Logs:Hallelujah

Hallelujah
cn: parental abuse, sibling abuse, violence, torture, sadism, murder
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Matt, The Beldam
In Absentia Emma, Ryan	2024-03-17 "{We both learned from you, Mother.}" (after matt's confrontation; part of lean in.)
Location <PRV> Tessier Residence - Greenwich Village
Understated opulence claims this spacious and well-kept townhome, the decor throughout the whole of it of the highest quality and carefully chosen. The front door opens onto the entrance hall, a closet close at hand to receive coats and shoes -- the pale hardwood floors gleam underfoot, unsullied by tracked-in mess from outside. The living room beyond the entrance is all dark woods and pale earth tones, comfortable couches and armchairs and a thick soft rug laid down beneath. Two large and painstakingly aquascaped aquariums flank the entrance to the dining room, with several brightly coloured species of fish within. Most of the rest of the wall space, notably, is taken up with shelves -- shelves crammed with books of every subject and genre. A study branching off of the main hall is cozy, small, done in pale blues and lined with books as well around the large computer desk and smaller futon, though these rarer books are cased behind glass. Another securely locked door leads to the basement, and another to the full bathroom downstairs. The kitchen connects to the living room; in contrast, it is sleek and modern and well-appointed, stocked by someone who takes their cooking seriously. And takes their alcohol equally seriously -- to one side of the kitchen there is a fully-stocked bar. The back door to the kitchen looks out on a small well-kept garden. The world has been dark and warm and close, its quiet shot through with soft-plucked guitar and Hozier's voice, "...housed by your warmth, thus transformed..." The press of cold nose and lap of warm tongue on his cheek force Lucien's eyes reflexively open to a perplexingly foreshortened view of Flèche's long narrow snout. The angle is wrong; he's lying down now, on the futon. "...by your grounded and giving and darkening scorn..." In the distance beyond the dog's fretfully flagging tail Matt appears through the door, his hair in disarray and his face pale with distress Lucien still cannot reach. He's carrying a tray with the celadon teapot and not one, not two, but three of the match mugs. "...remember me, love, when I'm reborn..." His brother is whispering something quick and frantic under his breath, too low to hear, too indistinct to read, but it's almost familiar enough to grasp--almost. Matt's bright green eyes snap to him as he sets the tray down. "...as the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn..." The grasp that had never fully relinquished his power tightens again, gently but insistently drawing the darkness back in. --- The world returns more gently this time, though the music still comes first -- jaunty piano and sweeping violin in counterpoint so familiar it reaches right down through the muddle of his waking mind right to the cues stitched with song and dance and laughter into Sabrina singing, prim and perky, "I know the parables told in the holy book..." But when his eyes blink open it's not his castmate looking up at him but Elie Tessier looking down, her face tastefully made up and framed by the tresses deliberately left out of her elaborate chignon, curled just so. She's dressed for a night out...somewhere in a black silk dress with a faint emerald sheen and a plunging neckline that would strike most as scandalous for a woman of her years, but on her the faint suggestion of scandal is striking in itself. Her perfume envelopes him, a cloud of rose and lily of the valley relieved by just enough pink pepper and sandalwood to feel uncomfortably familiar, and her eyes are fixed on him with an also uncomfortably familiar disdain. "{Are quite sure he's capable of such a thing?}" She's not talking to Lucien, though her gaze is still pinning him down. "{There must be someone pulling his strings, no?}" It's the perfume that cuts closest through the haze rather than the familiar music or familiar face. Lucien's brows furrow, head turning aside, little though it does to distance him from the uncomfortably comforting scent. He lifts his hand slowly to touch at the bruising lingering on his neck, then drops it back to the mattress. His eyes close again as if this all might be some terrible dream, and when they finally struggle open again he's looking past Elie, a rising panic in his neurochemistry that does not make it to his face as he seeks out his brother. "{He's more than capable.}" Matt's voice is coming from the direction of the desk where he's slumped in the chair, hugging his mug close."{But that doesn't mean there isn't someone pulling his strings.}" His power squeezes down just enough to remind Lucien it's there without actually holding him down anymore, like the barest tug on a leash to catch a dog's attention before it strays. Flèche is no longer in the room, however. "I don't know the comings and goings of his Machiavellian little cabal anymore. For all I know he might be answering to a new monarch." A soft huff of a laugh. "Or answering for one. {Is it still Queen Emma?}" This last, at least, is clearly directed toward Luci. "{Well.