Jean-Claude (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
baisant) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
undergrounds2017-04-14 07:03 pm
baisant) wrote in undergrounds2017-04-14 07:03 pm
If I Were A Painting... [OPEN]
Jean-Claude sits in the office of Guilty Pleasures, staring down at the account book laid before him on the desk. He is usually a lot more productive than he finds himself at such a time as this, but the air in the room is somewhat oppressive with the weight of time and memory that he feels bearing down on him, and he finds it difficult to concentrate on much of anything for long periods of time. The city is in turmoil over this business with the witches and the fae, and the wolves have begun causing trouble of their own.
He has made decrees of his own in response to these problems -- all vampires sympathetic to the Daybreak cause are to be expelled from the Nest. And the wolves? Well, since they were going about killing any vampire on sight that set foot in East End Pack territory, Jean-Claude made his own declaration in return. Any werewolf caught trespassing will be subject to punishment of that vampire's choice. He does not want an all-out bloodbath on his hands, to decree that they might kill on sight in return would be downright foolhardy. But he cannot let this go either. Perhaps he should have thought things through more, but he had been a bit preoccupied of late.
And that preoccupation had everything to do with the new portrait hanging on the wall above his couch. New, in the sense that it had not been there before, but definitely not new in age. Oil on canvas, painted over five hundred years ago, depicting three people dressed in the style of the 1600's. The woman wears white and silver with a square bodice showing quite a bit of decolletage, her brown hair styled in careful ringlets, with a red rose held loosely in one hand. A man stands behind her, tall and slender, with dark gold hair in ringlets over his shoulders. He has a mustache and a Vandyke beard, so dark gold they are nearly brown. On his head he wears a large floppy hat with feathers, his entire outfit of white and gold. It is the third that the onlooker will recognize. Seated just behind the woman, dressed in black with silver embroidery and a wide lace collar and cuffs, he too has his own wide-brimmed floppy hat, with a single quite feather and a silver buckle, this one black. Though he does not wear it, instead resting it across his lap. His black hair falls in ringlets across his shoulders, and his face is clean-shaven, his eyes strikingly blue even despite the medium. The other two depicted are smiling, but the third man -- Jean-Claude -- is solemn. A darkness to their light.
Jean-Claude does not know why Belle decided to send this painting to him. He has not gathered the courage in himself to ask, just yet. Neither has he gathered the courage to do anything with it but hang the piece on his wall. It is a reminder of what feels now as if a different life. He should have known, as the portrait artist had done, that he would bring a darkness in their lives. These two people he had cherished the most in all the world. Julianna. Asher. How happy they had been...
He pushes himself back from the desk with a sigh, feeling their gazes heavy upon himself. He will get no work done on this night. Perhaps he should take a turn about the floor of the club instead. Though he doubts that will do much to lighten his mood.
[ooc: feel free to visit him being maudlin in his office, or as he mopes around on the floor, or perhaps once he has found himself a corner of the bar and a glass of wine to nurse as well! c: ]
He has made decrees of his own in response to these problems -- all vampires sympathetic to the Daybreak cause are to be expelled from the Nest. And the wolves? Well, since they were going about killing any vampire on sight that set foot in East End Pack territory, Jean-Claude made his own declaration in return. Any werewolf caught trespassing will be subject to punishment of that vampire's choice. He does not want an all-out bloodbath on his hands, to decree that they might kill on sight in return would be downright foolhardy. But he cannot let this go either. Perhaps he should have thought things through more, but he had been a bit preoccupied of late.
And that preoccupation had everything to do with the new portrait hanging on the wall above his couch. New, in the sense that it had not been there before, but definitely not new in age. Oil on canvas, painted over five hundred years ago, depicting three people dressed in the style of the 1600's. The woman wears white and silver with a square bodice showing quite a bit of decolletage, her brown hair styled in careful ringlets, with a red rose held loosely in one hand. A man stands behind her, tall and slender, with dark gold hair in ringlets over his shoulders. He has a mustache and a Vandyke beard, so dark gold they are nearly brown. On his head he wears a large floppy hat with feathers, his entire outfit of white and gold. It is the third that the onlooker will recognize. Seated just behind the woman, dressed in black with silver embroidery and a wide lace collar and cuffs, he too has his own wide-brimmed floppy hat, with a single quite feather and a silver buckle, this one black. Though he does not wear it, instead resting it across his lap. His black hair falls in ringlets across his shoulders, and his face is clean-shaven, his eyes strikingly blue even despite the medium. The other two depicted are smiling, but the third man -- Jean-Claude -- is solemn. A darkness to their light.
