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lestat de lioncourt. ([personal profile] damnedest) wrote2034-06-28 12:42 pm
divorcing: past. (799)

hearty lol

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-05 04:56 am (UTC)(link)
Louis doesn't break free of him. All the fury and panic and hunger, it doesn't vanish. It only smolders, banked and heavy in his chest. His head falls forward, blood-smeared mouth pressed in against Lestat's throat. Hungry like digging claws in his belly, fangs sharp in his mouth but kept free of Lestat's neck.

Claudia is dead. A constant, endless refrain. Louis' thoughts snag, stuck, coming endlessly back to her screams.

Slowly, like rising smoke, guilt. Deepening even as he takes this small comfort, hand closing slowly in the back of Lestat's vest.

"Should've left me in there."
divorcing: past. (811)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-05 06:20 am (UTC)(link)
It's in his mind now, a plan that surely ends in his own death:

Ascend the stairs. Sink his fangs into the first vampire he comes across. Repeat until there are none left, or until he is dead too.

Louis can't bring his fangs back in, can't reign himself back in. Lestat has him by the shoulders. His eyes are glossy, red traces of tears there. Looking at him, Louis feels some distant, dull stirring of feeling in his chest. An awareness of what had kindled during the trial, the breathless flutter of anticipation at his coming, the love Louis carried for him glowing like a coal in his chest even as Lestat damned him and Claudia both.

"I hate you."

Even this is not enough of anything. Not enough of a condemnation.

But it is assent. Louis leaves the certainty of his own death, and gives over to Lestat's plea.
divorcing: past. (799)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-05 06:59 am (UTC)(link)
Claudia is dead.

It echoes in his mind, over and over and over. They trek through the sewers in near silence, Louis' palm on the slick stone to keep himself upright and moving. His breath is a scraping rasp of sound, a wounded creature tugged along only by its own pain. Hunger gnaws at him, the stopgap of Lestat's blood waning as they flee.

And his anger, his anger is a refuge. If he disappears into it, then the excruciating pain of his grief diminishes. He is thinking already of how he'll repay them. How he will make them regret what they'd done.

Lestat pulls him out. Louis remains briefly on hands and knees in the street, panting, before he pushes back. Looks up at Lestat from his heels, eyes dark. Fangs catching the waning moonlight. His breath comes faster, looking at him. Hurt. Why blooming in his expression.

"Is this where you leave me?" is the question posed instead, tone an inscrutable thing. Syllables scraped across gravel, thick with misery. One question from the many, the most immediate. How far does Lestat's benevolence stretch in this moment?
divorcing: past. (434)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-05 07:54 am (UTC)(link)
A crumbling sort of pain at the edges of Louis' expression.

He cannot return to the little apartment he and Claudia had shared. That is closed to him, he who will surely be hunted. Armand will look, Louis knows. The rest, upon finding the empty coffin, will seek to complete the verdict, to banish Louis from this world.

It is tempting to remain here. Kneeling in the street.

He would melt away in the dawn. It would be over.

It should be over. Claudia is dead. What else is there now?

(If he reaches for the comfort Lestat could offer, he will shatter. He cannot shatter.)

"I know what it looks like," roughly, stubborn. The grate is closed, prevents the impulse to simply turn to see it done now.

It is a labor, getting to his feet. But rise Louis does, propelled by the compulsion of hunting, of blood. (Of Lestat, inescapable and tangible, Louis' heart erratic over the continued presence of him.) He straightens slowly, runs his tongue across his fangs.

"Where?"
divorcing: past. (803)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-05 06:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Later, maybe Louis will hate him for this too, even as he recognizes the reprieve couched in the temptation laid out before him. The man's intention. The woman, unsteady on her feet but more than capable of fleeing the thing Louis becomes in this moment. Straightening. Scenting them on the air. Hearing the pulse of blood.

And for a moment, thinks of Claudia. Not her absence. Not her death. Thinks of her, aglow with the joy of her kills, French spilling out of her mouth.

I never want to hunt alone again.

The sound Louis makes then, halfway between a snarl and a sob, startles the man. The woman's laugh goes high, a shrill cackle at what sounds nonsensical to her. What must look nonsensical, in the shadows. Is not identifiable, until it is too late. Louis is older than he had been in New Orleans, faster now than he was then.

