romaβ
official daine visual archive
hello vonnie
Jar Jar Binks Fan Club
Andulka
blake kathryn
icyghini twinkie
Xuebing Du
ojovivo
π
@theartofmadeline
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
titsay
Game of Thrones Daily
Today's Document
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
h
will byers stan first human second
bliss lane
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Ireland
seen from United States
seen from Oman
seen from Italy
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Iraq
seen from Belarus
seen from Iraq
seen from Tunisia
seen from Syria
seen from United States
@symphonyofmalice
At-a-Glance
I have pages about the Mun, Muse, my tags, and rp rules. This is the tl;dr version. -This is a roleplay blog for Nicolas de Lenfent of the Vampire Chronicles! -I am an adult and will rp with other adults. This blog includes (tagged) NSFW and is not safe for minors -Common themes (hard to avoid even with tagging): Blood, injury, death, alcohol and substance use, abusive family, internalized homophobia, religion, trauma and mental illness.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch β’ No registration required β’ HD streaming
Nicolas saw Winnie's startled expression, felt the sudden tension in her body, as if the leg in his hands was preparing to run.
"I met him. I wouldn't exactly call us bosom friends." It wasn't like they had been writing letters to one another all this time. Plenty of people drifted in and out of Nicolas' life. It was one of the aspects of immortality.
Nicolas had liked Lawrence. As a fellow monster and a fellow writer, the two had found a resonant wavelength. He appreciated the shared craftsmanship and creativity. But Nicolas had been a young man fleeing his father once, and that sympathy with Winnie proved far more powerful. "I'm not in the habit of minding other people's business" he reassured her. "And I am even less inclined toward caging birds and clipping their wings. You have my word, he won't hear of this from me. Do you...do you need anything?" He probably shouldn't have been offering. He wasn't the nurturing type. But he'd been saved by Gabrielle's charity, once.
"Thanks. It's not that we are in a bad place. It's just that..."
What was it?
Winnie liked her independence. She liked being out in the world and on her own. There were times when her dad's worry could be too much. She'd lived with being a werewolf her entire life. She understood it. There wasn't any fear of the beast within her. They'd found co-existence in a way her father could never find it with the beast within him.
"I like being on my own and he worries so much," she confided as she slowly tried to lift herself up from the ground. A terrible pain, like hot electricity, bolted up her leg and a faint hiss escaped her.
"Would you mind helping me walk to my car?"
"Still none of my business" Nicolas said mildly. She could tell him if she wanted, but she didn't need to explain her family situation to him.
"Can you drive on that leg?" he asked, reaching down to help her up. "Do you need me to get you to a hospital?" He could take as much of her weight as she needed him to, letting her lean on him. He couldn't remember if Lawrence mentioned anything about werewolves healing. Nicolas was not much of a driver. At all. But he might be just barely better than someone who could not use one of their legs. "Which way is the car?" he asked, following wherever she directed him.
β Β Who am I ? Why am I here ? Β β
the last unicorn rp starters
@symphonyofmalice
This must've been one of the bad days he'd warned her about. "Your name is nicolas. You're my friend and you're here because this is where we're both safe."
Nicolas joined in only briefly, close to the man's death. This one had some alcohol in his system- he'd been at a bar, after all. But he wasn't as heavily drunk as his first meal had been. The overall effect was a pleasant buzz.
"Yes," Nicolas replied. "Thank god for alcohol. I'm still remembering things in bits and pieces. But I feel more solid, at least." The blood and the booze helped. "Do you want more, once we get rid of this one?" It wouldn't be wise to stop by the same bar. But if she was still hungry- as he guessed she might be- he could accompany her.
βIf I told you I missed you, would you blame the alcohol?β
@symphonyofmalice
Armand could have attributed this confession to alcohol easily, if it weren't for the fact that he'd known this sentiment existed within Nicolas for some time now. It was easier for Nicolas to feign ignorance on this point, but Armand had seen it coming for quite some time. They still fought of course, and that likely would not change, but the outcomes of such disagreements did not have to be so unpleasant. There was a different way that had opened up for them, if only Nicolas was willing to give himself over to Armand. At times, he was, and other times he was far too proud for such a thing. It was part of why Armand was so interested. Passivity was not something that he cared for in people. He wanted to dominate.
"I could but that wouldn't be correct." Armand replied, his voice the soft whisper like silk against the skin as he leaned forward and swept a finger lightly and slowly from Nicolas' shoulder down to his wrist.
"You can be honest with me Nicolas and if you are honest, then I will reciprocate in kind."
