Chapter Text
Claudia had tried to offer Louis the benefit of the doubt but by the fiftieth haunting she could only muster small flames of compassion. It was difficult, with his palm wrapped around her throat much like Lestat’s had, to utter anything but a whimper. Not quite fright, she’d purged that from her body like Lestat purged his blood in horrible heaving movements (she told herself this, at least). No, this was a different sort of dread that followed her aborted split-second attempt to convince Louis life didn’t have to be this way– because in the end it had, hadn’t it. He’d warned her, maybe this she could reason made it weakness and not betrayal, but she’d hoped he loved her more. That maybe the care taking and the house and the years she had spent as his daughter had meant something. She couldn’t remember what exactly brought upon the realization, but when she mulled it over she knew it was true. That night Louis had leaped before Lestat’s beating fists to defend her was conditional and dependent on her being his child. Now that she was his sister he could not muster the same valorant fleeting love. “You make a better mother than a brother.” She told this to him and left it at that. She clutched hear meat in her hands, warm and bitter.
Eastern Europe’s combination of humdrum and horror had carved new habits into their lives. Louis had taken to endless blabbering and complaining. Claudia had taken to cycles of dedicated vigilance. There were the roving tanks to worry about, the warplanes above, and of course Louis’ wellbeing. This was not solely out of altruism, rather an extension of every defensive observation. She'd noticed him shrinking away like a sick cat more frequently, often followed by uneven bursts of energy– she still remembered the sudden pressure of his hand around her neck.
Claudia could ascertain neither rhyme nor reason to it, which made it arguably more dangerous than the violence about them. She was forced to endure its spontaneity like the nonsense blaring of car horns on a street. Sometimes it was the curling inwards of Louis’ body was the cue, sometimes the shuddering and the whining, but there was no real reliable mark of the haunt. Louis did all of those far too often; ghost or not. When his mind wound itself into its madness it was his weakness that disgusted her the most, so much so that her shame for feeling disgusted had started to erode.
Tonight it wasn’t a spike of fear and self loathing to cued her in. His face went slack in the way did when he disconnected from all else but his mind— a sort of respite completely alien and unachievable for Claudia. Usually that piqued some curiosity in her, to feel that departure from life. But tonight she didn't have the energy. It was more boredom than any true curiosity or vigilance. No, she told herself, tonight she just couldn’t give enough of a shit to be appalled. It was inevitable, that when Louis’ gaze suddenly flickered to the side, it was Lestat that he saw. And through his open gate of a mind so did she.
Lestat crouched beside Louis, balancing on the balls of his feet, the tips of his claws dragging in the dirt. He looked like himself, but only in the way Louis understood him to look towards the end. His eyes were at once rolled back into his head and actively surveying the dead land. Everything was grey here; he’d have hated that. Lestat liked it lavish, liked it garish really. Filigree and animal skin rugs and furniture meant to call towards The Continent, which did everything it its power to disprove his posturing. Thinking too long about the bastard always brought down her mettle and her veil along with it, and when Louis turned to look at her the gash in Lestat’s throat yawned wide in its mirroring movement.
Their nights were long arduous things; which were no real stranger to the two of them. Rue Royale’s gory finale came only at the end of a miserable slog. Every waking moment constricted around her like time was the world’s slowest boa, and she were the world’s most bloodthirsty sparrow. But despite their joined struggle Louis was too used to discomfort surrounded by wealth and material. One of his favorite things to complain about these nights was the material on the continent. It figured that the moment he’d stopped complaining about Nazi blood was the moment he’d find another thing to bitch about.
"These ain't the clothes we like. They don't fit right." Louis tugged at his sleeves, pulled down at the ends of too-big shirts. "I shouldn’t be going out looking like this. We shouldn’t be going out like this." All babble that might've sounded petulant to a stranger (even to her, many times it did) but when Claudia dipped her toes into his mind she felt the skin crawling unease, the constant invisible eyes along his torso. He fidgeted more. Took nails to nailbeds. Habits she had never taken much stake of back in New Orleans, but back then there was always a book to flip through. Lestat was often a presence he could touch. He had her clothes to fix and her hair to braid the first couple of years and when she thought of that the thought made her sick.
