captain_jtkirk | .006 - Private to the Marquis

Drinking man, of course. Nothing does better for the circulation.

I'd prefer to help myself to one before we begin. Care for a splash of wine, Captain?

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when it's lubricated.

Sure, we can do that. Why don't you make your way to my room? I'll clear you a seat.

I'm afraid not, Captain. My wine. My chambers.

What's wrong with mine? Are your joints aching?

If you had taken the time to read my file, you might know the answer to that question.

Come now. You're not afraid of a little old man, are you, Captain?

I prefer to judge a man by what he brings to the table.

Fine, you pushy old geezer.

[And true to his word, James Kirk is banging on his new inmate's door a minute later. He lied a little bit. He read the file long enough to find the room number.]

[The Marquis answers, seemingly unruffled. He's not in his usual wig, and his smile has mischief in it.]

Welcome, Captain.

[He steps aside to let him in. As it is what is generally considered to be 'evening', the room is lit by candles, an oil lamp or two, and a roaring fireplace. There are various statues and books shelved all around -- some of questionable tenor. Some of the drawings and paintings on his walls are similarly lurid. However, many of them have words scribbled in the blank spaces all over them.]

Do make yourself comfortable.

[He indicates the sitting area situated around the fireplace. His chair. The couch, a chaise, tables. All of this while he fills two glasses with wine.]

[Jim doesn't like to think of himself as a paranoid person but he's getting that way in his old age, because twenty five is ancient, and he blames Bones for all of it, really. He wasn't like this before he met that cranky bastard.

He suspiciously eyes the Marquis for a few moments before moving to take a seat, slouching in the chair in only a way that he can manage. Confident, completely at ease, comfortable in his position of power, like he owns the chair and anyone is stupid for question that.]

"So what'd you want to talk about?"

One soldier cannot simply hold a conversation with another?

[He offers a goblet to him.]

Bottoms up.

[He takes the goblet, swirling the wine around for a couple seconds.]

"You wouldn't have pitched a fit if you just wanted idle chatter."

[Jim pauses to take a sip. He likes the Marquis a lot better then he liked Prefect when he first met him. That has to count for something.]

"We can trade war stories if you want. I have nothing to do right now but dote on you."

Mark my words, Captain: you have not yet witnessed me in the throes of "pitching a fit".

[He makes himself comfortable, enjoying a sip himself, which he savors in his mouth a moment before swallowing.]

Do you like it? This is a rare vintage from an obscure village in Bordeaux, in my time. Rather than crush the grape underfoot, it was placed upon the belly of a bride, reaped of its juices as the new husband steered his vessel into port.

[He rolls the glass somewhat in his hand, inhaling.]

Full-blodied flavor. [A sip.] With just a hint of wantonness.

[He's so totally bullshitting him, but he tried this on West to see how he would react, the Abbe before him. Why not put the little bugger to the test?]

"I like my alcohol a little slutty."

[Trying to make James Kirk blush because of something sexual? Not going to happen. And let's face it, he's put stranger things in his mouth. The young captain smirks and takes a longer drink from the goblet.]

"Delicious."

Perhaps the Admiral was not doing me a disservice after all.

[He considers his drink a moment.]

So tell me about yourself, cherub. What am I to expect in the coming week or so before you tire of me and begin to ignore me like all the others?

"Oh, I'd never ignore you."

[His tone is a little mocking but he takes that as a challenge too. One that he might enjoy because the Marquis hasn't given him the urge to rip out his hair yet.]

"James Tiberius Kirk. Reared from Riverside, Iowa. I'm the youngest captain in Federation history. Perks of saving the planet from being turned into a black hole. And that's another story in itself. But it's your turn. I didn't read your file, remember."

[He goes through it boredly. One would think talking about himself would interest him, but he doesn't show it.]