"Oh, and the wise elder could never be incorrect. The facts would simply change themselves for him" Nicolas said. But his default sarcasm was almost imperceptibly softer than usual. Like a stage prop sword compared to the real thing.
He shivered, slightly, as Armand's finger traced down his body. As if he could see past the skin to the veins and nerves beneath. And he could, couldn't he? Armand saw clearly, that was one of the things Nicolas admired and feared in him. Was the shiver fear or pleasure? He had long ago stopped being able to tell the difference. That was why he had spoken up. The alcohol may have smoothed the passage of the words, but the confession was a long time coming.
"Honesty" he echoed. "Yes, that has always been what you offer me that others can not. Did not." Lestat had lied and hidden. The troupe placated or talked around him. But Armand was honest. There was a refreshing purity in that, even when it came with brutality.
"I still hate you. I still fear you. I think I always will. You were the first face of mortal terror for me, and that is not a feeling that will pass easily, any more than Ursa Major will ever find it's rest below the horizon. But there are many stars in the sky. And so I miss you. And I think you understand the nature of vampires better than anyone else I know. You know what we are. You embody it so clearly. So what can I find you if not beautiful and horrible all at once. How can I not want you, as fiercely as I ever wanted the Gift for myself?"
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch β’ No registration required β’ HD streaming
Nicolas laughed, taking her teasing in stride. "Oh, I have enough baggage to fill a house. But I travel light."
He followed in step as she led the way to the Italian place. He understood her feelings about the city all too well. "My hometown was pretty similar." Well, that had been many years ago. But shitholes were all alike. "I hope you do. Get out of it, I mean." He did, for a while. He was still grateful for that, even if it had all ended so badly.
"Yes" he replied, once she identified him as a musician. "Don't worry too much about me. I can take care of myself." One certainly wouldn't know to look at him. He was thin, with delicate hands and pretty features. Any thief that tried to accost him would be surprised by his unnatural strength for the few seconds they had before he drained them dry.
Her smile remained as she listened to him add on to the joke. Elaine liked people like that. There were far too many people that couldn't take a joke, or didn't understand the joke to begin with.
"Well, here it is," she said as she waved to the door. The smell of tomato sauce and cheese wafted throughout the street. Her mouth salivated at the thought of a nice meal, a decent meal that wasn't pepperoni pizza bites -- not name brand, mind you -- thrown on a paper plate and tossed into the microwave.
"Do you know anyone around here?"
The smell of the italian place could be detected at least a block away. Further, to his enhanced senses, which as they stepped inside, informed him of a complex bouquet of ingredients, spices, cleaners, and human bodies.
"Just you" he answered. "I didn't come here for any particular reason. Just passing through." He'd had a few meals of his own in his two nights in town, but he'd made no friends.
Taking a table for two, he pretended to read the menu. He'd have to order something and pretend to eat it. "Whatever you want" he reminded her.
"Yeah, I know what that's like. And I know that teeter-totter shift from bubbles to drowning, too." He took another drag on the cigarette before offering it to the dark-haired vampire beside him. "Go on, it's not like it can hurt you. Might even ground you a little."
He was young, couldn't have been more than mid-twenties when turned. Reese raised an eyebrow to him. Young in immortality, too. At least, comparatively. "I gotta tell you, that may just be what eternity looks like: endless searching for exactly in a sea of misunderstandings." He shrugged. "I can't see much beyond that, fucking bleak as it might be. I'm Reese, by the way."
Bubbles to drowning. Yes, that was exactly it. The light, bubbling foam and the crushing black depths were all part of the same ocean, in the end. "Oh, I've tried a little bit of everything" he said, accepting the cigarette. "Roll of the dice whether it helps or hurts." His own moods were so changeable. And when he made a habit of drinking from the drunk and the drugged, it wasn't like he could get the exact same cocktail of substances every time.
Nicolas was past two hundred, now. But in some ways, he would always be that disaffected twenty-something, raging against the world. He sighed as his companion described the endless search. "Wish I could say I was surprised." That was what life had always felt like for him. A bleak wasteland with only fragile, temporary points of rest, where they existed at all. "Nicolas. Can I ask where you're from? How old you are?"
He nodded to the other vampire at the mention of his name. "From recently or from originally?" He looked up at the night sky for a moment before shoving his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans. "What is today Finland. We didn't call it that in my day, it had another name. And I died in 1361. Lost the speech pattern that might betray that back in the 1920s, Paris. Fell in love with the slang, the way it rolled off the tongue, the easy rhythm of jazz slipping into the way they spoke. Sound younger than I am, I know. You?"