“It’s all we got,” Claudia told him, because she had sleeves to roll up and wasn’t quite ready to disclose the reality that he and Lestat had shoved her into ill-fitting clothes too. “We endure, right?”
Louis grunted in agreement, shuffling past her with a sharp jerk of the scarf around his neck.
What they lacked in activity, they had in conversation. Exchanges of words that Louis initiated because what he did best was looking pretty, and after that was making money, and after that was talking your damn head off. And talking at length with brother Lou ended in a trading of blows more often than not. She didn’t know who started it, she couldn’t know anymore. And did it matter? No. Arguments came with conversation and it was as inevitable as the next Lestat haunting. Hell, there was something moving in the clearing back there that could have been him. Any little shift in the landscape, could be him sauntering and stumbling into her line of sight. Could also be her brain trying to give her an excuse to go wandering out into the fog before Louis started back up again.
“What's a woman then?” he asked her, fingers splayed over their campfire. Claudia didn’t trust herself to speak because she knew if she did, she wouldn’t be able to keep the sting out of her words. Was it the goddamn clothes again? It must have been the clothes. There was some scrap fabric wrapped around one of his hands, and he clutched it angrily.
“Well it ain't you,” she snapped.
“Evidently.”
“And it sure as hell ain't me. According to most. Damn near all. So thank you very fucking much for that.”
“I ain't give you what you started with–” he cut himself off, looked as if he regretted the words, but regret never quite stopped Louis, now did it?
“Well you froze me in it! Least you had time to wiggle your way into something you could work with, I’m stuck with this!”
Louis had the nerve to lower his voice, slow down as if talking to— She could kill him. She could really kill him. “When people look at you, they see you for who you are. I promise.”
“They see me as a girl. Girl as in a child, Louis.”
“I know what you mean, you don’t gotta talk to me like I’m stupid.” His eyes held the half bored half irritated gaze of someone talking to someone he thought was stupid.
“Do you now? You really hearing what I’m saying?”
“Well it’s better than nothing!” He hadn’t raised his voice like that in what must have been years. He paused to work his jaw, work his tone along with it. This time the shame didn’t stop him, it pushed him just one more inch. “Isn’t it?”
And at this point she had to placate for both of their sakes. Louis hadn’t fucking eaten enough. Feathers were sticking to his teeth again. And he’d been on such a good eating streak too. “Sure,” she grit out.
She could scream at him but there would be no catharsis in it, he’d just shrink back and that phantom would come skulking around full force. Life always had her tip toeing her way through some situation. And even with Lestat rotting in a dump (She had to tell herself that. She had to promise herself the body was decomposing) he loped forward to shove her one way or another. Once he’d grinned at her with moldering jaws, gnarled fingers tracing over where he must have first bitten Louis. She’d yet to see a visage of him where his eyes weren’t sunken in.
“I’m telling you, we get to France there’s gonna be all sorts of people. Different people. People who’ll see us for who we are.” Lestat was maybe ten feet away behind Louis, lurking as if waiting for his time to speak or pounce. It was dark enough, and the bones of his skull showed enough that she couldn’t quite make out his features. And what a blessing that was.
Louis had taken to rubbing his hands together these nights, and rubbed already ratty gloves raw. He wrung them now, staring at her. He slouched with either fatigue or guilt. This was another thing she had to assuage, or they’d get nowhere.
“I believe you believe that, Louis.” That’s the most she’d give him. “There’s a raid coming. We gotta move.”
“I’m telling you, sister. When I say that, I mean it.” He was still on the ground, looking up at her. It always took Louis too goddamn long to get moving.
“Get up, Louis.”
Nights had passed, they’d found the hundred trench to lie down in. It wasn’t as if she’d slept under the sky before but the lid of her coffin was better than the treads of a tank. Louis turned to her as if it were half an hour tops maybe since their conversation. He spoke with the slow steady tone of someone trying not to berate, someone desperately trying to convince themselves what is in front of them is old enough to be spoken to. And failing at it.
“What I tell you bout getting ugly?”
“That was a lifetime and a half ago, don't go talking to me like I'm some kid. I’m not in the mood for it.”
“I’m not.”
“I can hear it in your voice, Louis.”
