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#I might do dark academia lucien too
ladyelain · 1 year
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Ik you’re primarily an Elain blog but I’d love to hear your fav Tarquin headcanons, if you have any 👀🌊
hehe, I do. Let me think… 🌊🌊
Generally, I feel like there’s so much more to Tarquin than what meets the eye. He’s not as experienced in court politics as the other High Lords, being the youngest of them all, though I’m sure people underestimating him will play right into Tarquin’s hands one day.
- he’s the ultimate artsy boy at heart. This might be just me being a sucker for guitar / piano dudes, but i feel like Tarquin knows to play like 5 different instruments. Plus, he paints every night for relaxation. Which is why he was so smitten by Feyre.
- he’s a nerd for human history and dark academia stuff. Would definitely read Donna Tartt.
- he sucks at dating. Whenever he makes plans with a woman he really likes, he’s this close 🤏 to cancelling them last minute, just because he gets super nervous. You would never think so because he always seems so calm and collected.
- this is so random, but IMAGINE his future mate (whoever that may be) not knowing how to swim, so Tarquin would need to teach her. And they’d both get all nervous and horny and awkward 🥹
- ik it’s unlikely and impractical, but since i LIVE for opposites attract and courtly drama, I’d like to see Tarquin falling for a Winter Court member maybe. Also because it would be hella entertaining seeing Tarquin freeze his ass off in winter.
- he’d vibe so hard with the band of exiles.
- I feel like he’d also vibe with Eris. They’ll be secret High Lord besties once Eris takes over the throne. Lowkey shipping them now oops. Is there fanfiction? Lol
- his love language is gift-giving, but not in the I’ll buy you diamonds and lands because I can kinda sense. He’s just that person that makes the most unique and personal presents. He’s not just getting you pearls, he’ll dive down into the depths of the ocean and handpick the treasures. (Sry Lucien, you did great too)
- i just know he established a shelter for stranded sea animals at some point.
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infinites-chaser · 3 years
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dark night fireworks | mlqc | lucien/mc | dreams and memory
spoilers for ch.13 and somewhat inspired by ch.16
warning for drinking and vague + non-explicit sexual content
“Lucien,” you whisper, as if speaking his name aloud will somehow make it real.
It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. And what’s a moment in a dream if you make yourself believe it’s true?
‘oh, love, even if I wake up and it all disappears and becomes a mess
oh, love, I’ll wait for this night again’
xii.
Once, when you were young, you caught a butterfly, trapping its delicate wings between your hands. Most of your childhood memories have faded to sepia and tones of grey, but this you remember in vivid color. It comes to you now in fragments, like a painting ripped to shreds: The butterfly's wings, bright yellow blurs that tickle your palms. Your father's horror. The warm wind, his panicked scolding, and the wide blue sky.
You remember him telling you that trapped things, once let go, are never the same after. He told you catching the butterfly crushed its wings, and it would never fly straight again. You cried, you think, as you often did, and opened your hands.
You can't remember the rest. Did the butterfly emerge from your finger prison, its cocoon? Did it fly away? Did it fly straight and true?
Memory is reconstructive. If you reach for the pieces enough times, your mind will build its own answer.
But, now, the truth: the butterfly was already dead. It had been dead since you first snatched it from where it danced in the golden spring sky.
When you laid your palms flat, the butterfly's bright wings had stirred once and then fell still. You cried. To this day, you're still not sure why you don't remember this, your Schrodinger's butterfly. In your hands, it had become a lesson from your father, something with the possibility of being not quite dead. In your memory, it becomes immortal, that butterfly you remember entrapping but can never vividly picture flying free.
i.
The bar is not pink, as its name, The Peony Pavilion, might suggest. Its walls are a deep purple that fades upward to dark blue, then a black which stretches across the ceiling, uninterrupted save by tiny pinpricks of light. The floor, by contrast, is a softly glowing grey, carpeted and plush, muffling even the heaviest of footfalls of more intoxicated customers or louder, untrained personnel.
It is crowded normally, seats filled with patrons, troubled dreamers, and drunks. On busy nights, a spiraling chandelier will descend from the endless ceiling, shimmering with the colors of sunset: yellow, pink, and white. The air will still-- the frequent visitors know what’s coming, they tell their newer compatriots to be quiet, to wait.
A woman will unfold herself from a crouched position in the half-light, hair like unbound midnight, her dress a pure sparkling white. On cue, the patrons will clap and cheer, but she will gaze past them all, her eyes worlds away, caught up in a vision only she can see. She'll sweep a bow. They'll all fall silent.
The clock will strike twelve, and the lights of the chandelier will dim to a shade of purple, a twilight hue a few hours softer than the color of the walls.
The woman will open her mouth and begin to sing.
But not tonight.
Tonight, the bar’s doors are closed. Only the bartender stands behind the counter. All seats sit empty, save two.
xi.
He catches your attention from across the bar. (It’s easy. You’re the only two inside.)