Jean-Claude does not know why Belle decided to send this painting to him. He has not gathered the courage in himself to ask, just yet. Neither has he gathered the courage to do anything with it but hang the piece on his wall. It is a reminder of what feels now as if a different life. He should have known, as the portrait artist had done, that he would bring a darkness in their lives. These two people he had cherished the most in all the world. Julianna. Asher. How happy they had been...
He pushes himself back from the desk with a sigh, feeling their gazes heavy upon himself. He will get no work done on this night. Perhaps he should take a turn about the floor of the club instead. Though he doubts that will do much to lighten his mood.
[ooc: feel free to visit him being maudlin in his office, or as he mopes around on the floor, or perhaps once he has found himself a corner of the bar and a glass of wine to nurse as well! c: ]
no subject
"Asher and Julianna," he replies, as if that should explain it all, although he knows it does not. He has remained very tight-lipped about his past over the centuries since their tragedy. He keeps his eyes on the painting as he continues, for he is not certain he wants to see what might be in Joscelin's face should he turn to look at him instead.
"My maker, my master. Belle, as we called her. She was known to collect beautiful people. She had found Asher half a century before me. With hair like spun gold and eyes as a clear blue sky, she wanted him. Just as she wanted me. I was the twilight to his dawn, I suppose. She thought it was poetic." He drums his fingers across his chin as he studies their faces in the portrait. "He hated me, at first. Perhaps because I was the new favorite, and he was jealous of the attention I received, and because he was worried he might fall out of favor. But Asher had a human lover. Julianna." The friendly laughing woman in the portrait. "She helped him realize there was no need for jealousy. That we might be friends, the three of us." And more, as time came to pass.
"Belle hated her," he observes, as an afterthought.
no subject
It makes him uncomfortable, but he'll be damned if he shows it.
"Sentimental to the last." He smiles ironically, because cruelty comes easier to him than vulnerability. "Only you would hang a picture to remind you of all that. Your sire killed the human, I imagine?" That's how these stories usually go.
no subject
"She was burnt at the stake for witchcraft," he replies. "For all that Belle would have liked to do the honors, she never got the chance." He pauses for a beat, before continuing. "They captured Asher as well. They were torturing him. I had to appeal to Belle for his rescue. It is how I wound up in her service." For five hundred years, to be exact.
He glances back to Joscelin. "She sent the portrait earlier this month. I do not know what it means, but I thought there no harm in hanging the piece."
no subject
He's really not very good at this empathy thing.
"How did you end up getting away?" That's what he's more interested in than the sordid details of a love affair gone wrong. The rest of it reeks of a mushiness that is deeply off-putting to the part of him that is still a twelve-year-old boy.
no subject
He shakes his head somewhat at the question, glancing down at his hands where he has steepled them in front of him on his impeccably polished black lacquered desk. "I did not," he replies. "I was never captured with them. I only found out after the fact. I suppose it was the only reason I was able to appeal for help. Which I did. But at the price of five hundred years service to her." He glances up at Joscelin. "I came to London after she released me." It was only a hundred years ago, give or take. It is when they will have met, then. Jean-Claude was a different vampire then. Rougher around the edges, less refined. Used to living in the gutters Belle had constructed for him, and not the world as it had been in truth.
no subject
"I had heard rumors," he confesses to that reflection. "About what brought you here. I am glad you came to London, despite the circumstances."
no subject
"My misfortunes are my own cross to bear, mon ami," he replies. "But I am grateful that they did bring me such a friend as yourself." He turns to glance back at the portrait, studying Asher's beautiful painted visage. "I can only imagine what my life might have been like if Belle had not let me leave France."