rise&fall

“And what about yourself? Would you like to be ignored as well?”

Armand put his bag down in a haphazardly chosen bedroom, his focus entirely on Marius’ rambling monologue about time, hardly even noticing whether the decor of the room was to his liking. Not that it mattered when it came down to it. He might surround himself with luxury chosen and designed by himself down to the smallest detail of pattern and contour, perfectly controlled and ordered, but he could live just as easily and naturally in a barren cell. He knew this.

Marius seemed to realise that his admissions, so lightly shared as though they wouldn’t mean anything to Armand, or as though Marius hardly seemed to think his conversation partner real, were nothing short of chilling. Time is nearing its end. It is a feeling in me. And what of his time? His internal clock? 

When Benjamin and Sybelle had been turned his Maker had been saying similar things, that his faith was gone, that his life itself had no meaning. And meaning was what Marius craved more than anything, even though he derided the very same search for it in Armand and Santino. It had taken Armand a long time to realise that particular hypocrisy, but lately it had been getting ever clearer. If Marius felt that meaning was no longer an option for him…

“You don’t bore me,” he said. That much was true. Bored was not what he was right now. “But you do worry me,” he admitted as they neared the living room. “I do not wish for you to be lonely. It seems to me that you seek solitude deliberately, because… because you’re hurting, and because your pride forbids you to ask for solace.”

Marius turned his head slightly, a mild curious smile softening the white mask of his face. His placidity was sugar-dusted, faintly perfumed. It was something created and presented, nothing grown from nature. It showed, like a glimpse through the folds of a curtain, in the razor-thin lines that creased his forehead, the hardening of his pale stare. And before it all the smile floated like a mirage.

“But what solace could be provided me?” He wanted to know in that same conversational, matter-of-fact tone. With two strides, Marius reached the artful armchairs by the fireplace. The embers were aglow, now fanning themselves to flames under their master’s cursory glance. orange light splayed on the velvet ornaments of the armrests, inviting with comfort and warmth. Marius made to sit, offering the other seat to Armand. 

“I find that deliberate solitude is preferable to solitude imposed on you by others. My house will always welcome those I hold dear, but its doors must then also remain open for them to walk back out again. I have come to accept this. I am tired of the bitter fighting, the hurtful partings. And I cannot subject myself to the whims of another, to be their companion rather that they are mine. Perhaps one day, but not in this time and place.” He had spun such arguments before, threading them like silk to pretty patterns. But there was an aspect he had never quite considered which was now forcing itself on him with vigor. 

The movement was too quick even for Marius’ eyes to detect. Eric’s hand shot out, and the distance between them vanished as desire became intent without any conscious decision on Eric’s part, his long fingers closing around Marius’ throat until the grip threatened to crush both larynx and windpipe. The back of the Roman’s head made a very satisfying thud as it slammed against centuries old brick, his heels dangling pathetically two inches off the ground. Eric leaned in until their faces were mere centimetres apart, his own devoid of all expression but a kind of predatory fascination. 

“And what about you?” he asked quietly. There was no inflection to the words. He could feel a pressure building in his chest and head, a coiling tongue of fire that wanted nothing more than to leap out and make an inferno of the furious vampire struggling in his grip. “How would you like to end? You’ve escaped the flames once already. Do you think Fortuna still favours you lately? You would have the whole world mourn the loss of your loved ones, while you practically slaver at the thought of depriving me of mine.” 

His mask was cracking. It was all he could do to keep his voice from trembling, though his hand remained steady as a rock. “I know what happened. I was told. And it’s as well for you that I arrived too late, or you would have both died that night.”

Wrestling his anger back under control before he really did immolate Marius right there in the empty street, he snatched his hand back as abruptly as he’d reached out, leaving Marius to get his feet back under him quickly or fall flat on his ass. There were bruises forming on that proud white neck, and it delighted him to see them.

“You are alive because unlike that creature you picked up in the North, I’m loyal to my maker. She doesn’t want your precious blood spilt, and for that reason alone I’ve refrained from spilling it. But if you so much as breathe in Santino’s direction again, I’m going to turn you inside out. Do we understand each other?”

The hard grasp around his neck and the thump of his skull against the wall knocked the wind out of him. No matter how how he grabbed at the arm that held him pinned to the wall, he couldn’t break free. A snarl built in his throat but he wouldn’t give in to such base instincts. Instead he stared back at Eric, his silent glare parted by a strand of blond hair that had shaken loose and fallen in front of his face. 

It was the height of foolishness to speak so mindlessly. Eric had already been on the verge of hostility before, but now Marius understood the reasons for it. That anger was not born out of the disrespect for Maharet or the brutality of the execution as Thorne conducted it. Eric’s fury was fear in disguise, fear and pain. What had he said about Santino before? Marius’ eyes widened slightly.

Then the grip on him disappeared again and he landed on his feet. His own hand wrapped around his neck to rub slowly at the bruises. Shame burned through him like fire but this time he stayed silent. He had to keep himself in check. Eric had easily demonstrated that it would be futile at best to oppose him. And Marius wanted no quarrel with any of them, not even with this confused and hateful creature. His age commanded respect and Marius would pay it only because he needed to.

The glare Marius carefully directed away from Eric’s face was nothing short of ugly, his face contorting as his fine and noble bearing gave way to something so uncouth, so brutish, as simple anger. Stripped of the polished veneer of civilisation and justice, his designs frustrated, he appeared now unveiled as the sum of his baser instincts - a cruel and small-minded being, with a childlike urge to stomp out of existence anything that wronged him.

A cynical little smile curled Eric’s mouth unpleasantly, even as he ached with the desire to break Marius’ face for having the nerve to ask such a question. He wanted to close the space between them and pick the Roman up by the neck, pin him to the nearest wall and crack his skull against the ancient stones. A burning cold sensation spread through his body like frost on a lake, making him cold and hard as though he were covered in a fine glassy armour. This anger went too deep for sound and fury, it created a nuclear winter in his soul, turned him into a compassionless dead being that was alien even to himself.

“Did you think we would simply stand back and let Thorne destroy him in Maharet’s own house?” His clear voice cut through the tense silence like a whip. “Did you think her word meant so little? That all it took was the audacity to ignore her will, and everything would align the way you hoped for?” A look of mocking sympathy turned his brows upward, before his gaze became flat and dead again.

“Poor Marius. It must be so difficult for you, knowing that Santino is protected by forces you cannot hope to contend with and live. It’s inconvenient when your enemies have friends, isn’t it.”

Speak of ugliness. 

Marius jolted away from the sheer viciousness of Eric’s expression, a sudden spark of self-preservation driving him to seek distance. He was by no means a fighter, not even for a moment, but the centuries had been merciless teachers when it came to the law of preventive retaliation. Marius let the small book in his hand slip into his coat’s pocket. 

“It wasn’t my audacity that earned Santino what he so rightly deserved.” Marius said stiffly, anger flaring once more to loosen his tongue. He couldn’t understand why Eric of all people would be so passionate about this matter. But then, he also didn’t understand why Maharet would choose to protect Santino again and again. They all did this, didn’t they? Maharet and Pandora and Armand. Always they stepped in to speak in the dark-haired Italian’s favor, and for what?