Marquis de Sade. Full name Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade. Colonel of a force of Dragoons during the Seven Years' War. Married young by arrangement into the merchant class. First jailed for shouting blasphemies at a Prostitute. First major stint in jail the result of accusations to do with kidnapping and rape, among other things.

[He waggles his eyebrows briefly]

But were they true?

[He 'meh's in disinterest and continues on.]

Spent a total of thirty-five years, three months, and five days in various jails and asylums, most of them because my good mother-in-law had authority from the King to have me jailed on a whim -- better than causing scandal, you know. Began writing fictions. Unheard of for a man of my class. Escaped from jail twice. Sentenced to death in absentia for sodomy and giving laxatives to prostitutes. Burned at the stake in effigy. Recaptured. Released from jail after the storming of the Bastille. Took part in politics, jailed again for publishing anti-religious philosophy. Watched a majority of the executions during the Terror from my window. Spared the guillotine purely by clerical error. Have personally witnessed 2514 persons of noble blood beheaded -- I kept count. There wasn't much to do when denied company for conversation or correspondence.

[He pauses to sip from his cup.]

That serves as a decent halfway mark, I think.

"Teach me not to read. I hate cliffhangers."

[Jim pauses to take a drink of his wine. Apparently he paid more attention in school then he thought he did because he knows about the Terror and the Seven Years' War that his new inmate is talking about. So that's great. He's dealing with someone from hundreds of years in the past. Because he and time travel have such a great track record.

He lets out a breath that sounds a lot like a sigh.]

"So I'm from your future. About five hundred years, I'd say. We've come a long way. We fly around in space now and fight aliens but that's not in the Federation's creed, so I'm not supposed to say that."

[Jim stops himself by waving his hand his hand around.]

"But anyway, this angry Romulan from the future decided that he wanted to turn all the Federation planets into black holes. We couldn't save one of them, even with a space dive onto a fifteen foot platform, which is harder then it sounds. I wasn't even supposed to be on the Enterprise, being accused of cheating grounds you so your best friend has to give you some terrible disease to sneak you on, but then I ended up the captain by pissing off a Vulcan, not easy to do, I might add, and Earth is safe and sound because of that."

[He smirks, looking entirely pleased with himself.]

"Now tell me the second half."

Edited 2009-06-01 14:34 (UTC)

[He doesn't know half the races and technical terms he uses, but he is smart enough to connect the dots in most places. Honestly, the boy could be talking gibberish and make as much sense.]

Very well.

[He sits back.]

Deemed not wicked enough to execute or jail criminally, Napoleon saw virtue in having me institutionalized for life instead -- with a little gentle prodding from my wife and her somehow still-influential harridan for a mother. I could have had the bitch killed when I had sway in the assemblies -- while I didn't appreciate the asylum much more, it was better than jail until the end. I suppose she remembered that. Continued to publish in secret, employing a friend of mine to smuggle manuscripts for me.

[His tone becomes more cordial, then, more like that of a storyteller rather than someone blandly spouting off figures.]

When the publication of my novel, Justine, started to draw public attention, the good Emperor sent a new doctor to Charenton to silence me.

The man running the asylum, the Abbe de Coulmier, had been an unusual sort for his profession -- preferring to employ the arts as a way to calm the minds of the insane. Not only could I write, but I was given permission to direct plays as well -- the asylum had a tiny theatre, and patients played the roles. The Abbe was content to permit me my ink and parchment that I might have a place to put all the terrible things moving about in my head -- until he discovered that I had published. His new overseer had to be assured I would not continue, and the Abbe's only failing was that he trusted a madman to keep his word against his own compulsion. I did not publish. However, I did take some interest in the rumors surrounding the new Doctor's recent marriage, to a girl he could have grandfathered three times over, not yet adult, plucked from a convent. It was glorious pretext for farce. I wrote a play on the subject, slipped it into the next programme, and saw it performed before a most receptive audience.