“Having an attitude don't got no age limit, I'm just saying by the time we meet some decent folks we gonna have to act decent!”
“Ain't no decent folks here. Just you, your ghost, and me. So lemme talk ugly all I damn want.” It didn't land as hard as she wished it would. She wanted to see him flinch, at least a little bit. But closed his eyes, his brow furrowed.
“We’re going to meet decent people at some point, and when we do we need to be…” Louis waved his hand in the air. “Socialized.”
“Socialized?”
“We gotta meet people to eat them don’t we? Gotta get ourselves a place and some decent clothes then we can do all that vampire stuff.”
Claudia scoffed under her breath.
“See, this the shit I’m talking about.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it. That’s damn near just as bad.”
“Yeah? Try reading it now.” Claudia was familiar with the sensation of Louis’ mind against hers, how weak and fumbling it was. It had never been a struggle to keep him out. And Louis knew it too. His attempt lasted a good twenty seconds before he gave up.
“Couldn’t tell you.”
Claudia snorted. “That’s what I thought.”
***
This was her last dream before their encounter with the human rabble, and the eye gouging rock braining vampire killing fiery end. It was a good dream because it was vengeful. Claudia stood impossibly tall over Louis, holding him firm by his shoulders. If he struggled she could not see it. If he cried, she could not hear it. The two of them watched Lestat's body crackle and fissure in the furnace. And that was all.
***
Civilization took its time, but it found them. Thank god it found them.
Louis was made for cities, for people. As long as he could get his head and shoulders through the hole he'd find a way to drag his body through if it meant proper conversation on the other side. Claudia tried not to think too much about what was proper now. There was something both insulting and freeing about the concept of him rattling on to another person. His topic of choice these days, when it wasn’t his photography, was fashion. He waved his newspaper in the direction of one of the shops just as the light went out. “Once we get some money proper I’m gonna find you a tailor. Someone who can get you what you need.”
“You trying to tell me I dress bad.”
“I’m saying better is out there. You wear them well. You don't embarrass me walking out the house. I’m saying a good fit can really help is all. Something that once you put it on you see yourself in the mirror and you see you.” Guilt etched itself into every line of his face. Even the way the skin pulled over his knuckles as he clutched the paper felt like it was crawling away from her. The whole of him, tail between his legs. I’ve seen what I've done to you.
“You know Louis. Sometimes I can tell you didn't expect me to make it this far.”
“Claudia…”
“We gotta get hunting anyway, we running low on money. And I mean proper hunting.” She pointed at him. “I don’t wanna see you hanging off nobody’s balcony trying to catch a pigeon. You talking about me not embarrassing you when what we should be worrying about is you embarrassing me.”
Louis rolled his eyes.
“I’m serious, Louis. You’re not only being a poor excuse of a vampire—“ Louis opened his mouth to retort but Claudia held up her hand. “Ah— don’t you start— you’re also gonna get us caught.”
Louis’ eyebrows knitted together. “How you figure?”
“Folks all over the city losing their pets.”
Louis shook his head laughed. “Now that’s not me!”
“Uh huh. They’re saying the stray cats are missing too.”
“You gotta have more faith in your brother, they’re rationing out here! Suppose one of them gets a little hungry and here comes Fido trotting along…”
"Oh, because you wouldn't hurt a dog."
"Never!"
"Never!" Claudia pitched her voice lower, and Louis laughed despite himself.
"I'm a changed man, I don't know what you talking about."
"Louis du Lac is a changed man, y'all heard it here first. He'd never eat a lil’ puppy dog."
Louis clicked his tongue. "Now you ain't have to make it a puppy."
"Somebody's lil’ precious frou frou puppy dog."
"Hey now, some of them frou frou things had it coming."
Claudia snapped her fingers and pointed at Louis, smiling widely. "There he is!"
Louis waved his hand. "Now see some of them ain't raised right. Got no manners. They're rude. Got these menaces walking around off their leashes pissing everywhere."
“You can't tell me you care about the gutter hygiene.”
“I care about the smell.”
