Archive of Our Own ^beta

New Orleans, Fall 1939

Claudia had been driving Lestat mad.

She had done nothing but try to pit Louis against him since he’d been allowed back into their home. Things had not turned out the way he had hoped upon his return, and now he lived in fear that Claudia would finally convince Louis to leave with her.

Tonight had been intolerable. He had sat with them quietly on a bench in Jackson Square, ostensibly hunting. Once again they carried on their endless telepathic conversation, a resentful, persistent buzzing in his head. They knew he could detect it. He had told them as much, and they did it anyway.

It had become constant since his return. Lestat could hardly speak to Louis without him falling silent mid-sentence, distracted by Claudia’s voice in his head. Louis had even begun allowing it during their lovemaking. It was humiliating.

Annoyed and frustrated, Lestat couldn’t sit there another minute. As he‘d said his goodbyes, thinking he might find some relief from them in Antoinette’s company, he’d sensed she was nearby, he’d noted how satisfied Claudia seemed to see him go. Louis looked… off.

Lestat had barely made it three blocks when he stopped in his tracks.

He kept thinking about Louis’ sad smile when Lestat had mouthed that he loved him. Louis knew where Lestat was going, and he was past caring. And when Louis got that way, it would only be a matter of time before it got worse…

He’d seek out Antionette another night.

Tonight, he would ask Louis to hunt with him, Lestat decided, as he made his way back to Jackson Square. Louis would likely decline, but at least he'd been asked. He had to stop running from them.

He'd returned in time to find Claudia trying to convince Louis to leave with her.

Lestat remained hidden, just out of sight. His heart dropped, he felt nauseous, as a cold wave of dread washed over him. It was his worst nightmare realized.

He’s finally had enough, he’s going to leave me.

Would tonight finally be the night? He struggled past his fear to focus on their conversation.

Claudia wanted to catch a train bound for New York, and then onward to Europe.

Louis wouldn't go.

Lestat knew better than anyone else how hard Louis struggled, how hard it was on him, his darkness, that it was like an anchor around his neck. There had been times, when Claudia was gone, that he had not been able to leave the house, no matter what Lestat did. Claudia perhaps knew that now too. She was going to leave without him.

Louis tried to comfort her, encourage her.

“You don’t need me. You think you do, but you don’t. You’re smarter now, you see trouble coming a mile away.”

If only it was that simple.

Lestat had been relieved to see that Louis would not go with her, that in spite of how tenuous things were between them, Louis had chosen to stay. That gave Lestat a sense of hope, that perhaps he and Louis would have the peace they needed to work things out between them. Louis would be upset that Claudia was gone, perhaps dangerously so, but Lestat would not let anything happen to him. Lestat would not abandon Louis as he had the last time Claudia left them. In time, Louis might even find comfort in knowing she was well, that she was finally going out to find her own kind like she had wanted to. But as soon as he thought it, Lestat’s heart filled with dread.

Conflicted, he watched them tearfully embrace.

Lestat finally would have Louis all to himself, after all these years. He should have been elated. He watched Louis as he stayed on the bench, watched Claudia walking away.

So why didn’t that sit well with him?

Claudia was a brilliant, competent vampire, and she now knew about the dangers, the risk she took going out on her own, something she hadn’t when she first left them.

When Claudia had first left them, Lestat had been certain she would find her own way. There were still few vampires in the New World, and he assumed she would be able to travel safely enough, choosing for herself where, or if, she wanted to settle down. From her diaries, he knew she had been unhappy for a long time in the home they had built. She resented and mistrusted Lestat, which he had understood, but she had also grown bitter toward Louis for not putting her above his feelings for Lestat. In many ways, it had been a long time coming. Lestat hadn’t expected to see her again, or at least not for a very long time. Still, he had resented her silence, the way she left Louis to worry for her, to miss her, for seven long years without a single word to say she was safe.

When Claudia finally did come back, it for Louis, intent on taking him with her to Europe to find others of her kind, for it was clear she had struggled on her own. She had come back altered, there was a darkness within her that hadn't been there seven years before.

