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"Aw," Claudia says sweetly, leaning back against the wall beside Armand with a practiced indifference. She doesn't crouch to his level, remaining standing above him instead, and it's a relief, of sorts, to not have to meet her eyes when she continues, tauntingly, "Are you scared of him— of Santino— because he tried to kill you? Because may God bless your soul, if so. I can't imagine how that would ever feel. It must be terrible."
It takes Armand a moment to even hear her words, and it takes him even longer to process them. It takes a moment for him to blink, attempting to clear away the darkness from his vision, but a late response is still a response.
"I would have preferred it if he had killed me, actually," Armand says back, attempting boredom. Attempting indifference of his own. From the way Claudia snorts loudly, it's clear he has failed.
Armand can't see Claudia's face, and he's not sure he even wants to. He doesn't need to look her in the eyes to know that's she's looking down at him, gaze full of contempt. His back is starting to feel numb where it's been pressed insistently against the wall for who knows how long, but still, he doesn't move, shifting to see Claudia's intrusion.
He doesn't know how long he's been sitting here, alone— and he doesn't know how long it's been since he saw Santino in the hallway of Maharet's compound and turned off course because of it, heading into the first room with a lock he saw— but maybe Claudia would know if he asked her. He thought he caught his first glimpse of her in months earlier, lingering on the edges of a crowd of vampires and wearing the same scorched yellow dress she's always wearing whenever he sees her.
"It would have been so much better than everything else he did," Armand adds dryly, looking up anyway, away from Claudia's forever-bleeding ankles, to scowl halfheartedly at her. He looks at her chin rather than her eyes. "But I'm not scared of him. I've never been scared of him. You're wrong about that."
Armand aims towards sounding intimidating, but from the way Claudia hums, judgmentally, it's clear he hasn't succeeded, falling just short of it. An unfortunate shame, but it's difficult to muster up the strength to be truly irritated. He knows his voice sounded halfway closer to dead than it usually does, but he can't bring himself to care about that either. That's just another shame of many, he supposes.
It was stupid to come in here in the first place, hiding like a child who thinks hiding under a blanket could ever save them from the monster living under their bed— if Santino still cared about the Children of Darkness' beliefs, a simple lock would not stop him from drawing Armand back into the rituals— and it is stupid to be bothered by Claudia now.
Still, Armand remains seated.
And the ghost of Claudia lingers above him. He lets his gaze drop once more, trailing down a path of yellow and to her split open, forever bleeding ankles.
"It would have been better for me too, if you'd died then," Claudia comments, but her tone feels less accusing than Armand has grown accustomed to hearing from her. The words feel like they come more on impulse than anything else. The anger still persists, of course, like it always will, but it's mixed terribly with the unbecoming sensation of being seen. "Did you get the ideas for the ways you tortured me— Baby Lulu, the rats, the mind fuckery of the trial— from him, or were those all your own unique ideas, crafted specially for me?"
Armand huffs, looking away again. He doesn't have an argument to offer her, he doesn't have anything to say to defend himself, and he thinks he prefers it when she just laughs at him. She's not entirely wrong in her assumptions, of course. She's usually right when she taunts him, dangling the worst of his past mistakes over his head, and she's usually right when she manages to connect two random puzzle pieces together. He'd never tell her that, of course, but he's sure she already knows that too.
She was right, in Paris, when she told him that he ran to Louis to escape the coven, and she was right, not long ago, when she told him, after he found out that his maker never died, that it makes sense that he didn't come back for his "insufferable ass." She's been right so many times about so many things over over the years, as she's flitted bitterly in and out of Armand periphery, angling sharp insights at him while Louis remained perpetually unaware of what was happening so close, yet so far away, from him.
Claudia asked once, leaning forward on a table shoved haphazardly into the corner of a bar, "Hey, do you still remember Paris?"
Armand had half a mind to question why she would remember Paris, being so young. He had half a mind to ask why a fourteen year old would be here, in a bar, in the first place, but he nodded reluctantly instead, knowing he had nowhere else to be and no one else to talk to.
Claudia let out a small sound from the back of her throat, humming, "You do! I thought you might, and since I sure do too, I think it's worth mentioning that I've been wondering a few things about what went down towards the end. Not basic thing like— oh, I don't know— questioning why you did it, but other things. Unimportant things to you, I'm sure, but important enough to me. Would you mind it if I asked you one simple question? I have lots, but we can just do one for now, if it's too difficult for you to talk about."