"Whichever you feel like saying." He was curious, but this was a casual conversation. He had no interest in prying where he wasn't wanted. He raised an eyebrow at the year of death. That was old, even for a vampire. Not as truly ancient as those who had survived millennia, but about four hundred years older than Nicolas himself.
"Born in Auvergne, 1760. But I became everything I am- man and vampire alike- in Paris. Died once at age twenty-one, and a second time at thirty. Did you meet others of our kind when you were in Paris?" He'd had no idea what became of the coven after he left it, no idea whether anyone he knew would still have been in the city by 1920.
(it was so hard to pick one) βPlease donβt ask if Iβm okay. I wonβt be able to lie convincingly.β
Mina watched the blonde haired blue sparkle man gyrating across their screen, "Wait, THAT'S him?"
Nicki's maker, Nicki didn't even have a photo of him. How long had it been since he saw him?
Mina grabbed the remote quickly and switched channels to women's basketball instead of the concert that was on the news.
She looked at him and tried to think of something to say, "he's....shorter than I imagined."
Hi there, grandpa.
She always imagined he was larger than life and ridiculous like Fabio. Well, it WAS ridiculous in a different way. Seeing him as him felt like near grounding in it's way.
Mina went to kneel in front of her maker, "Look at me."
@symphonyofmalice
"Of course I mean it. You know how much I despise lying, Mina." He was often wrong. The sea changes of his mood could mean he said exactly opposite things between one day and the next, but he always meant them. He was brutally honest with friends and enemies alike, and there was no one he trusted like Mina.
Romance was the last thing on his mind. He'd had that, with others, and look how that worked out. As for his madness, he'd mostly given up on the idea it would ever pass. It was a part of him, and one Mina handled better than anyone else ever had.
He hugged her back, holding her close. "I've made plenty of my own mistakes. I'm just refusing to repeat theirs". Magnus abandoned Lestat as soon as he was made, Lestat did the same to Nicki, Armand had been snatched by force. It wasn't hard to see the pattern. He did still think she'd come to tire of caring for him eventually, but she kept proving him wrong so far.
"I know, I'm just...." she knew very well he hated lying, most of Mina and Nicki's problems were because they were a bit TOO honest with each other.
Theirs was an exceptional bond. Mina understood what some meant when they said that a maker/fledgling bond couldn't be replicated by the human world, because it couldn't. For everything she and Jonathan were to each other, it would never be the heart shared between her and Nicki.
And her and Nicki's would not be the heart shared between Lestat adn Nicki.
"I do wish you had someone though," she told him, "To fill in where I can't."
But they only chased fleeting lovers. They tended to steer clear of other vampires and neither one ever considered leaving the other.
She took his hands, "Whatever decision you want to make, I"m here with you."
"I don't think one person, or a dozen, can fill those gaps, Mina" he said. "All the king's horses and all the king's men, et cetera." He had had a black hole in him from the day he was born. And he'd been broken beyond repairing by everything that followed. A dozen vampires working together couldn't keep him afloat. And while the troupe had contributed to his problems, he still didn't think it would have worked if they'd all been perfect.
"I do not think I am ready to face him. But I do not think I will ever be. It must happen anyway. There is no moving forward until it does." He took a breath, and for the first time, his blank face cracked into a smile. "If nothing else, I am looking forward to the two of you meeting. Or, should I say, you yelling at him."
Sanctify them in the truth
There was a ritual element to the murders. There had to be. There were practicalities, like never killing someone that could be tied to his personal life, to keep the police at bay. And then there were Rules, the commandments that came from his soul and could not be bent or broken.
It was two in the morning. Nicolas was in the secret second home of his latest victim. This one had been hard to catch, since he was a priest. Nicolas could not enter a church while he was hunting. He could not kill anyone wearing a rosary or a cross. There were Rules. But here? Where the fire-and-brimstone preacher came to have his affairs? Here, his hypocrisy would be exposed to the world.
The middle-aged man was bound and gagged on his own bed. Nicolas had drugged him, to restrain him. But he was awake and aware enough to look afraid as Nicolas approached with the needle. They had to be alive when he drained them, he had to stop before the heart stopped. That was a Rule. The first syringe of blood was squirted directly down his throat. He had to taste it, that was a Rule, too. But he had about two liters to drain, and he couldn't drink all of it. The rest was delicately poured into an empty champagne bottle and two glasses, set up in a mockery of a romantic date at the dining room table. Bright red rose petals led from the table to the bed, where he left the man dying, two puncture wounds in his neck.