}" Elie straightens up, primping unnecessarily at her hair. "{I think it unlikely he should be able to fuck his way into that kind of access.}" The vulgar diction jars with her cultured accent, and she's wafting over now to fuss at Matt's hair (which is in fact a mess). "{But clearly he is not without his wiles. I suppose it'd be impossible to spend as much time around you as he has without something rubbing off.}" She smooths her hand over her firstborn's head and curls her arm around his shoulder, pulling him against her side. "{I shouldn't like to leave something like that to chance, though. Even if his queen didn't put him up to this, she is no doubt dangerous. And the rest of her court, also.}" She finally looks at Lucien again. "{Out with it, then.}" Upon sight of Matt there is a reflexive easing in Lucien's mind, the panic subsiding almost immediately. It isn't long-lived; recent memory quickly catching up to this instinctual feeling and a jagged fear clawing back up into his mind. His breathing stays slow and calmed, and he's attempting to push himself upright, starting to reach for the third mug of tea on the tray. He doesn't quite manage to get far enough before some lingering exhaustion pulls him heavily back against the futon mattress. "{You really think I would involve my monarch in family business? I am,}" there's a bitter spite in this declaration, flung sharp at Elie rather than Matt, "{a Tessier, no matter how little you care to remember it.}" "{We both learned from you, Mother,}" Matt says blandly; it sounds at once like a compliment and a curse. "{I doubt very much if his court would have any interest in us one way or another. Prometheus is another question altogether.}" He leans into Elie's hand, the tense set of his body easing with her ministrations. "{It was a black project bloated on defense funding with little oversight, and because it was brought down in such dramatic ignominy, nobody wants to be left holding the bag.}" His eyes track to the unclaimed mug, and though Lucien cannot feel the impulse, he looks as though he's about to reach for it when Elie's arm settles across his shoulders and he subsides. "{Any number of organizations stand now to profit from the fallout, Frost Technologies included. But I'm frankly not sure Emma has that kind of initiative.}" He arches an eyebrow at Lucien. "{Does she even know? Who else was involved?}" Elie's laughter is bright and pure. "{Family business? It sounds to me rather like you keep it all to yourself, meting out whatever you think will make your siblings complacent while reliant on you.}" She caresses Matt's hair again. "{You ought to have got rid of him years ago, darling. Really, you ought to be where he is, and might be if you didn't spend so much energy coddling him.}" Her gentle reproval hardens when she addresses Lucien again. "{I'll not deign to count you among my children after what you've done to us. You were nearly the death of Matthieu, and even if consigning him to the labs saved his life I'm sure it furthered your own ends, also.}" Her lovely face twists into a mask of rage. "{And with him out of the way you disposed of me!}" It looks like it takes a physical effort to tear herself away from Matt, but she does it with a will and backhands Lucien, hard. She huffs a small breath, as if the single blow was too much exertion. "{You'll have to make him answer, my love,}" this to Matt in a tone of doting admonishment. "{Force is the only language he's ever understood.}" Lucien's expression has tensed against the impact of Elie's words, but he hasn't braced himself for the physical blow, unprecedented enough between them to widen his eyes in stark surprise. He doesn't even attempt to mute the pain, idly focusing on the stinging in his cheek as he pushes himself properly upright. "Matthieu --" His fingers start to flex, to twitch, but then clamp down in determined stillness against his knees. "{There are many things I regret not telling you but everything I have done, I have done to keep this family safe. That has always been my end, you have to know that.}" "{He is my brother,}" Matt protests mildly, "{and your son.}" He rises when Elie pulls away from him, but evinces neither distress nor--more puzzlingly--surprise when she strikes his brother. "{But you're rather loose about your definition of 'family', no?}" It might be difficult to tell at first he's speaking to Lucien and not Elie, and if he clocks the irony in his own words he gives no indication. "{And 'safe', also.}" He drains his mug and sets it down beside Lucien's, still untouched. "{I've always trusted you, Luci. I've always believed you, even when no one else would.}" He looms over his brother and runs a hand gently over the ruffled blond hair, not unlike what Elie had just been doing to him, until his fingers sink in and grip painfully tight--more painful than it has any excuse to be. "{If you want to protect us, you'll fucking answer me.}" The words are too vacant to be harsh. He sounds almost bored. He brings his knee up and slams Lucien's forehead down into it. The pain echoes and magnifies itself, and somewhere beyond the bright loud ripples of overwhelming agony he can sense Matt's eagerness. When Matt wrenches his head back up there's a light blazing in his bright green eyes again. "{Tell us how to bring your court to heel.