Armand took a sip of his drink to stall. He winced at the taste of it and pushed it away from himself, towards Claudia, who will never again be able to pick a cup up to drink, and he shrugs, "Go ahead, if you must."
Claudia rolled her eyes at the pettiness of the motion, but she maintained the syrupy sweetness of her previous words, when she asked, imploringly, "Have you ever heard of the concept of solidarity? I can't help but notice a poster on the wall, over there by the counter, about it."
Armand opened his mouth to respond, but a pressure in his mind drew his attention away. He glanced to his side, attempting to hide his concern, and Claudia followed his gaze. Louis. He looked fine, for the most part. Visibly, at least. Louis was leaning close to a guy who was swaying on his feet, and when he caught Armand's eye, he tilted his head towards the door, telling him he was leaving and not inviting Armand. Armand nodded to show he understood, and Louis turned away without another word, leading the guy away with a hand pressed against the small of his back.
"No, I haven't, actually," Armand said dryly, drawing Claudia's attention back to him. Her jaw was tightened with displeasure, and Armand was sure his was too. He swallowed thickly, "What's that?"
And Claudia was right, in Dubai, when she said, in that grating voice of hers, that there was nothing he could do to stop the lie that had built itself into something unable to be confessed. She said, rather gleefully, that there was nothing he could do to stop it from crumbling back to the ground, sending Armand careening down with it. The lie didn't have the proper framework to withstand the elements, and Claudia laughed, announcing to no one in particular, "Good fucking riddance. Finally," when she saw him leaning against the wreckage of it.
"Fucking do something," Claudia bit out, on one occasion. She looked stressed, and she looked like she was close to trying to hit him. "Help him! If you love Louis as much as you say you do, then prove it. Go and find him."
"I'm trying! Just— just give me some space. I can't concentrate when you hover," Armand hissed back, swatting her away. She sat beside him on the couch instead, close as possible and worry clear, and she bent her torso, twisting to look him in the eyes. It was hard to fault her for it when his stomach was rolling with the same feeling. "Quit it, would you? I'm trying to find his mind among the many."
"Well, then, you should really hurry up," Claudia snarled back, but she leaned away again anyway. Out of the corner of his eye, Armand saw her cross her arms over her chest. He saw her run her fingers soothingly over her upper arms, as if to comfort herself. "The sun will be coming up soon. We don't need a repeat of San Francisco, do we?"
Claudia's always right about something, isn't she? She's right, about Armand and Santino, now. It would be incorrect for him to think, even in the privacy of his own mind, otherwise.
But instead of giving her the satisfaction of being right, Armand lets his focus drift elsewhere, to other things.
He can't resist the urge to ask, "Are you even real?"
The words get a laugh out of Claudia.
"What do you think? Have you been feeling guilty enough, all these years, to hallucinate me?"
Armand does not dignify her a response, but he says, as calmly as he can manage, "You know, it's difficult to tell the difference, sometimes. Most people, most vampires, can't see ghosts at all, but I've been able for a very long time."
The first he saw, led to him by Santino and the other Children of Darkness, was a dead child. A child who he killed, because of them. A child who trusted Amadeo when he lied, saying he would not hurt him. And many dead children followed after the first, echoes of his fallen and burnt brothers. When he looked in one direction, he saw their corpses caged beside him, and when he looked in the other, he say their ghostly faces painted with confusion and hurt. In the corner of Amadeo's vision, Riccardo lied still. His ghost never came back for him, but the others remained for longer than they were welcome. It makes Armand feel breathless to remember, even now.
"Since around the time I met Santino, actually."
He doesn't know why he confesses it to Claudia, but the words slip out anyway. And then it's too late to take them back.
Claudia hums again. Armand feels it in the air as a cold breeze when she shifts, moving to sit against the wall across from him, and he feels the barest outline of her dress brush against his shoulder when she passes. Armand doesn't look up to see her, but he can tell, somehow, that she's not set on leaving yet. He doesn't hear it when she sits, but he can tell that's what she has done.
"And were they all other people you killed, or am I special?"
Armand stays silent.