---
Back at home, he changed out of his clothes, an eighteenth century getup that would have fit a period piece about the revolution. The gloves were practical, yes. But he needed to maintain a connection to his true self when he was hunting. He slept through most of the day. Come evening, he got up, dressed in a band t-shirt and ratty dark jeans, and went out as Nicolas, local musician.
Arriving at the club, he saw Mina already sitting at the bar. He sidled up on the stool next to her. "Hello hello." Mina had an unhappy expression on her face. "What's stuck in your craw tonight? The music's not that bad," he joked. Befriending Mina was the riskiest thing he did, but he couldn't resist. She, like him, was an agent of truth, in a way. He could feel the spark in her.
Mina leaned on the car and lit a cigarette as she mulled it over. Mina didn't want to drink and go home nad talk about it and think about it. She didn't want to wake up in her bed thinking he was standing in the corner ready to hurt her again. she wanted to be desired, she wanted to be distracted but she also knew that she wasn't the only one effected by this, "I'll be okay if we do this. But if you don't want to, we don't have to. My friendship with you is far more important than anything he's got."
She offered him a drag, "And if you don't want to, we'll go make some bad decisions somewhere else. Just not home."
Nicolas let his voice drip with the most potent, exaggerated sarcasm he had. "Oh no, Mina! How will my friendship with you possibly survive the tormenting ordeal of...getting to have a one-night-stand with a hot guy?" He put his hand to his forehead like a fainting dandy before dropping the act with a grin. "Seriously, Mina. This fling would be just a bit of fun for me. It's you I'm worried about."
He accepted the cigarette, taking a drag. "You're not asking me to throw myself on a sword for you. Well, I guess you are, but in this analogy I'm a sword-swallower for fun. If this is what you want, I'll be happy to indulge. Do you want me to be loud about how much I'm enjoying it?"
"You're fine with that?" Nicolas echoed. "More than fine with it, even?" He was willing to let the matter of Hell drop for the moment. It was clear he and his conversational companion would not come to any agreement on that particular point.
"All we have is one another, and see how poorly we treat each other! From every child throwing stones at a bird to every old man clinging bitterly to power like King Lear. Every war waged, every atrocity committed. Oh yes, if we only have each other, there is no need for Hell in another world, it is here already."
The other's anger does very nearly startle him enough to jump; it is a good thing he does not have his pistols at the present moment.
Still, with a disappointed sigh, he merely replies, still cordial, aside from the disappointment.
"Perhaps, but if you are right and as J.ean-J.acques R.ousseau theorized, the worst evil is in man, surely that means the human potential to do our best in the circumstances we are in also exists? Indeed, I would go as far as to assert you cannot have one without the other."
Nicolas, if asked, wouldn't have thought himself particularly angry, at the moment. But anger to Nicolas de Lenfent was like slime to a snail. It was too baked-in to his very essence, he shed it everywhere he went, in every action he took. Bitterness and sarcasm bled through in his words no matter what he said.
"I'll grant you it exists. But do we use this potential? And consider the circumstances we are given. In a world as corrupt as this one, can even a man doing his best achieve anything but a fruitless struggle?"
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch β’ No registration required β’ HD streaming
The good hunter, bad hunter routine was a method that Mina wasn't the most fond of when it came to captured monsters. But it was a method that worked. And it got them results that didn't have to resort to torture and so when Mina was called into play the good sympathetic hunter to a vampire outside Paris, she answered it.
he'd been captured in Paris during one of his hunts, and he'd been blindfolded and whisked outside it far enough away that the vampires he was in a coven with might not be able to find him immediately. Oh they were quite the group. A theatre if one could believe it. Parading their vile acts in front of countless people that came to see them.
The leader was an old one and he would be coming to find them soon if he cared about his coven. Time was of the essence, they needed to get answers and then set it all alight without the vampires going into the catacombs and coming out somewhere else.
But only the vampires knew the extent of the catacombs.
Everything was discussed away from the property. A rough hand wouldn't do, a gentle hand was going to be tried and that's where Mina came in. She was told she had a kind smile when she put some work into it. Enough that someone desperate could be fooled.
The plan was to come in while the roughing up was happening and so Mina walked in with just as much swagger as the 5'4 expert monster hunter had and made QUITE the noise, "What the hell is going on here?!"
They bellowed, they fought, but they let it out quite casually that Mina Harker was here, like it was some big frustrating thing that she was ruining their interrogation. They didn't say how many vampires she killed or that she'd helped mastermind Dracula's death. That wasn't something that would help the character that she was playing for this. Instead she shoved them all out and slammed the door behind her. She heard the lock slide in place.
trapped in here with you.