This man is already dead. He is already dead when he begins to shout. He is already dead when the woman begins to scream, when Louis flings her away from her companion without looking to see where she lands or if he has left her only to Lestat's mercies. He hasn't chosen her.

Louis tears this man's throat out. Blood spills down his chin, down his chest. The scream turns to a wet gurgle. It is not enough. It will not be enough. His hunger and his anger are one thing. They are a wildfire. This man is only kindling. Louis hears bone snap as he slams the body against the bridge rail, and abruptly the struggling ceases.

He drinks.

The world around him quiets, for a moment.

(Claudia. Claudia is dead.)
divorcing: (Default)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-06 03:22 am (UTC)(link)
There is no decision.

There is some distant awareness of a pulse suddenly stopping, of the splash that follows. That he is starving still. That he can still taste Lestat in the back of his throat, even as blood flows forth from the mangled man pinned up against the side of the bridge.

Not so much flow as sluggish spurts, but there is still the promise of more.

And then after, what next? Another, and another after.

More, until he is no longer weak. Until he is no longer a fool. (More, and more, because the world is quiet while he is so occupied, because the oppressive reality of Claudia's death is no longer crushing him beneath its truth.)
divorcing: past. +lestat (818)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-06 06:22 am (UTC)(link)
A whole body shudder underneath Lestat's hand. A moment where his teeth dig in harder, pushing a last weak whimper from his prey.

Chéri wedging under his skin, finding that deep, intrinsic part of him that Louis has never been able to sever.

His jaws release. The man falls. Louis' breathing too hard, too heavily. Something near to shock setting in, vision blurring, narrowing to the corpse at his feet. The hand at his shoulder an anchor point as he sways back a step further.

He has never had to consider whether a vampire can overeat. Has never asked what happens to a vampire nearly starved, and then animated once more.

Shrouding himself in his anger, going rigid in its grasp, this is the only thing keeping Louis from collapsing too. (And Lestat, the hand at his shoulder, the touch he almost sways to if not for his rage. His rage cannot yield.)

"No," has nothing to do with this moment, a moaned misplace of a word.

(He'd screamed it, over and over. It had done nothing.)

"I need more, I need..."

Claudia. The coven reduced to ash. To climb back into that coffin among the stones. His mind spins between these things, flinches away from Armand among the wreckage of them.
divorcing: (143)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-06 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
"No," is a sob of a response, even as he gives over to the pressure of Lestat's hands. Says it again, even as he does turn, his head before the rest of his body follows.

"No."

No near to the same tenor as I hate you.

These aren't untrue things. They are only incomplete. Louis has no space for the rest.

Claudia is dead.

The blood has streaked down his chin, his throat. Soaked through his tunic. Lestat is touching him, and Louis wanted that. Louis wanted to be touched by him, has always wanted to be touched by him. Sat on that stage and heard Lestat lie, heard him render their lives in malicious tones to a gleeful mortal audience, and still—

His heart leaps, erratic. Wanting. Even in the midst of all-consuming grief, a corpse at their feet and their daughter dead, Louis still wants him.
divorcing: past. (817)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-07 04:14 am (UTC)(link)
It is only Louis, so locked in his own building fury, that keeps them from collapsing here in the street.

There is a not insignificant part of Louis that desperately wants just that. To collapse. To be crushed under the weight of his grief.

Claudia is dead. (A refrain that he cannot shake. That feels as if it will follow him for the rest of his life.)

Lestat is holding him again.

Something in Louis snaps. Breaks.

Lestat clutches him and for a moment Louis cannot move at all. His breath rasps in Lestat's ear, tremors held in check by the force of their embrace. Says something. Maybe no, again.

It doesn't matter.

Slowly, clumsy as if Louis cannot recall how, his arms come up in return. And then it is a bruising, clinging thing, holding Lestat desperately tight in return.

Is he broken? He feels broken, or near to it. As if the only thing keeping him from spiraling into absolute insanity is Lestat, holding on to him.
divorcing: past. (530)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-07 07:17 am (UTC)(link)
The first thought, reflexive: Where would I go? What does it matter where I am? Claudia is dead.

