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armand

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It has only been a short time since meeting the strange man with the strange eyes. The man who says he was once human and now only pretends to be. Armand. He had promised his mind would always be open, which is a strange thing to promise. But perhaps it will make him easier to find.

She wants to know more about him. She wants to understand why he reacted the way he did when she'd told him her powers didn't always work. She wants to know if he can teach her to be more powerful than Darrow. Not powerful enough to leave: just powerful enough to protect her friends.

Finding him would be easier if she had a picture of him, but with a scarf over her eyes and her phone hissing white noise into her ear, she sits on her bed, Dustin the cat curled up against her crossed shins, and she recalls his face. His strange eyes. His strange nails. The copper-brown of his skin. Pretty, she thinks, a thought she hadn't allowed herself to have then, her suspicion too high. Now, it comes freely, in part because it's true.

The Void fills in with fits and starts. His leg. His arm. A shoulder. His hair. It would be easier with a picture, but it gets easier every time she does it this way. And then there he is. El watches him, the black of The Void echoing around them as she does.

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Armand is a very old vampire with skills that others will only ever dream of possessing. It means that when he feels the itch of someone scratching at his shoulder, as if to whisper that they're watching, he casts his mind out into Darrow.

It's a small enough city and it doesn't take long for him to locate the mind that's seeking him.

He hears the echo of a thought, but it's muddled. Ah. He must be too far away. Well, perhaps he ought to step into this inky darkness that she's somehow creating, allowing his mind to slip into the space in between as if he's entering a shop. Hands in pockets, he peers around the emptiness, as if looking for something apart from the girl. "You rang?" he asks pleasantly.

She can see the moment he joins her. This isn't the first time it's happened, but it's the first time it's so obvious, a casual shifting of his body before he glances around them. El takes a half-step back, the inky water under her feet rippling out away from her.

"Oh," she says softly. She isn't used to people being able to be in here with her. "... Hi," she adds. "I was... going to watch you. People do not know I'm doing it."

"I can sense a vampire's thoughts from thousands of miles away and know precisely what the weather is like where they are," he comments, staring at the water below them with mild disdain, mostly for the state of his shoes -- even if it is in his head.

"You're very skilled," he assures. "I'm simply older."

Not better. He's had more time, that's all.

"The weather," she echoes, and the space around Armand fills in, showing them both where he is in the city. It means almost nothing to Eleven unless she expands it further — she doesn't know every single room in every single building on every single street, after all. But she could find still find him if she wanted.

"Can you still do that?" she asks. "Or are you also 'excised'?"

Armand doesn't mind her seeing the intimacies of his space with Daniel. After all, there's no danger. Not from anyone unless they catch him unaware and luckily, Daniel is an excellent security system backup.

"I can still read the minds of all but two people in the entire world," he says. "One is here. One is not." And he's still unsure whether he ever wants Marius to be there. It's a complicated experience for him. "Reading minds, manipulating them, that's a simple trick, boring in fact. Every vampire I know wields it. You wield something different. What else can you do in here?"

Reading minds is not boring to her. It is something she is still unpracticed at; Papa had made her find people, and now she can see into their minds. She isn't Kali. She can't plant images in people's minds that look realistic, that talk and act like the real thing. She isn't sure she would need The Void to do that, anyway.

But it does make her wonder: What else can she do in here?

"I don't know," she admits. "This is the... in-between place. It is how I find someone, and how I see their thoughts. Memories. I do not need it to move things." Once, before Darrow, she could use her powers to speak through radios — to put someone's voice through it, if she heard it, or her own if she wanted to — but she hasn't been able to do that since she arrived.

Hm. The in-between, is it?

Armand focuses on not only her mind, but the liminal space around them, eyeing his toes as he mentally thinks of taking the ankle-socks off. Soon, he's barefoot, dragging his foot through the water, as if to test it, curious and amused. "Test it on me," he says.

"Pull a memory from my mind."

He's making one front and centre for her -- the memory of seeing Lestat perform for the first time, a clown on a stage, capturing the attention of everyone in the theatre.

She barely has to try: the memory is there, ready for her. El moves to stand in front of Armand and look up at him, meeting his eyes. Normally, the person she does this to doesn't know she's doing it, isn't aware of it, and it makes her wonder if he can feel it — if he can feel the way the memory fills in like mist, or if he can only see it around them.

She wonders if he will live the memory, or if he will observe it with her. Armand is an unknown, to her, but the memory is clear and perfect.

It feels a little like someone has scratched an itch. He can tell her presence, but it's not a blunt hammer. That, in itself, speaks to potential and Armand instantly knows that with the right time and investment, she can be formidable (and now comes the time for him to decide how much of his own time and effort he wants to invest).

For now, with little else to do, she has his whole attention -- for better or worse.

"Can you simply see it?" he asks, as the memory unspools. "Do you feel my emotions? My thoughts in that moment?"