Mina took a bucket of water from the corner and put a rag in it. She stood far enough away that he couldn't grab her through the chains and offered the rag, "Here. To clean yourself up."
@symphonyofmalice
"No pain," the kind mask....if there ever was one, was gone now, "That's what one of your lot said to me...and there was always pain. There's always pain when you do what you do. And tell me, what do you do if they regret what's been done to them and want to live? Do you stop? Do you encourage those lost that this doesn't have to be the end? No, you think you're doing them a favor but in reality you see them as weak so you don't have to endure a fight."
She didn't flinch when he lunged at her, she stood straighter, looking him in the eye, her own rage not hidden, "Feeling powerless? Don't worry, you cooperate, we'll make sure it's not painful. oh...sorry, that doesn't actually make it all better? You're not falling into our arms?"
"If you displayed your depravity, you wouldn't be hiding behind a bunch of fictional plays in a theatre crumbling around you. You'd be walking the streets out in the open."
But they didn't. Because they were cowards.
"Vampires make evil plays?" Mina raised an eyebrow, "Is that so? Because I've been all over the world, and you're the first one."
At his question, she shrugged, "Seems like an easy plan to me. You all hate each other, why not take them to hell with you? Protecting your family...isn't that a concept that good people do?"
She leaned forward, just enough that he still couldn't reach her, but maybe if he looked in the light just right, he'd see the ugly jagged fangmarks in her neck. "Why not be the evil you want to be and betray the people that won't even fight for you?"
'One of your lot'. Had she been attacked by a covenmate? The members of the troupe were generally careful to not leave their meals alive. She likely just meant a vampire in general.
He said nothing, sullen and silent, as she turned the tables and taunted him about his own helplessness. He was a fool. He had let her get under his skin.
"You want me out on the streets?" he challenged her, looking her right in the eye. Oh, yes, he would have loved that. This huntress was right, the stagecraft wasn't working, the audience wasn't getting it. Oh, the things he could achieve if he could take it to the masses, the public, out in the open... Didn't they already watch public executions? What was the difference, really?
A number of retorts jumped to his mind. They aren't my family. I'd let you kill my family any day. Armand is scarier than you. Armand is the only one I'd want dead, and the only one you'll never succeed in killing. But he had said too much already.
"I'm sorry the plays upset you, Madam. But you're right. It's all fiction and stories men tell each other. There is no such thing as vampires."
He'd gotten in under HER skin as well and she was kicking herself that he'd gotten her so far off track that she lost why they were there.
They were there to get into theatre through the catacombs safely.
"What I want is for your lot not to exist at all," she said, "And for whatever happened that made all of you never happened."
What made the vampires? No one was talking.
Mina rolled her eyes at his mockery, "Well, I'm coming back in a couple of days, and then we'll see how talkative you are then."
She'd told them not to go in there when she went off to do thier scoutuing. He needed to be alone, he needed to be weakened, he needed to be vulnerable so she coudl talk to him.
But some men changed when someone weaker was amongst them. And they went down there those two days, and they beat him. Because he wasn't a person, it was a thing to them. They didn't question him, they didn't ask how to get in. He was just a punching bag.
No one noticed one of the chains weakened.
And two days later, Mina came back. They told her that he'd not talked. And of course they hadn't gone down there.
But Mina was trying to move up the time table. One of the coven was looking for him. Eleni from what her sources said. And when she realized he wasn't in Paris, she may move outward...and they would be found.
For vampires to have never existed? She was right about that. But she'd have to take it up with God.
There were no questions, so there were no answers. He started humming music when the hunters beat him. Mozart, Haydn, Bach and similar contemporaries. The starvation, not the injuries, were the real torment. He was relatively young for a vampire, could still not get by on little drinks. And healing his wounds took up more energy, left him more empty.
When Mina saw him again, his body was intact, but looked markedly weak. He was gaunt, his skin seeming to shrivel to his frame. His eyes were more hollow. "Clytemnestra" he said at the sight of her, never having caught her name. His voice was weaker, drier.
"Your friends are learning. They're using their fists and feet, at least, I imagine they might advance to actual weapons by next week. But though they've gotten better at inflicting pain, they've gotten worse at asking questions. Anything to say, as their tutor?"
Nicolas was still a little vague, a little meandering. Whether it was the whiskey or his madness was hard to tease apart. His steps were clumsy for a vampire. His mind bobbed like a bouy at sea, nudging against the few mortal minds around them without particular intent.