}" Elie rolls her eyes theatrically. "{Really, Matthieu, you've always been too soft on him, and he's taken advantage of you. Don't let him do it again.}" She makes a slow circuit of the room, trailing her fingertips over the spines of Lucien's books, watching her sons only sidelong. When she sees that fire light behind Matt's eyes she smiles -- just the barest sliver of a smile, but it transforms her whole face as she circles back. "{There you are, my wolf pup.}" Her voice is full of warmth and praise and relief. "{But you can do better than that.}" "{I've always wanted to protect you. It's why I can't.}" It's very soft, Lucien's hands remaining very still in his lap. The unsteady tremor in his breathing is reflected a thousandfold in the terror that lights bright and sharp in his mind. His eyes lift slowly to meet his brother's, and at first his neurochemistry is shifting to dull the edges of the pain and fear. The feel of the fingers running through is hair halts this effort; the tension in his mind is oddly easing, a strange sort of surrender colored in fierce and aching love. The sudden shock of pain does not diminish this, though it does thread a new and nauseated grief into the cacophony. His words don't quite echo Elie's, low and pleading: "{-- you are better than this.}" "{Protect me?} Is that what you thought you were doing all this time?" For all Matt's anger and incredulity, he is gleefully drinking in that surrender. "Oh, darling..." He slams Lucien's head into his knee again, then a third time for good measure. "I ought never to have let you forget your place." When Ryan Black's cover of "Hallelujah" starts playing on the sound system he comes up short, his fingers going slack in Lucien's hair. Though his biokinetic control does not ease, the already imperfect obscuring of his own neurochemistry lapses further. His mind unfurls bright and sharp and ferocious against his brother's, majestic even in its chaotic tumult of anger and heartbreak and pleasure and hatred. "{We are going to topple Emma, whether you tell us or no.}" At Elie's goading his hand relinquishes its hold, dropping down to find the marks he'd left on Lucien's neck earlier, fingers digging hard into still-rising bruises. "{This is who I am. This is who I've always been.}" He leans harder, his expression serene though he thrills at the power he wields and hungers for more, revels in Lucien's pain and aches to deal more. "You cannot protect me from this. You can't even protect yourself." Elie perches herself on the arm of the futon, sipping her tea as she watches her eldest strangle her second-born. "{Oh, my sweet darling boy, I am so glad that you see through him at last.}" She sighs and lowers her mug to her lap, breaking into a beatific smile. "{If dying and spending eight long years in purgatory was what it took to bring you home to me, then I'm glad he murdered me, after all.}" This does not, evidently, suggest to her she should be grateful to Lucien for said murder. "{If he's not going to help us, then best be rid of him. I still don't think he's as clever as you say, but even so he's too dangerous to leave hovering about.}" She makes a sort of vague shooing gesture in Lucien's general direction, never mind that Matt is pinning him down savagely by his throat. "{Be a dear and kill him for Mother, won't you?}" She brightens, lifting her cup again and smiling coquettishly over its brim. "{Oh, but do take your time, of course, if you're having fun.}" Lucien -- says nothing. If the tumult in his mind is even in a place to summon up words right now, they certainly cannot make it out past the hand clamped cruelly down on his throat. His hand lifts -- not to try and fight back against his much smaller brother but just to touch fingertips light against the back of Matt's knuckles, where past his anguish a faint habitual trickle of cool comfort whispers out into the ravenous chaos of Matt's mind. It's hard to tell how much of Elie's sentimental chatter is actually getting through to Matt, but Lucien's touch certainly does. The howling storm of his mind doesn't quiet, exactly, but some parts of it grow more focused and others more muddled. Something in him is struggling toward what might pass for lucidity, but that something hitches at Elie's request and shatters into a fierce chaotic spill of delight. His grip eases--physically, anyway; he pins Lucien down with his own power when he pulls away. He doesn't take long to find what he's looking for in Lucien's meticulously organized closet, and returns to the futon with an elegant inlaid lacquer box. The speakers are still quietly piping Ryan's voice, "There was a time you'd let me know what's real and going on below, but now you never show it to me, do you?" Probably it does not strike Elie as particularly strange that Lucien doesn't even try to overpower him--or simply walk away--while he lays out his weapons: syringe, a bottle, a spoon (it matches the box, of course), a little bag of white powder. He leaves the vials of narcan in the box but, perhaps absurdly, still uses an alcohol swab. Somewhere in the middle of this operation he's started singing along, wildly off-key, "Remember when I moved in you? The Holy Dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was hallelujah..." Maybe it should strike Elie as strange that Lucien just lets him push the needle into his vein, humming through the refrain all the while.