Saltburnt Inbox

[snaggleteeth]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

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QIMIR

text ❖ audio ❖ video

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text - backdated slightly

[nishtha]

[ By now he's seen the photos, the videos. Shifting figures in bad lighting. Gasps and cries muffled by pillows and distant, throbbing music. Occasional snatches of different languages. He doesn't remember any of it. But he recognises his companion, who made such an effort to record it all. Easy enough to put the rest together.

A buzzing pressure in his head like tinnitus. A distancing; someone else types out the text and sends it, while Armand sits in his body. ]

I gather you met Amadeo.

[snaggleteeth]

Hi.

[somewhere in the house, he rouses from a book, a bed, an ordinary circumstance in which to die.]

Was that his name? He never said.

[nishtha]

It was the name given to him. Did you treat him kindly?

[ This feels important. ]

[snaggleteeth]

[how do you answer that question? how do you show kindness to a hallucination seen in the spray of an arterial bleed?]

Yes, but only in the way he wanted. You can be angry. Probably should.

[nishtha]

Amadeo isn't used to being ignored. And it looks as though he enjoyed himself. I'm not angry.

[snaggleteeth]

You talk about him like he's someone else. Someone you take care of. Offends my delicate sensibilities, though I recognize it's not up to me.

[nishtha]

He is someone else. He died 488 years ago. The boy within me is a ghost. Less than a ghost. A fragment of a life that ended in sweat and blood and violence.

1/2

[snaggleteeth]

Time moves in a lot of directions, but it moves through most of us, most of the time, in only one. Everything you are is built on Amadeo. His little shoulders, smaller scars. There are better ways to love him than talk of him like he's extant fragments in a crematory.

2/2

[snaggleteeth]

I've been told I'm bossy.

[nishtha]

[ Funny, how he'd always imagined hearing those words from Marius. Now, here, they're coming from a stranger. A man who barely knows him, yet somehow has plunged himself into the heart of something that Armand can barely stand to look at. He reads the words over, candles on the other side of his bedroom flaring and guttering as the wicks are suddenly consumed.

There are better ways to love him. How could he ever love him? Poor Amadeo, who had lived, suffered and died. Who had been loved. Treasured. Who had failed and lost his Maker, while those around him paid the price of his indulgences.

The reply takes time before it arrives. ]

You can't talk about him. You don't know anything about him. Or about love.

[snaggleteeth]

[there is some truth to the exceptions that armand is making. 'qimir' is perfectly capable of talking about amadeo, but some 'can't's are 'should's in a veil. he 'should' have been humbled by the flood of blood and viscera in the vampire's memory. he should think about the consequences of dying at saltburnt, of coming back wrong, of being more out of control than he is. he should think about his blood and viscera wicking in the gaps between armand's teeth, under his fingernails.

the problem is, he does think about all that and more. but he already came into this world wrong.]

I met him. He liked me.

All love is true, vampire. You know that. You're old enough to.

cw: csa mention, transactional sex

[nishtha]

Not his love. His love was bought and paid for by the men who wanted him. The men who used him, and his skills. The men who came to his Master's studio and who asked that his services be kindly donated by that same Master. The Master who raised and loved him and bought him from slavery as a child, too beautiful to leave behind in the brothel where he was found. The only truth in Amadeo's love was the kind made from gold and silver, exchanged in sweating palms.

All I have learned in my life is that there is no such thing as true love. No love without violence. Without pain. Only an exchange. Always.

[snaggleteeth]

Doesn't make it less true. Or less cruel. Just makes it what it was. None of us got to choose the first love that made us. You become what you lose.

[the fact he believes it, as he writes it, doesn't make it enough. and 'qimir' is, himself, old enough to know that. and it almost felt like concession, when armand chose i, my.]

Say there's a man who wants you. Gold and silver are no good here. Sweat, even cheaper. Say he thinks you beautiful even if you can't lock Amadeo behind a door. He offers nothing but an empty hand. Do you assume him a liar? His love false?

[nishtha]

One can lie without knowing it. Words are meaningless.

[snaggleteeth]

You write like a wounded romantic.

What has meaning?

[nishtha]

[ Rather than write a message, Armand casts his attention into the din of mortal minds scattered through the manor. Sifts through them, their beating hearts and churning desires, until he finds the tracks of his own blood leading back. Hands that have reached into him and dredged up his secrets. A mind that expands.