"I can only see," she confirms. "I cannot feel or change anything." She wonders, suddenly, if she would be able to feel anything, if she tried hard enough. She doesn't know if that's something she could ever do, or if she is limited to what she knows so far.

Henry could control the Upside Down creatures. Can she do something like that, too? She isn't sure she would ever want to try, and anyway, without knowing how Henry did it, she isn't sure she could try.

"It is... not mind-reading," she explains. "It is... memory-seeing."

Interesting. It feels that there's a block of sorts. If she can see the memories, then it would only be a stretch of the finger more to be able to claw at the surface and set the deluge of emotions free. "Why?" he asks. "Is that how you were taught? Or is that what you feel you can access?"

He serves her another memory now -- this one of the coven, of their performances, and of the rehearsals. "Do you feel the mood? The undercurrent?" He whispers to her in thoughts, instead. Which one of them do I hate the most? Which do I love?

"I don't know," she says to his first question, but to his second question, she finds herself frowning. Can she feel that? Can she know? It seems impossible, but Kali can plant pictures into minds, and Henry...

So why can't she? Perhaps she simply wasn't taught. Perhaps Papa never needed to teach her that, and it had never occurred to her to try. Until now. Now, she realizes she wants to know.

"How do I... feel them?" she asks.

"It's all there," Armand says. "You're able to access the memory. You're here with me. Reach. Imagine that you're skimming the surface of a pond with your hand." Will he come to regret this? Possibly, and yet, Armand's innate curiosity dictates that he go further, because he wants to know if he can teach this girl.

"Plunge your fingers below, see what comes of it." And then he'll see if he can feel the intrusion, though he does imagine he will, with a novice.

El frowns, brow twitching into a subtle furrow. Plunge your fingers below, he tells her, and she imagines her power doing just that, curling fingers into the water of the pond. In her room, her nose beings to bleed sluggishly. In the Void, she stares in intense focus at the memory they are watching, and for a moment, she can feel. She can feel a flicker of something that isn't hers, fitting badly in her thoughts. Just as quickly, it's gone again, but Eleven looks at Armand, eyes huge.

"I think it worked," she says.

Armand watches her with a passive interest, taking care not to allow himself to appear too interested. After all, he wants to maintain the upper hand. He needs to pretend that he can walk away at any moment. And yet, he can allow pride. "Good," he says.

"And how did it feel to you?" Not his emotions, but how she's felt pulling the emotion. "Do you feel stronger? Wiser? Better?" he challenges.

"Tired," she says honestly. That isn't what he means, though, so she explains, "Good tired. It feels like I have been in gym class." She means it feels like exercising, like she's flexed a muscle she hasn't used in a long time. "I will need practice to know." That much, she's self-aware enough to know. None of her powers had been immediate. She'd had to work to unlock them, step by step and inch by inch. This, she thinks, will be like that.

He drags his toes through the water, ankles still bare as Marius would have them. His expression remains disinterested, disconnected, careful not to show too much pride. He's learned from so many masters that praise leads to a stifled talent.

"There are others we can practice on. Daniel, for one," Armand suggests. "Perhaps we'll see what you can do with my memory blocks. Perhaps you might even unravel them."

"Memory blocks," she echoes. She thinks briefly of Mama, of the way her brain seemed broken and trapped in the loop. She'd been able to learn of Kali, but it had not been easy. Could she learn to be better, with Armand's help? Could she repair Mama, if she learned how to extend her powers — how to un excise them?

Oh dear. He really is dealing with an absolute beginner, isn't he? So unaware of the skill she could possess and wield, and yet, so tempting for Armand to be able to shape her in the exact way he wants.

"Think of your powers like a surgeon," he says with a pleasant smile, not too big, not too excited. "You'll act as the scalpel. Decide what should stay and what should be plucked out, for their betterment."

"How do I know what is for their better mint?" El asks, narrowing her eyes in concentration. She wants to make sure she understands. There are many things that she can understand right away, and after so many years in Darrow, nuance has finally, mostly, become one of them — but reading people and knowing what is and isn't good for them is one of the things that continues to elude her.

"You take away the pain, of course," Armand replies smoothly. Isn't that what he always does? Isn't it lucky, then, that in taking away the pain, he so often is able to also etch away his own mistakes?

Luck. Surely, it's all just luck.

"Experience will teach that to you. Are you mortal?" he asks. "Or do your powers affect your ageing as well?"

El frowns, equal parts thoughtful and unsure why it matters — and a little bit unsure of the answer. She has grown, after all. She's grown and developed and things about her have changed. She supposes that's her answer.

"I think I am mortal," she says. Not like Nathan, who came back when he died.

She thinks. She isn't sure.

Interesting.

There is an easy way to test that, but Armand is quite far away and besides, he'll have to tend to Daniel soon. Still, he knows the curiosity is going to linger, and he'll happily tend to it at some point soon. "Well, we all have flaws," he deadpans, raising a brow at her. "Mortality doesn't mean your powers aren't an incredible thing."

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