One stolen glance and you're lost in his eyes again, like a moth to a dark flame. You're reminded, briefly, of the sleepless nights you once spent following him through the city, a lonely journey down moonlit alleys, into the cinema, into bars. They're nights from a time you know you can't return to, a time you, even after everything, still hold dear.
You read about the primacy effect one time in a psychology textbook, following along for a few pages over his shoulder before you stifled a yawn. He’d marked the page and closed the book, and turned to caress the top of your head with a gentle smile.
The study those pages had described surfaces in your mind now, as he raises his glass and drinks, dark eyes never leaving yours. The scientists had split their participants into two groups, and given them the same list of traits in different orders, one presenting a fictional man with his flaws first and strengths last, the other, the reverse. They'd then asked each group for their impression of the man.
Despite being given the exact same listed traits, they had opposite responses. The first, remembering most clearly his flaws, thought him a terrible person. The second saw him simply as human, and sympathized with those natural flaws.
At the time, you hadn't understood it. You couldn't think of how it related, out of the study and academia, back to everyday life. Of course now, you do. You're in his experiment. (You're in the second group, presented strengths first, flaws last.)
You can't help but continue to stare, your traitorous heart twisting with endlessly conflicting feelings at the sight of slim fingers you still remember holding, and the elegant panes of his face that you’ll never forget.
ii.
He'd explained primacy again, after you'd watched Memento, a movie he'd called one of his favorites. You don't know anymore if that was true. You don't think you know a single true thing about him. But still, you remember it. His words. The movie. The Polaroid. Don’t believe his lies.
The movie starts centered around the main character, and it’s intensely subjective, he’d said. We see him and his world through his eyes. We learn the details of the plot along with him, even as he forgets, and by the time the movie tells us he’s not as good of a person as we’d like to remember and we finally step out of his head and question his character, it’s too late. We're back at the start. A beginning at the end, an ending at the beginning.
The movie’s a bit like those classic math puzzles, he had said, and had chuckled at your groan. We begin with two trains going in opposite directions towards each other: one from the past, in black-and-white, going forward, one, in color, from the present going back, and they meet somewhere in the grey in between, at the start of the movie. Only, we’re introduced to his positive perception of his present self first.
So we call the movie’s arguable villain hero, up until the movie’s end. Just as you would like to think of him not as Ares, as a villain, up until this dream ends.
xi.
You know you’re dreaming when you blink, and he’s gone from the shadowy corner only to reappear right next to you, your name on his lips with a smile.
“Lucien,” you whisper, as if speaking his name aloud will somehow make the moment real. As if a dream could ever become reality.
It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. And what’s a moment in a dream if you make yourself believe it’s true?
He raises his glass to your lips, a silent invitation.
You meet those dark eyes. You drink.
(A different movie, but. You fall. He's your totem, your ever-spinning top. You wait for the kick.)
iii.
The world shifts and swirls around you. Only he stays steady, awash in a sea of sunset colors and midnight starry lights. You take his hand, your anchor, and he lets you.
Your dress is a soft purple now. Now, you say, since you think it used to be pink, and before that, white. (If the bartender would speak, she'd tell you it looks like the chandelier: dripping in crystals, iridescent, reminiscent of the fading day, the coming night.)
x.
There's an invisible glass wall between you and him. (You don't remember Ares. You don't remember why.)
You press up against it, and it shatters.
iv.
He calls your name, and you surface, dizzy, from your daze.
"Why did you come here?" He asks. His hand's hovering, almost reaching, on the verge of taking your glass away or perhaps tucking an escaped strand of hair behind your ear.
"Why do I do things? Why does anyone do anything?"
You're definitely a little drunk.
"What I do isn't meaningless just because there are things I don't remember," you say, and what you mean is things you've made me forget.
"The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?"
"Memento," he notes with that same gentle, enigmatic smile. "Touché."
Then, musing, quieter:
"So, you remember that night."
"I remember everything."
(You both know that's a lie.)
ix.
(a tangent.)
Once, you asked, waking from the middle of a nightmare to a starless night:
"Daddy, why do I forget so many things?"
Your father held you close without a word. (You weren't expecting an answer.)
Now, you think it suits you, being a girl cut loose in time.
v.
Your head hurts.
You'd ask the bartender for a glass of ice water, but the silent, white-clad woman's gone. In her places stands a gleaming door. Behind the door lies silver stairs.
Your temples throb again, and you think, fresh air. He takes your hand, and you let him. You pass through the doorway together.
viii.
(another tangent.)
A question without a proper answer: what does it mean to forget?
You searched it on the internet for Miracle Finder, found Wikipedia pages on the different types of memory and how your brain wires them all. Each article was long, convoluted, and a little pretentious.
(You gave up.)
Spoiler alert: neuroscientists still don't know.
You asked Lucien. He doesn't, either.
(The beginning of the hypothesis of an answer, buried in words about synapse strengthening and weakening: forgetting is just another word for loss.)
A better question, but one you'll never get a proper answer for: when your memory of someone is erased with Evol, which part of the brain is it affecting? What neural connections are lost, overwritten by the unnatural?