Severely unwell? Yes, that must have been it. He was sick, he needed to get better. He missed her implication, not sure what company he usually kept. When she asked where he stayed, he answered automatically. "We have a room at the Ile de la CitΓ©". But a moment later his brow furrowed. "No, no that's not it...". He could picture the rooms in his mind, but there was something wrong, some mental distance, some nagging thought.
"I used to live there, with Lestat, but not anymore. Now I'm staying in..." Why couldn't he think of it? Or did he just not want to? There had to be somewhere he stayed, somewhere he belonged. Someone he belonged to. "With Armand. And Eleni. Armand protects me." he repeated, with the same rote intonation as before.
Protect? Yes, well, we are all in need of that. It is why she has Lestat, aside from his conversation, and sometimes it seems to her desperate bedfellow.
Audrey will be the one to assess the auburn-haired fiend's skill in that regard and his sincerity. But, as of now, she will not push the question.
"As you say," Audrey agrees, affably.
"Do you have your senses about you enough to know the way?" Audrey asks an honest question. It is merely that... Lestat, he might finally have something to regret if something were to happen to you.
"No" Nicolas answered honestly. His mind was still clouded. He was not sure where his feet would lead him if he let them take charge. "But they often follow me." Escort might have been a gentler term. But all the same, he was not often in Paris without a shadow in some form. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure the others had already approached him tonight, tried to cajole him into coming home. Why had he ignored them?
"I want to go and I do not. Why does my heart race at the thought of returning where I am protected? Where I am kept?"
When her father disappeared, there was so much they had to wrap up. Her father had been seeing to some property for a frenchman in Auvergne and she, her mother and one of her uncles went to the town to find a way to wrap up proceedings.
They had been staying in the inn for a week when the town draper came to them. He had a son, he said, and he would be ever so interested in calling on young Miss Murray.
Her mother had been hesitant. She'd just lost her husband and she didn't want to lose her only child to this stifling small village. Her daughter wasn't in the right mind, you see. She just lost her father.
But Mina, who had been listening to the town gossip this past week, knew of the boy he was referring to. She'd heard he was at least well off, she'd heard other rumors about him as well that she'd rather not say. Mina was practical, the money would soon run out that her father had collected and they would be living on the charity of her uncles until she married.
She wasn't sure why she said she would allow him to call on her. Maybe she was curious at what would happen. Maybe she content to court and marry someone she didn't love so she wouldn't go through the same painful loss her mother did.
Or maybe they would get on, maybe she WOULD love him.
Mina stood next to her mother at teatime the next day, waiting for the Lenfents to enter the parlor. He was a handsome boy, with dark curly hair like hers and expressive eyes. Mina gave a small curtsey as she was introduced, "Monsieur."
@symphonyofmalice
It was one of those moments where one laughed just because they had already been laughing so hard. Where nothing in particular was funny, but everything became funny because the laughter developed a life of it's own.
"Yes, let's". When would they have a chance to see the old church again? "And we can go in. I am starting to think I was overly hasty in making any oaths." Perhaps it was just the good mood he was in. But the more he thought about it, the more he was all right with stepping foot in a church again. On a purely practical level, it would cause Mina and their family consciuous problems if they didn't attend church regularly. He didn't want that kind of negative attention on her. He'd made the promise about his father's house, but he'd never need to see his father again. And there had been the vindictive satisfaction he and Mina had talked about, rubbing their success in the old man's face.
"The more I think about it, the more I want God to see us." Wouldn't it be a fun trick, walking through the church doors every Sunday, knowing he was a deviant with a devout man's face. "I want the angels to seethe with jealousy to see two devilish mortals under their roof, who have fun they can only dream of."
Episode 3.07
Reactions to The Failures
Mina could've sworn she turned off her alarm the morning that her class was cancelled but it still rang loud and shrill that pulled her out of a dead sleep.
Mina scrambled quickly, on instinct to turn her phone off and looked worriedly at her boyfriend next to her. She quickly checked her messages to make sure nothing had exploded while she was asleep and then lay back down in his arms, dressed in nothing but one of his shirts. Her legs tangled with his and she brushed her fingers down his side.
She'd met Nicki her first day in college and they just sort of stuck together after that first meeting. They'd been dating for awhile, Mina liked him, wanted to take him home to meet her parents. Was he the one? She couldn't say that, she couldn't say she was looking for 'the one'. But they were being young, they were having fun. She genuinely liked him. He was funny, and sarcastic, and loving, but sad. She knew enough about his home life that she was determined to keep him away from it.
"Sorry," she mumbled and slipped her hand around him, "Thought I turned it off."