Lestat could not read her mind as her maker, but he had been able to read the thoughts of Bruce, the monster who had kept her captive and assaulted her years before. Lestat knew the entirety of what he had done to her.

So yes, although she knew now, how dangerous other vampires were, and she was lethal and clever, she wasn’t strong. Bruce had been a young vampire, younger than Claudia, and he had managed to subdue her easily. What chance would she have if she encountered even stronger, older vampires? She would not be able to outrun them, she would be easily overpowered. And if she did make it to Europe…

She would be destroyed immediately. She would be seen as an aberration by those fanatical, archaic Old World vampires, for being made so young.

He hadn’t been entirely truthful with her, she would find them, if she went looking, the covens would be easy to find, London, Paris… Armand…what would he do to her, if he ever got his hands on her? Knowing who had made her, and having the perfect excuse to destroy her because of her age and his insipid Great Laws.

If Lestat let her go, as hellbent as she was on finding others of her kind, she would be doomed, it was inevitable. And that was his fault, making her so young that she would always be vulnerable and targeted among her kind, simply for being who she was.

And Louis, if Claudia was destroyed, Louis would not survive it. She was his last connection to his humanity, daughter of his heart.

Lestat did not want to dwell on how he himself would feel about it.

So Lestat realized, with great reluctance in his part, that he would have to bring her back. He would not abandon her to such a fate.

Claudia would never listen to reason. She would never believe it was because he was keeping her safe. Her choosing to go to Europe made it clear she hadn’t taken his warnings about the viciousness of other vampires to heart. It was convenient for her to believe everything he said was a lie, he thought bitterly.

Of course… she wasn’t entirely wrong.

He’d lied when it suited him, told half-truths when he thought it would spare them, or when he simply couldn’t face their questions. He had convinced himself it was to protect them. Maybe it was. But maybe it was also because it was easier.

Regardless, Claudia wanted what she wanted and would not let anything stop her, even with what had happened to her before. She was stubborn and fearless in that way. It was admirable. But she was simply not strong enough to survive on her own.

Louis had once called Lestat’s parenting skills sadistic. Lestat had resented it, and yet, once again, he would have to use force and cruelty to stop her, and even that might not work. Perhaps she would bend if she thought it was to help Louis. That, she would believe. And as for Louis, it would be better for him to have her back, as much as Lestat loathed to admit it.

Lestat thought of Armand then, of how he had once warned him that those he made would come to hate him, and how he was becoming as brutal a maker to his fledglings as Armand had ever been to his coven.

There is no other way, he thought stubbornly.

Resolved, Lestat set out after her.

New York City, Spring 1963

Lestat had purchased the brownstone in Greenwich Village back in 1942, when he had fallen in love with the vibrant local music scene. But he hadn’t been back in well over a decade. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed New York until now. In the last year, he’d made it his own again, finding his rhythm here.

The parlor reflected that. Records were stacked along the walls, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, but also Pérez Prado, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri. Tucked beside them were older favorites: Maria Callas, Enrico Caruso, and Arturo Toscanini. He’d even begun to collect more unconventional jazz: Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra. He liked how it all blended together here, always changing, always evolving. Jazz, mambo, boogaloo, opera, even this new thing people were calling pachanga. The music was wild, hungry, alive.

He glanced at the piano in the corner as he shrugged on his jacket. He was playing again. Though he considered himself very rusty, some of the local musicians he'd fallen in with would often invite him to join in on jam sessions at private get togethers, and, on occasion, at smaller local clubs.

But tonight, he was going to a show.

From the side of the parlor, Claudia’s shade regarded him with the usual disdain she always had for him.

And as always, it still broke his heart when she appeared. But now he no longer tried to deny her presence, the guilt and loss she represented, as he had in the first few years following Paris. Now, he accepted her as part of his life, another reminder of the things he could never undo. Although she never spoke to him, he had taken to engaging her just the same.

“The music is louder now. Bolder. Chaotic. The rhythms aren’t so polite and neat anymore.”

Lestat smiled faintly.

“This place suits me better now than it did in the forties,” he admitted, softer now. “I can breathe a little easier here.”

Claudia’s resentful gaze, if not her voice, seemed to say: How fortunate for you.