[He doesn't mention its being disrupted when Bouchon attacked Madeleine, but he hasn't forgotten, either. It occurs to him then that he should have been more careful after that.]

The Abbe confiscated my quills and ink. While I had kept my promise, this was considered an egregious offense. Our friendship took a turn for the worse after that. But I continued to find ways to write. I could not simply abstain, of course. I was compelled. First with a bone from my dinner plate and red wine on my bedsheets. After that, my bed was removed; I was denied wine at meals, and all my dinners were to be deboned. I shattered a mirror. That one, to be precise.

[He indicates an ornate mirror hanging on the wall near his bed.]

Using a shard I began pricking my fingers and wrote upon my best suit in my own blood. Every inch covered in my glorious text, beginning at my right cuff, continuing across my back, and completing itself at the base of my left shoe. For this, and for escaping my room, the remainder of my belongings were taken, including my clothes. The good Doctor suddenly saw fit to attempt to rehabilitate me himself, having lost patience for the Abbe's tactics. Flogging ensued -- but I rather enjoyed that, but soon after came the waterboarding. The self-righteous fuck had no understanding that the harder he tried to silence me the more firmly he cemented my ideals in my heart.

To a friend who had been punished for my misbheavior, about to be sent away, I chose to dictate my last book. I would whisper into the cell next to mine, and so forth, finally to the writer, who would record it all. I did not finish. Fires broke out in the asylum, inmates escaped, and some died -- orderlies, servants, patients alike. Among them someone who should not have been harmed.

[The Marquis' voice has slowly lost some of the pride and candor, though now he looks a little drawn and not completely there anymore.]

I was blamed. My tongue was removed and I was thrown in the dungeons. I composed my last story with what few materials remained at my disposal, succumbed to infection, and died.

[He brushed by the last of it. Without detail. Without mentioning his last exchange with the Abbe or his final defiance. He downs the rest of his wine.]

And now I am here.

[That... is a lot of information to get in a few minutes and Kirk silently takes back his previous statement. It is a good thing that he didn't read that damn file because he would've given up long before he got to the end of the Marquis's story. He's not one for reading, never has been, preferring to do and to learn through action. And if he'd read it, it wouldn't have been as interesting as it was coming from the man himself.

Jim likes the Marquis, he decides after a few moments of just watching the other man because he doesn't seem to take crap from anyone and is probably about as stubborn about something as Jim himself is.]

"As your new Warden, I'm glad you have your tongue back. Also, write whatever the fuck you want. Have you written anything recently?"

Take a look around, Captain.

[He means this quite literally. Without parchment, he has over time had to look for blank surfaces elsewhere in the room when the compulsion has taken him...and it has, without a doubt. There isn't a white space, whether it's a sheet, curtain, or the blank parts of a painting, that haven't been scribbled over in writing.]

When I must, I find a way.

"I've got an extra datapad if you want it."

[Because no man should be forced to write all over his walls and sheets and things. James doesn't see any harm in letting the old man have his fun and write his stories.

Then he remembers that the Marquis is from his past.]

"You too old to learn new tricks? Or do I gotta go find you some paper instead?"

(ooc: gaaah I'm sorry I left this sitting ;_;)

[He chooses not to take offense to that.]

I would prefer parchment, quills and ink. It is the process just as much as the writing itself, you see.

"Where the hell am I going to get that stuff?"

[Jim frowns, looking less than thrilled about the idea of searching this ship for primitive means of writing. He wouldn't even know where to start looking for something like that back home.]

Experience tells me that asking is usually the speediest way to secure such things. [The Marquis raises a meaningful eyebrow.]

Edited 2009-06-10 15:27 (UTC)

"I'll see what I can do."

[Which is Jim Kirk speak for 'I'll do it if I'm bored later and don't forget about it'. Which is probably the best that the Marquis can hope to get out of his new warden.]

.006 - Private to the Marquis

You asked for it, JimmyJim

Bring it.

Oh it's being brung.

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