@symphonyofmalice
There was something so nice about feeling his hands working through her fingers, she could do this forever. She'd need another hair washing before their holiday was done, Maybe she'd draw up a bath and have Nicki really wash it for her.
"I know your'e going to be insistant, that's why I"m not fighting with you on it," she told him, "And I will wear a buttondown too, so you don't get lonely."
She slipped out of the bathroom and went to grab her phone, messaging her parents to look nice as well, so he didn't feel out of place.
"Well, if you're going to join me, we're coordinating colors," Nicolas insisted. If presentation mattered, it mattered all the way. He wasn't going to start cutting corners now.
His own shirts and pants were all tailored, because of course they were. His father's business was in clothing, he couldn't go around in something unfitting.
"I have a black one and a dark blue one," she told him, she'd play along, why not? "But if you have another color, I have a ridiculous amount of blouses I can pull into."
Hers were not specially tailored. But they were washed and pressed. Her mother would NEVER allow her to walk outside in a wrinkled dress shirt.
"Blue is good." A nice, solid color that was almost always available in nearly every style.
"You know, I could make adjustments to you clothes, if you'd like." He didn't know if she hadn't asked because it hadn't crossed her mind, or because she didn't want it. "Not like, right now, we don't have the time. But if something starts wearing out, or is a little too big or too small, or there's something at a store you really like but it's uncomfortable, I can probably fix it." He'd been sewing on his own buttons and mending tears since he was six, and had progressed to more complex alterations as he grew up. He didn't bother making all his clothes from blank fabric, that would be a hell of a hassle, but he could do quite a bit of tweaking.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch β’ No registration required β’ HD streaming
"Is that vanity?" Nicolas mused. He'd never shared his blood with another either, and he considered himself the lowest of the low. But as Sibella went on, he understood her a little better. She wasn't withholding her blood with the understanding that it was a curse, she thought it was something to be 'deserved'. He felt his opinion of her sour. He had never had much respect for rulers, elders and authority figures, whether as a mortal or a vampire.
"Vampirism is damnation, princess. All your blood could do to anyone is corrupt and condemn, same as any other monster."
As for the finishing school for girls, well, the world was full of surprises. "So even among monsters there is elitism, money and privilege. You'll forgive me for not bowing and scraping. I lived in the age of the guillotine."
"Power does the very same to humans -- my father is an example of both, a warning."
There was never any denying it. Sibella always danced across the line of the spoiled daughter of a very powerful man, someone that had only ever known the ease of life -- even one condemned in darkness -- and the want to experience the world as everyone else, to know it's anger and loneliness. There were times she could come off as extremely snobbish and other times when she could come off as down to earth. Sibella lived in a concoction of both.
"I never asked you to bow. Nor did I ever ask you to call me "Princess". Sibella is fine."
"All us vampires are warnings," Nicolas said. The cult of the Children of Darkness was functionally dead. But he still believed, as deeply as he ever had, that their kind was an embodiment of evil and a warning to mortals. "And what does that mean for you, daughter of power twice over, vampire heiress of wealth and blood?"
π ππππ (i know we have enough threads, but do we really?)
It'd been one of their holidays to her family when Nicki disappeared. He'd been going to see some friends that were on the other side of London. Mina had gone to bed without him...he would make his way home. He had a key to the house, he'd slip in when he was good and drunk and not remember it in the morning.
But he wasn't home....and he wasn't answering his phone...and their friends said he'd left early acting strange.
They called Scotland Yard, they filed a police report and Mina stopped sleeping. She barely ate. She went out looking for him with her mother or one of her uncles but there were no leads. She was certain he was dead....that any moment any call would be they found him in some trash bin or in the river. Maybe his family had been too much, maybe he'd done something he coudln't take back.
And then a few days after his disappearance, late in the evening, he came back. He was stinking, and ragged and he looked like he hadn't bathed in awhile. And the next thing Mina knew she was hugging him and crying and screaming for her parents.
"Nicki, Oh god," she sobbed.
"Nicki," she said almost pleadingly, "Succeed at what? We're barely adults! Everything's supposed to be just started for us to explore. The future is supposed to be open for us to think about and choose, not....trudge through like it's a certain fate we don't want but have to endure."
He was stubborn, sometimes frustratingly so, but Mina was just as stubborn, "You didn't ask to get made, Nicki! You didn't ask for them to make all these grand plans for you on your behalf. Did they even ever ask you what you wanted to do with your life? Was this ever something YOU wanted? Because last I checked, God gave you free will and he put you in a time period where you could decide what you wanted to do with it."
