Imagine spending your unlife like that.  Imagine him giving over his legacy, all he has built here in Hollywood, to someone like that.

“I have a contact,” Fiona volunteers.  “If the sweepers identify anyone who needs to have an accident, he can handle it.”

He is silent for a moment, looking through Fiona, gazing on his precious things.  Above the table where Ash sits, there is another gilt picture frame.  This one contains not a movie poster but a magazine cover, thick and glossy.  The picture was snapped at London Fashion Week, he recalls, when she was still mortal.

Nelli is poised in mid-strut, halfway down the catwalk, wearing some confection of taffeta and muslin that presumably represented somebody’s heartfelt artistic vision.  She is the true work of art in the picture, though.  Her hair is like a silken river, so black it is blue, so blue it is black.  She has never refused a bouquet from him or a quick spin around a ballroom.  She knows.  She understands.  She is like him.

And one night, when she is ready, when all is in place for her, he will be able to release his grip at long last.  He will be able to give in to his yearning and sail across the sea.  Across the sea, to the bleached white stones and toppled columns of Syracuse, where the perfume hangs in the night air and Arikel lies dreaming, waiting, calling him…

Isaac.  Come to me, Isaac, ever so distant childe of my childe of my childe of my…  I am waiting for you.

Until then…

“Good,” he tells Fiona.  “Make the calls.  I don’t need to know details.  I just need it done.”

“At once.”  She gives a dutiful bob that she somehow manages to make look mocking, and retreats to her own little vestibule.

He nods to himself, satisfied to have managed to strike off one of the many problems on his continually-updated mental list.  If only they were all that simple.  He feels himself relax inside a little.

Or maybe he just feels empty.

 

END

Notes:

The depiction of Isaac Abrams here, his personality and motives, draws on a quite a bit of discussion with a few other fans of the show – if you read this, you’ll know who you are. My sincerest thanks to all of you. It also includes some dodgy headcanon for which I have to take sole responsibility. I don’t intend for anybody to read this and think old Isaac is a swell guy, because I’m pretty sure I don’t. ;)