Lestat sighed.

“Tonight we are going to see someone I think you would have loved. A bit of home, if you will.”

⸻

Lestat had had a wonderful time, although he was feeling a bit melancholic. He’d gone to see Fats Domino, at the Apollo.

The rolling, lilting rhythm of Domino’s piano struck a chord in him, it was poignantly familiar. Brash, defiant, full of life, it was the sound of home, of New Orleans, infused with the energy of a new era. A bittersweet reminder of the city he loved in the heart of Harlem. As the crowd clapped along and danced in the aisles, Lestat found himself momentarily caught between the past and the present. The music tugged at old memories: the warmth of a summer night in the Quarter, laughter echoing through open windows, dancing with Louis, Claudia’s voice, the scent of gardenias.

As he stepped out into the crisp spring air and began walking south, back toward the Village, Lestat decided he would not let so much time go by before he went back to New Orleans.

No more running, he thought.

The city felt electric tonight. Music poured out of clubs and cafes. Voices, horns, footsteps, laughter, it was all rhythm, all movement. And after so many years of feeling disconnected, alone numbed by grief, Lestat didn’t feel like a ghost drifting through it anymore. He was present. He was part of it.

He turned a corner onto a quieter street near Washington Square, when he suddenly stopped.

For just a moment he thought he had sensed something…something familiar, circling just beyond the edges of his awareness. He listened, then reached out with his mind, searching. Unable to detect anything, he dismissed it and continued to make his way home.

⸻

Lestat was almost home when he heard his name echo through his mind.

Lestat

He turned, fangs bared before the word had fully formed, and threw the figure standing behind him hard against the brick wall.

Armand staggered but did not fall, only straightened with infuriating composure.

“You,” Lestat snarled, lunging again.

This time, Armand caught him easily, shoving him aside with a flick of his hand. Lestat hit a far wall, and fell to the pavement. He immediately rolled to his feet, crouched low and ready.

“Lestat,” Armand said, as if scolding a child, “I don’t want to fight you. I only wish to talk.”

Incredulous, Lestat laughed bitterly. “I have nothing to say to you-“

Armand sighed.

“So you’re still angry at me? How pointless and pathetic, Lestat.”

“What the fuck do you want, Armand? Why are you here?” Lestat hissed, closing the distance between them.

Armand paused, savoring the moment. “Louis and I are planning to settle here. Not the Village, of course. Our tastes are… more refined. The Upper East Side, perhaps. I’ve been house hunting.”

Lestat felt a knife go through his heart. So they were still companions. Louis must still not know…or he didn't care? No, that didn't make sense…

He shook his head, he’d think about it later. He had to be careful, he could feel Armand trying to dig around his thoughts, fucking gremlin.

”Damn you, stay out of my head, Armand!”

Armand only smiled, unperturbed by Lestat’s rage.

“Why are you really here?” Lestat sneered. “What do you want?”

“I know you’ve been staying here for some time. But I think, if you want what’s best for Louis, you should leave.”

Armand sighed softly before adding,
“Your presence here will only cause him more pain.”

Lestat was surprised, but no less furious.

“Oh, is that so?”

Lestat could hardly believe Armand’s audacity.

“Or is it your companionship with your husband so fragile that you need to worry about me? Surely he is calling you husband by now?” Lestat mocked, spitting the word.

Armand flinched, and Lestat guessed all was not well between them.

“Has he discovered the truth of what you did, Armand?”

Armand’s gold eyes flashed with anger, which told Lestat everything he needed to know.

“No? I do wonder why not. Perhaps he’s not remembering things very well anymore?”

Lestat had known Armand would use lies to manipulate Louis, but now Lestat had to wonder, how far had he gone?

“What sorts of tricks have you had to pull to keep him with you? What lies do you have to keep telling him?”

“Silence!” Armand snapped, slamming Lestat into the wall again. This time, bones cracked.

Armand walked to stand over him as Lestat struggled to stand.

“He begged me to remove his memories so he won’t have to remember her, to remember you.” Armand said coldly as he looked down on him.

Fully healed now, due to his powerful blood, Lestat stood to face Armand, fists clenched in rage.