Into that mind, rising from the blood like a headache, Armand's presence. Hurt. Frightened. Angry. ]

Are your hands empty, Qimir?

[snaggleteeth]

[it's not that 'qimir' fails to understand. that the vampire is upset about his ... intervention? response. bold-faced assertions about centuries of history, of life, of suffering that he did not witness, except in the vaguest snapshots. it's not that 'qimir' would have liked to be on the other side.

it's just that—he's happy. when armand falls into his head like a shadow, he's happy. and 'qimir's answer is a warm and snuffly thing, licking up against the imaginary line of armand's throat, pressed in, as out-of-touch as a new puppy with the bad mood pulsing like a wound in this other presence. or not out-of-touch. he is bossy. he likes hurt, and fear, and anger. he likes wounded romantics. he just also happens to like licking armand's throat, that's all.

i'm holding my phone. i was talking to someone.]

[nishtha]

[ There are other forms of telepathy, other magics. Armand has grown used to the feeling of Koby's Haki, the knowledge that rises from muscle and sweat and the body, and Parisa's more calculated sending from her sharp, observant mind; both of them, in their own ways, warm and mortal, natural extensions of existing senses. Different from the ancient blood throb of the Dark Gift, but still concepts within his understanding.

He has, of course, touched other gifts. John Gaius' presence, an immensity of shadow. The coppery sun-warmth of Set's pleasure. The darkness and the light within Bob. Vast, alien awareness. He's become accustomed to feeling small. But the power that he senses within Qimir, as their minds meet, is something else altogether.

Instinctively, he reacts to the new power, the overly friendly welcome, closing the door of his mind, leaving only part of himself to stand in front of it. A flash of bared fangs. A flicker of movement across the room, a curtain left swinging. ]

You know what I mean. What is this? Your power.

[snaggleteeth]

[telepathy? unique perception? making someone easier to kill, more willing to die? no one has asked him about this before.

i'm sensitive to the force. i was born this way.

does he know what armand means? the stranger isn't sure. the objections were rigorous, the vulnerability intriguing, there's some metaphor here about a warm and struggling body. but he can't sit here and pretend he typed without intent, that he didn't know he was pressing against bruises, that armand hadn't cried out in pain. he sits by the door outside the vampire's mind, leans the head inside his head.

i did expect you to be angry with me. that mean i don't get to see you again?]

[nishtha]

[ A noticeable pause, when they're able to communicate as fast as thoughts can fly, electrical pulses riding from one neuron to another. Armand frowns, somewhere. ]

You want to see me again?

[ Added, pensively: ]

I could kill you. Amadeo dislikes violence, and wasn't aware of his strength. I have nothing holding me back.

[snaggleteeth]

[is it bravado? sometimes, the stranger doesn't know. so much flashy rhetoric about the dark side. fear is present every day.

to be fair, if you want to kill me, won't matter if i want to see you or not. though he does take armand's point. normally that would be discouraging. it's not—not discouraging. he does not want to die, actually. sometimes hard to tell from his behavior, but it's true.

are you worried about me, armand? by your argument, we've never even met.

yes, i want to see you again.]

[nishtha]

[ Another small time of consideration. Calmer, when he comes back. Settling into familiar roles, behind the familiar weight of the mask. Leaving Amadeo and his messy, blood-soaked vulnerabilities behind. ]

I offended your delicate sensibilities. But you still want me.

[snaggleteeth]

[a strange thing to watch. he does not need a clear line of 'sight' on the mechanics of personality and pain to notice the difference, ultimately, when armand's voice emerges again.

easy to hold both. but i'd rather hold someone else.]

[nishtha]

And who is that? Would you have me as a lover? A student, like the others?

[ There are few boundaries in the house for a vampire who has been trapped within it for over a year. He knows the shortcuts, the ways to get around the shifting halls and rooms. Go out and come back in again, enter through the window, the balcony door. With Qimir in his mind, pinned between heartbeat and thought, it's a trivial thing to triangulate his position.

A shiver in the air; lengthening shadows. Barometric pressure dropping. The vampire approaches. ]

What would you make of me, that hasn't already been made?

[snaggleteeth]

[there's familiarity to it—the feeling of being ... what. hunted? he makes bad prey, he believes.

i didn't get to choose before.

don't you want your chance to do so, now?

prey would know when to run. in the right direction. instead, a lilt of his hand in the air opens the door. a jab of his elbow evens out the pillow deformed by his inelegant slouch.]