Work Text:
The spurned offspring of Lestat still haunted the stage. Incredible really, that the yellow-haired rogue, not even a year old in the blood, had made two more fledglings. Perhaps that was why his second, the violinist, was as he was. Weak and mad, but capable of wreaking unspeakable atrocity upon weaker still mortals, without care for age or goodness, or even privacy of setting. A rabid dog that Armand would have put down long ago were he not bound by his promise to the dog’s master. Yet the longer he stuck around, the more Armand thought of how well Nicolas would have fit in with the old coven. Yes, he was begging for guidance, purpose, a north star. And that violin, such frightening sounds he brought out of it, a symphony channelled directly through the twisted tunnel of his soul. Armand could imagine it underscoring the Sabbat’s of ages past, concert to the wailing of the vampire condemned, to the chanting of the dancing fiends around a pyre.
Armand watched the troupe rehearse from the shadows of the theatre stalls, yet undecided whether it was his place to partake or remain their silent guardian. Nicolas was telling them of a most devilish idea for their next performance, his eyes wild with delight.
An effigy of the crucified Christ, feasted upon by a cast of painted vampires and devils?
Those few left of the old coven gave a shivering side glance to Armand, obviously fearful of his wrath. Of course, Armand would never give them the satisfaction of reading his face, nor his mind for that matter. They would never know he was as fascinated to see how Nicolas would ridicule his old faith as he had been euphoric to lay waste to his old followers.
Audiences despised it, some loved it, and it ended in a gruesome vampiric resurrection. Christ loved his devil children so much he would be one of them.
One night, Nicolas had declared he himself would play Christ till the performance closed. The absence of his lead violin underscoring the play made Nicolas’ debut performance all the more eerie. His Christ cried helplessly as he was tied to the cross and, not for the first time, fed on by the coven. When Christ was resurrected as the devil’s child with the dark blood he laughed hysterically and half the house had emptied by the time the lights came up.
Armand found himself enraptured.
On closing night, tense whispers and stray thoughts from the other vampires sent Armand to the dressing room tucked behind the stage. When he stepped inside, the smell of iron was immediate. Iron of blood and iron of rust mingling in the air. And a crouched, shivering form in the centre of the room.
Help me finish it .
Nicolas seemed quite incapable of verbal speech, but his mental voice was urgent and demanding. He was in the clutches of mania, obsessed.
Red was smeared over the floorboards around him, leading a sickening trail back to his hands, where rusted nail heads protruded just above the flat of the palm and the sharp ends grew out the back like two daggers. Armand could piece together how he’d done it– alone– placing the nails on their head and impaling his palms on them. Slamming down until they ruptured through and he could slide further down the rusted shaft. He couldn’t say he wasn’t fascinated by it.
Nail me up.
He wanted it done properly, no rope and no footstool.
For an excruciating moment, Armand only looked at him. He considered. Then he approached soundlessly, measuring his voice, imperious, yet gentle, lulling.
“I’m going to remove the nails. The wounds have healed around them, so the flesh must be reopened. It will hurt.”
Nicki's burning gaze broke and he peered down at his bloodied palms, a sudden fear leaping into his face like he was almost present again.
Ah, no, that won’t do.
Look at me . Armand sent.
Nicki 's eyes slid up to find him. Good.
Armand held his gaze—the distraction—and in a movement too fast to see, pulled the nail from one palm, and before Nicki could jerk away, the other.
The jaw snapped open—the eyes— bulging, red and glistening — yet no sound came. Only after a few seconds did Nicki begin to tremble, terrible gurling choking sounds from a throat that couldn’t seem to swallow air. The skin and muscle of the palms was freshly torn again, a trail of sinew hanging down and dripping with blood.
Armand held the two bloodied rusted stakes. He stepped away for a moment to wrap them carefully in a cloth, the sacred parcel, its contents bleeding through ever so slightly.
Nicki’s hollowed hands hovered, shaking in front of him, dripping, flooding blood. Small defeated whimpers, wounded sobs. Nicolas de Lenfent was not worthy of Christ’s suffering. Finally, he went quiet, watching the tendons of each gaping hole reach desperately for each other. If one looked at the right angle, he could see all the way through to where the blood collected on the floor.
Armand felt something that was almost pity. Lost child, mad child, abandoned child.
In a silent gesture, he gathered Nicki’s hands, slashed his own tongue, and brought them to his bleeding mouth. He kissed his palms, letting his powerful blood perform its miracle, quicken the healing. And the mad one, this musician who should have been doomed for the fire, he simply stared, his breath shuddering, his brown eyes suddenly glassy and round like a creature of the woods.
The broken hands in Armand's hands were cupped to receive the sacrament, like a boy at the altar, and Armand could hear the passage that swirled in his head like it was radiating off him.
This is my body, this is my blood .
Nicki’s shaking hands, almost whole, healed, and painted red with the sacrament, reached for Armand’s face. The tremor of his fingertips touching the cheeks first, his wiry violinist’s fingers spidery across the skin. Then his red-stained palms hovered over the apple of the cheeks, his thumb swiping at the delicate skin under the eye, testing that it’s real.
Never holding the face, no, it would be too bold for a sinner touching a saint.
Armand was silent and still, the marble Christ impervious to the pleas of the believer. But he allowed it, whatever moment of revelation Nicki was searching for in his boy face, his gaze anxious and fervorous, the eyes unblinking in idolatrous mania. A sense of wonder like he had touched an angel of the Lord. With a stab of pain Armand was hit with gossamer threads of his fledgling-self, memories faded and buzzed around the edges but so sharp in the centre that they cut an aching image of his maker, his master. This is how I looked upon him . The desperate worship of an inextinguishable spirit he had once mistaken for Christ.
If Nicki looked too long he would only find a reflection of himself. He was searching for his lost god. Boldly, in his mind’s eye Armand held them both, the images not without pain. Lestat, Marius, both light of hair, icy of eye, but something smooth and cool and all the more otherworldly about Marius, well practiced at living and yet, a statue next to Lestat, who lived as easily as if he really breathed, warmth under his skin and in his hair, even the careless fidget of his hands curbing the unnatural stillness that often befell their kind.
Ah, so many old wounds so recently reopened by that brash fledgling.
And then this one before him, sent mad in the blood and abandoned in his lap by that same creature, now smearing blood a shade darker than his hair on Armand’s face as he knelt gazing up at him and cradling his face like he might find his salvation. What did Nicki think he saw as he looked at him, the Botticelli Angel, the cherub devil, the wolf shepherd of the Children of Darkness? Yes, a beautiful contradiction he was.
In one slow, fluid motion, Armand bowed and placed a soundless kiss on Nicki’s forehead.
“Tonight’s performance is cancelled.”