“I told you that if you destroyed Claudia, you would be destroying Louis!”

“There was no other way,” Armand hissed. “And you know it.”

“How very convenient for you,” Lestat spat.

“Everything that befell her, everything Louis must carry now, her loss, that is because of you, Lestat. She never should have been one of us. She was an aberration, she was doomed the moment you made her.”

Lestat shook his head angrily. “Claudia had found a companion, she could have-”

“Making her for Louis,” Armand interrupted. “What was that but a manipulation to keep him? Who are you to judge me?”

Without waiting for Lestat to answer, he continued, “Even as I shielded Louis and Claudia from the coven, preventing them from discovering what they had done to you, she continued to put herself in danger.”

Armand took a step forward, intent on making his point.

“She was doomed, Lestat. She joined the coven, of her own free will, swore an oath, and then abadoned it. She continued to see the mortal, Madeleine, even though I, her coven leader, had forbade it. She trampled our laws, revealed our nature, even though she knew the penalty would be death. She wanted the right to choose a companion for herself, when she, as part of the coven, had knowingly given up that right. And still, even as I warned Louis that it was forbidden, they went against my wishes, had Madeleine made, that very night.”

Incensed, Lestat shouted, “You know the Great Laws are nothing but- ”

“No, it is you who laughs at our laws,” Armand angrily interjected, “but they ensured our existence, allowed us to endure. Claudia and Louis’ lack of respect for them was your doing-”

Armand would never understand.

“Because, unlike you Armand, I did not want their mindless obedience, I wanted a family-”

Armand ignored him.

“Again and again, Lestat, you broke the rules, repeatedly, because of your selfishness and arrogance, you bring chaos with you, everywhere you go, because you want what you want, and there is no stopping you from taking it.”

Lestat tried to lunge at him again but found he could not move, Armand held him in check.

“And she was just like you in that way, Lestat. She was chaos, and so was Louis, anchored to her madness, and would always be for as long as he was burdened by her.”

Armand shook his head, and released his hold on Lestat.

“Even now, we will always be hunted by our kind for destroying the coven, forced to live behind fortified walls and guarded gates because Louis sought some sort of misguided sense of justice, for her.”

Lestat laughed bitterly, “Do not expect me to weep for you.”

Armand reached out to Lestat with his mind then, sharing a memory from years ago, back in Paris. It was Louis’ voice, sounding frustrated, angry.

”Can you imagine me, without the burden of her?”

That's what he told me, Lestat. And he meant it. He was tired of the chaos, he was tired of her unhappiness, her discontent, he wanted to be free of her.

Lestat was not surprised Louis said that. Lestat had suspected that without him to focus their anger and resentment on, that they would struggle. But Armand, being who he was, would not have understood that such feelings were fleeting and of no true consequence.

Lestat shook his head, “You understand nothing of family, nothing of what you destroyed.”

Armand considered that.

“I recall telling you much the same once, Lestat. You didn’t care then.”

The heat of Armand’s anger had faded from his gold eyes, replaced by a glacial calm.

“Claudia gave the coven the proof they needed to seal her fate. Every detail in her diary, reveling in her own genius, using Louis as a pawn to misdirect you, to murder her maker, filled them with revulsion. Do not forget that you were our co-founder and benefactor. Had she succeeded in destroying you it would have put our existence in jeopardy. And she would have continued to make impetuous decisions for the rest of her existence, it was inevitable. It would have been only a matter of time, in her perpetual discontent, her joyful joylessness, a forever switch of wild opposites at play, that she would have turned against her companion. Within decades, her mind would have broken apart, she would have thrown herself in the fire.”

You are the same tedious, unimaginative, gremlin as always, Armand. Of course you would believe such a thing. So what, it was a mercy then? For who? I don’t think Claudia or Louis would see it that way, and he would never ask you to meddle with his memories, I know it, for I offered to do so once, with his mortal family, and he refused. It was all for you, what you wanted, and it still is.

I care for him more than he cares for himself. I prevent the darkness within him from overwhelming him. He cannot withstand the guilt and pain. You more than anyone else can understand that, Lestat.