Stay, Lestat begs, and it's not about location, about proximity or about intent to flee. It's an appeal for Louis remaining alive, whether Lestat realizes it or not.

She would hate him for this, Louis knows. He's doing it again, she'd hissed, as if she could sense the way Louis' heart, his terrible, foolish heart was already softening.

And while rage and grief have locked so much of Louis into place, his heart—

There is just enough left to warm here, clutched close with Lestat's voice in his ear. Louis' grip on him tightens impossibly further. The words don't come for a long stretch, only the ragged rhythm of his breathing until Louis can finally dredge up a reply.

"I want all of them dead."

Lestat can help if he wishes. Louis will accomplish it with or without help.

One thing at a time, Lestat had cautioned. Maybe it will be easier to feel the grief without being destroyed by it when those responsible have been made to regret harming her.
divorcing: past. (435)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-07 10:09 pm (UTC)(link)
The audacity of it may become clearer to Louis in the years to come. Later, when he has some distance, when he has more understanding of the world he's treading within.

In this moment, it is only repayment in kind. It is only a necessity. It must be done. He cannot survive any other way.

"Okay."

As if it is a simple thing Louis has set out to do. The specifics of it, the extent to which they will involve Lestat, are unclear even to Louis. It is only the desire, and the permission to see it through, that matters in this moment.

Lestat's fingers upon his face, the way the touch of his lips lingers, distracts—

It appeals to the same part of him, whatever breathless, inexorable part of him that hadn't been able to do anything but rejoice at Lestat's coming. At the sound of his footsteps upon the metal grating. Fear and hatred and love, always love. Always these three things in a terrible potent combination.

There is a teetering unsteadiness still in Louis' face. It's there when he looks back at Lestat, being held upright perhaps only by Lestat's hands about his face and neck. Louis' fingers have found their way to a loose, absent grasp on Lestat's tunic, flex there as Louis finds his way to, "We have to go."

And it is nonspecific enough that Lestat would be forgiven, if he assumed Louis means back. Back the way they came. There is only unsteady movement to signal his intention, a pull towards momentum before the churn of emotion can drag him under.
divorcing: past. (229)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-08 02:43 am (UTC)(link)
A nearer thing than Louis is perhaps given credit for. It is tempting, to return to the theater to die.

But they have stood still long enough for a different instinct to manifest itself among the all consuming weight of his anger, shape the trajectory of the manic energy gathering inside Louis. He is hurt and weak, and if he is to die, he should take them all with him.

And Lestat, even now, is a gravitational force. (His heart, all the shards of his heart, demand proximity, and more.) The inkling of awareness that Lestat has drunk nothing wedges in the back of his mind, even as Louis drains another Parisian. Less brutal, but no neater. The blood is still drying on Louis when they find their way to their destination.

Stood on the stairs, a gore-splattered ghoul thinking in circles about the murder of a coven of vampires, Louis doesn't immediately understand. It takes him long minutes to respond, having come as far as the bottom step and stalled there, kited thus far by Lestat's purposeful movement.

Stirs finally from his internal reverie to look from the coffin to Lestat, parsing the offer.

"It's yours."

This place. The coffin. A humble assortment of essentials, all of which refuse to lay neatly alongside Louis' assumption of the extent of Lestat's participation.

"Go on," slowly, head tilting as he looks at Lestat. "You have it."
divorcing: past. (460)

[personal profile] divorcing 2024-07-08 04:57 am (UTC)(link)
"You ain't eaten."

Feels like a counterpoint to Louis, whose attention is all in fragments.

"I need to think," also feels like a clear counterpoint. What does his mind need? A plan. A way forward. He needs to think on how he'll kill the coven. The audience, he'll leave for Claudia.

A thing that feels rational in this moment, a respectful division of labor. She'd laid her claim. Louis will allow her that. She'd be angry with him, overstepping and leaving nothing for her.

(She's gone, she's gone, it doesn't matter, because she is gone.)

Louis' study sharpens. Perceiving, perhaps, the gesture being made, the care inherent in it. Feels the way it threatens to disarm him, hook the soft parts of his heart that are so attuned to Lestat's proximity.

"Go on," is a slower repetition, as he comes down off that last step.

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