"Nicki, it's not selfish. It's YOUR life! You could die tomorrow or 50 years from now and will you feel accomplished if you spent decades doing something you hated? No. You'll always wonder 'what if'? and grow resentful. And if things work out and we get married, I don't want you to have regrets when we have the time now to avoid them. I don't want to be the reason you go into law school, because you think I need to be provided for. You didn't even ask ME if not working was something I wanted to do."
But that was getting off topic.
"It's more selfish to shove someone else into a shape they don't want to be in so YOU feel accomplished. Your father will think himself respectable if you are a lawyer, but he will never be respectable, because your accomplishments should not be his. They should be yours.
She was quiet for a few moments, and let her temper cool down because she was getting worked up, "A parents love for their child should not take work from the child, it should just be. What have I done that my parents should be proud of me? But they are. Because it was never hard work. And I know what you'll say, you'll say I was a good kid. but you know better than that. I was a little shit."
She moved back to her side of the bed and folded her arms, staring ahead and off to the side a bit, "I just don't want to see you broken down by something you don't have a passion for. You have to have a passion in law."
She looked to him, "Will you at least talk to my father? And see what he thinks?"
He was a lawyer, he could surely give Nicki some advice.
"That's not what free will means" Nicolas grumbled. He could see the conversation tumbling downhill toward a religious debate, and he didn't know how to stop it. He usually loved debating things with Mina, but it didn't feel fun this time. "It's more like...a test. Like the apple in the Garden of Eden, or Abraham and Isaac. God set out clear rules and made it people's choice whether to follow them or not, and face the rewards and consequences. Free will isn't about 'do whatever you want', it's about 'do you choose the right thing when nobody's forcing you, do you resist the wrong thing even when it's tempting'? The choice between good and evil wouldn't mean anything if you couldn't choose, but it doesn't make all the options equal."
He stiffened further, scowling at Mina. "Don't talk about my father like that." He was accomplished, he was respectable, he had his own business and provided for his family and was a pillar of the church. Any other day, Nicolas would have been complaining about the man to Mina, but now Mina just wasn't getting it.
Maybe she'd never understand. Maybe she couldn't. He had nothing to say, really, about her parents being proud of her. He sighed. "I'll talk to him." Nicolas didn't think he'd change his mind. But Mina's father was a lawyer, he might have some actual advice.
"And why is going to do what YOU want to do evil, Nicki?" she asked, but she knew why he thought so, because his family had planned it all for him and there was nothing that made him close up more than disappointing his parents. They might as well be another God to him
And his scars told thier own story.
But dammit, it was so frustrating, she wanted him to see that this wasn't okay. That he shouldn't live trapped in the very rigid structure his parents wanted. Was he thinking he was going to pull her in on what they wanted too? The stay at home mom with the kids? Were they going to override all Nicki and her's decisions over what they should do with their life?"
Or would Nicki snap out of it?
Though she knew when he stiffened when she insulted his father, she had gone too far. She went serious, and looked like she regretted it, "I'm sorry."
It was still his dad.
But at least he agreed to talk to her dad and maybe that could help him.
Without much else, she crawled to her side of the bed and pulled the covers up, "Goodnight."
It'd been a long night and she was exhausted.
But she didn't sleep much. And when morning came, she got up and showered and went out with her mom to a breakfast and to spend the day relaxing after a hell of a week.
Alex meanwhile, made him and Nicki breakfast at home.
"Because it's selfish!" he repeated. Wasn't she listening? "It's not just about me, everyone owes something to the world. My parents owed their parents for raising them, people owe their teachers, we all owe society for keeping us alive until we could contribute in kind. That's what growing up is. When you're a child, you're helpless and other people invest in you. And this is the time we're supposed to develop the knowledge and the skills to pay it back. And becoming a musician? That's not paying it back. That's like getting a ten thousand dollar loan and wasting it all on booze and junk food." Everything was so financial in his family. Every penny accounted for, everything parsed in terms of debts and worth.
At least Mina sounded serious when she apologized. She wasn't a bad person, she just... didn't get it. She went to sleep, and he tried to, too. He stewed in his own thoughts for a while before tiredness finally kicked in.
In the morning he got up, refreshed the bandages that needed it, and got dressed. It was good that Mina was with her mom right now. She probably wanted some space from him. Of course, that meant Nicolas would be facing Mr. Murray alone. With the ladies out of the house, he would probably be able to share is real opinion, unleash the anger Nicolas had seen on his face the day before. Well, he had to face the music eventually.
"Good morning, sir," Nicolas said, coming down for breakfast with Alex. He was braced for a lecture at best.