He thinks she knows the answer.
He knows she knows the answer.
"Well?"Claudia says, urging him on anyway. "You got to ask me a question. Don't I get to ask you one too?"
"You didn't answer mine," Armand points out, petulant.
"I'm as real as possible, because of you. Now answer my question."
"I didn't want to kill them."
"Yet you did," Claudia says back, immediately and without any sympathy. In an odd way, it feels sort of nice. Armand doesn't have much sympathy to offer himself for it either. "Who were they?"
"Children, mostly. I never learnt any of their names. I didn't want to."
"I wasn't a child when you killed me," Claudia fires back, defensive and taking offense. She adds, "Jackass."
"I didn't say you were a child," Armand says, and he barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. "I said they were children."
Claudia pauses, stumbling in her charge, "It was implied."
"No," Armand says, less biting than he wants to, "It wasn't."
A beat passes.
And a silence follows.
It's less uncomfortable than Armand would expect, but there have been many times, in the past eighty years, that Claudia has sat across from him, glaring and not knowing that to say. It becomes familiar, at a certain point. It becomes easy enough to ignore, at a certain point. Usually, she leaves when Armand stops reacting to her, but other times, she sticks around for far longer than he knows how to explain. Armand usually isn't tempted to speak to her unless spoken to, but as of late, he hasn't minded her presence as much as he used to. Not that he'd ever admit that, of course.
"Tell me why you did it," Claudia says after a long moment, breaking the silence at last. She softens her voice ever so slightly for the first part, but it tightens back up when she continues, "If you really didn't want to kill them, then you wouldn't have."
Armand takes a moment to answer, rearranging his thoughts of fire into something less burning hot. "It was that or starving to death," he settles on, eventually. He settles on the bare bones of the truth, leaning against the discomfort of them. "Santino was not a kind coven master. We didn't even really call ourselves a coven back then, but it's the closest term to what you're familiar with."
Claudia laughs, without any humor, "You're telling me you were a part of a cult? God, that makes so much sense."
Armand denies, on impulse, "It wasn't really a cult." After a moment of silence, clearly radiating with judgment, he corrects himself. "Alright, it was kind of a cult." But being within it was never the worst of it.
Claudia falls silent again.
It was worse to know the why, and it was worse to be unable to forget. The boys burnt, and he left to be with the Children of Darkness. His children, in darkness, burnt, and he left the crypt for a life above. His coven burnt, and he left, feeling nothing. He tells himself he feels nothing about Claudia now.
Armand confesses, "I thought I'd never have to see him again."
Claudia clicks her tongue, "It's like you're trying to convince yourself. Like you try to convince yourself when you say your vampire daddy beating you as a mortal child wasn't really that bad. Like you try to convince yourself it wasn't bad that he hit you even harder after he turned you, because you could take it better than you could when you were a little boy."
Armand looks up at her. She's sitting with her knees pulled to her chest like he is. Her chin rests against them, echoing his position in mockery
He smiles thinly, and he says, dryly, "I think you prescribe your own worldview on me, when I have no reason to think like you do." He takes on an innocent, falsely sympathetic expression. "My maker was not Lestat, Claudia. He didn't drop me from the sky."
He did, once, actually, but it was into the ocean, after he was turned. Armand doesn't think that should count, even if he had to crawl his way back to land after. And Claudia doesn't really need to know that. She would take it as winning this argument, if she did, but it wasn't the same at all. It doesn't count, if it wasn't left injured, aching exquisitely in the aftermath.
Claudia snorts, "Sometimes you remind me of Louis."
"Thank you," he says.
"But only ever the bad parts of him, that refuse to look reality in its ugly face. For you, it'd be like looking in the mirror."
Armand laughs.
As if Claudia can't help herself, her lips twitch upward at their corners too.
She looks young, like this. Armand stretches his legs out, leaning his head back against the wall too look away from her and mostly into the light. Across from him, from the corner of his eye, he sees Claudia tilt her head too, as if to study him back, but she doesn't say anything else for a long time.
When Armand opens his eyes again, blinking away the still persisting thoughts of his dreams, of brightly lit flames, Claudia is gone again. It's both less and more shocking than it has any right being. But just as always, she leaves behind no trace that she was ever there at all. That, too, is both less and more shocking than it has any right being.