After all, Evol goes beyond the explainable, but it'd be wrong to say it doesn't affect those circuits at all.
A quick lesson that Lucien will never teach you: memory loss isn't like what you see in the movies.
There's many types of memory. You already know the first two: short-term and long-term. The temporary. The eroding. (outside these two-- the already lost)
(Memento's different. In it, he's lost the ability to make new long-term memories. Not quite memory loss. More like he can't feel time.)
Within the eroding are two subtypes: explicit, and implicit, or conscious and unconscious.
First, within explicit:
Semantic memory, our memory of general facts. It's how we familiarize ourselves with the world. (The sky is blue. Grass is green. The city the company headquarters are in is Loveland City.) A knock on the head to important bits involved here, and you won't remember the name of the president or how many cents add up to a dollar, but you'll still remember your childhood.
Episodic memory, the memory of our personal experiences. Many people argue this is the memory that makes you you. Say the amnesia-inducing Evol removes this. You forget an important event (a dream, a nightmare where he was Ares and you still called on him for protection, and he came, he saved you).
There, you say. Question answered. Problem solved.
But wait. The lesson's not over yet. There's still implicit. The unconscious part of your memory. (Freud's favorite.)
Implicit memory contains multitudes. (We'll just focus on a few.)
The important bits: implicit memory stores the memories necessary to learn. Procedural memory covers skills.
Then there's association, and key to association are your emotions. (You'll remember things that make you happy, make you angry, make you sad. You just won't remember why.)
Lastly, priming, also known as pattern completion. (If a puzzle was put in front of you, you'd be able to solve it, if you had before.)
Long story short, memory loss by Evol, if scientific, doesn't wipe them all out. Let's say it just wipes episodic. No more memory of the event. No more memory of the event itself. Let's say the emotions remain. Let's say you're still primed. But we digress.
(Lesson over.)
vi.
You race up the stairs, past pipes, through smoke, and burst onto the roof, giddy, flushed, his hand in yours the whole way. In the night air, your dress shimmers and darkens to a midnight blue, just a touch shy of the black of the silk of his suit.
The roof is wide open and empty, save for a delicate floating canopy of fairy lights. Beyond the rosy glow, vivid colors of fireworks shatter bright against the velvet curtain of night.
He pauses at the sight of the fireworks, the city far below, and you stagger back against him, one hand raised to the sky, laughing, drunk. Neither of you notice when the silver stairway disappears.
You loop your arms around his neck and stare up into his eyes. At first, the light doesn’t reflect off of them and you almost freeze, but he clasps a hand to the small of your back and draws you closer. When you blink up at him again, the dark of his gaze is warmed by the shine of the veil of lights.
“Where are the stars?”
“Shall I go and fetch them for you?”
Before you can respond, he leans in and catches the swell of your lips between his, dark eyes closed.
The first kiss is gentle and teasing, like his words. The second kiss is yours when he pulls back for air and you follow him. The third devours you.
His hands move in opposite directions; one floating up to cup your cheek and draw you in further with a caress, the other creeping down your back, leaving a trail of fire, aroused nerves, in its wake. It settles on the back of one of your thighs, and grips rough, possessive, hard and--
you gasp a single word between stolen breaths,
Lucien.
His name burns stronger than any alcohol on your lips, on his, it consumes you both, and you're glad of it, you're content to go up in flames. Your hands move to match his, to mark him as your own. You think this is perhaps what fireworks feel like, the moment before the end.
(You explode. It's not as pretty as a fireworks display.)
You arch your back against him and you suddenly remember the butterfly, those vivid splinters from your childhood so small they could hardly be called memories. You are not certain of much anymore but you are certain of this: You are his Schrodinger's butterfly, dancing futilely, dead in the palms of his hands.
He pulls away, panting, and you want to, but this time you do not follow. You don't move at all. Trapped things, you hear your father say, voice shaking, the butterfly long gone, once let go, are never the same after.
Your mind doesn't remember, but something in your heart does: this has happened before. He's altered your memory so many times, but you still can't remember to forget him.
(Emotional memory, and now. Priming. Some part of you sees the same pattern fall into place.)
His hand, cold against your flushed cheek moves to cover your eyes, and you know: you won't remember the ending of this, either. You don't try to stop him.
"Go back to sleep. Forget this nightmare."
His voice comes, silky smooth and soft. Sad, you want to think, though you know it can't be.
"What if I wake up, and this isn’t a dream? What if that's the nightmare?"
"Then find your way back here. I'll be waiting."
You close your eyes under his cool fingers, and wake to warm sheets.
In your dream, he's still smiling. You're sure of it.
xx.
You're waiting for someone. Someone's waiting for you. (You aren't sure which it is. You aren't sure who.)
The butterfly's wings flutter in your small child hands, light yellow heartbeats tickling your fingers. The sky is grey. A chill wind blows. Your father is silent, frozen and smiling. Gone.
You remember (or at least you tell yourself you do):
When you opened your palms, the butterfly flew straight. It flew true.
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