hands over your eyes
It's the same master suite that has played home to the Vega heads of house for summers unending; the space has hardly changed except for the subtle effects of disuse. A little ghostlike maid, an unsettling, inhuman-looking girl in black lace, embroidered gloves, had of course tidied the space for the long-awaited return of the matriarch Luciana, but she has not been allowed in here since then. It would unsettle the mother too much.
It's her son who sits beside her now; even Vega can bow his head sometimes, it seems. The woman's white, white hand (the skin is still so smooth, even though the bones of the graceful thing have begun to show) clutches her son's tight, too tight.
She is holding a black-haired baby, and she is overcome.
"Marius," says Luciana, strangled with a wellspring of emotions it has been too long since she knew how to express. And she says her son's name again, and again, proud, overwhelmed, her dark eyes fixated on the infant's delicate face as she holds him to a bosom made for children -- even at her age, like a living Madonna. Vega is not especially sensitive to imagery, but in that moment, he wishes to capture it; his mother, his child.
"His mother named him Lucian, Mama," Vega tells her carefully. He watches her eyes brimming, he keeps his own voice level. "His mother's here. I want you to be able to meet her, Mama... can you do that?"
She doesn't seem to hear him; is it difficult for her, the passing of time, the evolution of her family dynasty?
"Mama?"
It seems that Luciana will answer, and yet all of a sudden, there is the flash of a camera. Mother and son look up to see the long, lean shape of an interloper in the frame of the door; Aden Brande, nephew and cousin, had stole in so silently, coming on like a bad omen.
"May I intrude?" Asks the black sheep with uncommon elegance, politesse. And yet he passes into the room without awaiting permission, placing the camera on the nightstand presumably as a gift to his cousin. Brande's aunt, his cousin Vega, stare at him silently.
"Marshall," says Luciana, conflicted, but smiling, purse-lipped. She holds the baby close.
"That's just Aden, Mama," says Marius, darkly. And Brande smiles, crookedly, and he stands over where Marius sits, and looks down at him. Looks down at the baby, too, his first time seeing it; reflexive twitch of something negative, undefinable, at the maternal scene. Discreetly presses the edge of his hand to his upper lip, as if to repress a wave of nausea.
"Brande, when are you leaving?" Asks Marius directly. "I don't want you near my kid, and my sister's coming, so you should probably get out of here."
"Where is Mercedes, the dear little thing?" Luciana asks dazedly, pet-pet-petting Lucian's downy crown adoringly.
"Your sister?" Says Brande, mildly, ignoring her, as if he did not know to whom Marius referred.
And Vega cannot, he will not, lose his temper in front of his mother, in front of the baby. And he won't lose his temper for Brande's sake, that's for sure. "Nettie's on her way here to see her mother and her nephew. I don't think you should be here when she arrives."
"Neither do I," says Brande, easily; that's too easy, Vega reflects, and Luciana is gazing at Brande in the strangest way.
"Marshall," she says again.
There's a long silence; Only briefly does Lucian agitate, shifting, squeezing tiny fists, as if to hide against his pale, lovely grandmother.
"Marius," says Brande, and he lifts his chin. The citrines are impassive, unearthly, and the electric line of his shoulders is straight. "Antoinette is not your sister."
"Marshall," says Luciana again, more urgently. In the way of babies, perhaps Lucian perceives something; he makes a sound, a muffled little noise as if tears are imminent. "Marshall," says Luciana again, with distinct anxiety, adoration, a strange, unfamiliar cocktail.
Vega -- he is becoming more comfortable holding him -- leans in as if to retrieve the child, but something about his mother's stricken body language stops him. "The fu-- what are you talking about, Brande?" Weary, Marius Vega is so weary of the mad.
"She's my father's child," says Brande, glacial, expressionless except for the luminous way in which he watches Marius for a reaction. "Isn't she, Aunt Luciana?"
She says only, despondently. "Marshall, please--"
Says Marius, "Mama?"
Lucian's crying.
Says Brande -- and only now does he allow himself the razor's edge of his subtlest, most vicious smile -- through the mask of that kind of frozen, sick fury is the only way he can produce words like these, can acknowledge a fact like this, so distasteful as to shake the foundation of his being. Of course, of course -- the cruelest, the most bitter of ironies. "She's my half-sister."
Marius has no answer; it's hard to tell whether he's more shocked at the fact or at the circumstances under which Brande chose to believe them. He forgets himself; he says, "motherfucker," under his breath, although it isn't clear whether he means Brande or Brande's father, and Lucian cries louder. In just a few minutes, one of the attentive staff whose life's occupation is the care and comfort of the child of Marius Vega and Jill Lockhart will come in, summoned by the sound, to retrieve the baby.
Luciana's crying. "Marshall," she says, "Wh-what -- why --"
Vega wants to ask his mother if it's true, but she's too fragile for confrontations, he knows. She's too weak. He can see it in her face right now, and it sickens him, because in her eyes, in her tears, he knows Brande is not lying. And he can't hate his mother, and so he hates his cousin, a stone that hardens in his gut.
"This is what you wanted me to know, Brande? This is what this has all been about?" Fathomless, fathomless.
Silence; the revelation is effective enough on its own without Brande repeating it, and it's sickening enough to taste in his own mouth, so he says nothing.
Mother and infant cry. Says Marius, hoarsely: "Does Antoinette know?"
"I think she knows," says Brande. "I think," he adds, reflective, as if something had occurred to him for the first time, "maybe she always has."
Silence, except for the crying of the young and old. Vega's coal black eyes, the inheritance of his father, meet the ill yellow eyes of his cousin, who'd inherited his from his own. So had Antoinette, come to think of it. Come to think of it, she looks more like a Brande -- she is more of a Brande -- than Mercedes, born of an unrelated mother, had ever been.
Says Brande, "I trust this is the end of your self-righteousness."
Silence and crying.
Then Marius says, "I think you'd better go, Brande."
"Fair enough."
Marius has reclaimed his son from his mother's arms; Luciana is overcome again, though with a certain immutable grief, she has curled over on herself, she is trying to remember the rosary, her prayers for forgiveness, and it is impossible, impossible for her son to watch.
Marius says, "You'd better go far from me. I don't think I want to see your face for a while. And stay away from my sister."
My sister. The slow, smokewisp curl of Brande's crooked lips is impossibly cold. "Advise her to stay away from me," he reciprocates simply. Gilded gaze falls on the crumpled Luciana, and there is nothing evident in the eyes save for a pale, detached sort of fascination, subtle revulsion. "Lovely to see you again, Aunt," he says, low.
And then, says Brande: "Congratulations on your new family, Marius."
It doesn't seem that he's insincere. Just distanced, ambiguous, impassive. And the gesture of farewell that he makes with one black hand is similar to a benediction, archaic, silent, before the alchemist leaves the room, its air clotted with ghosts that for once, for merciful once, have nothing to do with him. It's liberating.