And that is why you cannot be here.

Armand sent images, just a few, recent memories of Louis, a lost, haunted look in his eyes, one Lestat knew well.

Lestat felt his heart break for Louis. Why did his beloved always have to suffer so? Lestat was almost overwhelmed with longing, seeing Louis’ beautiful face again after so many years, even in a fleeting shared memory.

Devastated, all the fight drained out of him.

“I don’t want to fight you like this, Lestat.”

Armand reached out to lovingly caress Lestat’s face, his thumb briefly tracing the scar by his mouth as Lestat’s eyes, now bright with unshed tears, met his.

“Why must it always be this way between us?” Armand’s voice was barely a whisper now. “I have loved you, Lestat. More than I ever loved Marius. Even now, I love and care for what you love most.”

Lestat looked away.

“I don’t hate you, Armand, but I won’t forgive you, just as I won’t forgive myself. I am grateful that Louis lives, that you look after him…do not ask for more.”

As much as Lestat hated to admit it, and even if Armand’s reasoning was flawed, he was right about one thing.

“Very well, Armand, I’ll leave. But know this: the lies, the manipulations, they won’t hold forever, and the damage they leave behind will be catastrophic. And it’s selfish, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise. I know, I made the same mistakes. I didn’t listen to you all those years ago, when you tried to warn me. Will you heed my warning now? If you continue, you will lose Louis.”

Armand said nothing as Lestat turned and walked away.

He had watched Lestat from afar for the last few nights before approaching him. Armand always needed to give himself time, to prepare, before talking to Lestat.

Lestat suffered from the loss of Claudia, the loss of Louis, and he should have been shattered, a shell of his former self. Yet there he was, living freely among the mortals he loved so, with his music. Even after all he had endured, Lestat’s light still shone, and it still had the ability to draw everyone within his orbit to him.

Lestat was loved and adored everywhere he went. It had always been so. Armand suspected that Magnus had known, when he created Lestat, what chaos would be released upon the world through him, his brilliant, shining light.

Armand still ached for it, as much as he had the first time he’d laid eyes on Lestat. He’d known from that first night that everything would change, that all he knew would be destroyed. And although Armand had hated Lestat for it, he had also loved him. It was a sentiment he and Louis shared, even though neither of them could admit to it.

But Lestat would not, could not, love Armand in return.

Armand had tortured himself over the years, occasionally reading memories from Louis’ mind, searing memories of such tenderness and love that Louis himself could not bear to acknowledge them any longer. As a result, Louis had almost completely forgotten them. Regardless, Armand knew Louis grieved the loss of Lestat almost as much as Claudia, and longed for him still, after all these years.

Armand looked out to the horizon. Not much time left before the sun came up.

Bitterness twisting inside him like a knife, he turned and left.

Lestat had spent the last few nights preparing to leave. He’d arranged for what possessions he’d managed to acquire in the last year to be shipped down to New Orleans. As he stood by the door, he looked longingly at the piano, which he would not be taking with him, one last time.

He was leaving, not because he believed Louis would be hurt by seeing him again as Armand had suggested, but because he would not interfere with Louis’ choices, as he had with Claudia so many years ago.

Lestat’s use of cruelty, his inability to let her live her own life, make her own choices, telling himself she was doomed unless he kept her, and Louis, chained to him had led them to believe they had no choice but to kill him to escape him. And it cost Claudia her life. He had already stepped aside once, in Magnus’ tower all those years ago in Paris, and he now would do so again.

It seemed Armand was making the same mistakes he’d made with Louis, lying and manipulating to keep him by his side. Armand was just as self-deluded, telling himself it was for Louis’ good, as Lestat had been years ago.

Lestat could not quite judge him for that.

He was right, Lestat thought. All those years ago. There is nothing I can accuse him of that I haven't done myself. I can only hope that Louis will fare better by his side.

Lestat pushed down the ache in his heart when he thought of Louis, how adrift and fragile he’d seemed in Armand’s memory. Whatever would be, Armand and Louis would have to work it out between themselves. Lestat still had faith Louis would seek out the for truth himself one day, when he was ready.

For now, it was time to go home.