Paris, without the high of war-be-over, was a city of Just Enoughs. Her and Louis’ brief dabbles in street entertainment were just enough to tide them over when the prey didn’t provide. The baubles and francs balled up into her hand, then placed on the dressmaker’s table— they were just enough to get the dress and get it tailored. The white girl who did her clothes, stuck pins in fabric. Her skills were just enough. The way she gnawed on the pins sticking out of her mouth, the mumbling under her breath (once a “sorry” when she pricked Claudia, laced with that undercurrent of disdain for a random American with money, the fact she felt she had to apologize in English). Enough, she would admit that. A little rude but she knew how to use her hands.
Had it taken a good year or two for Claudia to get it? Sure. But she’d never let him know; in that mirror Claudia finally reaped the benefits of Louis’ dogged insistence on clothing. And what she saw in that reflection came dangerously close to more than just enough. And that was her revelation was hers and hers alone. She could look at herself and smile, genuinely. Maybe if she smiled more the crows feet would finally catch up with her. Maybe it would tug not only at the muscles of her face but the whole of her head, down her throat, stretch that voice box into something more befitting of someone grown. Surely her body couldn’t be that resistant to change. After all, the blood they drank was bad, and the war had stunted and gouged the bodies of so many.
The discovery of the dress shop and Madeleine, the joy of slightly worn fabric, these were among many things Claudia had decided to keep for herself.
Her art was another. She’d left Louis crestfallen to see her scribbling habit had gone and she was happy for it. Damn near euphoric. He’d crafted his own scapegoat— it was the war to blame! Blame the war for driving her from art and music, blame the stretches of shell ridden hellscape driving her further and further away from humanity. There was no real reason to correct him. Admittedly there was something lost whilst hopping from trench to trench and being reduced to hurried chicken scratch between raids. But Paris offered her something new.
It was magazines and collaging that took her fancy now. Scrounging little scraps of fabric and newspapers and fashion articles and paper dolls seemed driven by desperation and boredom than actual interest at first, but it soon became a part of her cobbled together routine. Besides, the doodles had been on their deathbed since the month before Lestat found what was intended to be his. She’d outgrown the saucer eyes of her cartoons, the bobbling heads they set into, the rubbery limbs below. Now those hours were spent tracing, then committing proportions to memory, then training her eye for folds and shadows in the fabric and the flesh. These new sketches and collages she hid from Louis so he wouldn’t ask, and she made sure to keep magazine pages taped to her coffin lid just in case he did.
And of course he did. He wasn’t incurious, but she wished he fucking was.
Louis did not say it outright, because he never voiced his true concerns about her, but he feared a true fracturing of her humanity. The artists in those clubs were her age and younger, a handful older. She’d idled around once or twice. The music was good, the art wasn’t boring. But she remembered Romania. She could practically feel the greasy little bastard’s forehead as she shoved him to the ground. She could see Louis glancing at her out the corner of his eye, forgetting himself and playing father. She couldn’t take being a child again.
And was she more vampiric for it? Louis danced around this as well— there were people like them there. No, not black, for he’d come to the insulting conclusion she didn’t care. There was a point, several in fact, where she would have leaped at the idea of new company to talk to. Rue Royale was gaudy, comprised of herself a father-brother and a tyrant. But rapidly approaching middle age was a chasm and a half away from budding teenhood. What use was there to reminisce about dollhouses— who was she to talk to? Charlie died at her fangs just like countless other boys. Ask a human to surround herself with chickens and chat. See how that ends up.
She’d rampaged her way through man woman and child. She’d left makeshift lakeside graves with blood and silt caked under her claws. She glared at the bruising of half dead jaws decorating her forearm. For years after she imagined she could still feel the criss-crossed toothmarks and never shake the humiliation of the limits of the blood. But the ransacking of libraries provided her company. Humans passed by her just as easily as the nights. College was a set piece. She never knew what was coming to her.
But no see. There were people like them out there. Really like them. Louis looked at her pointedly. Do you understand, Claudia? Did she. And what was that, a joke? Louis had been killed in his thirty-third year. Claudia had been made a slave to perpetual pubescence. What the hell would a kid do in a jazz bar that served heavy liquor and ushered men like Louis into backrooms to fuck. Sure, if she really tried she could attempt to shape the story into something that could sway a drunkard. She turned it around and around in her head when particularly bored, or particularly lonely. She’d starved in this world. Ignore the roundness in her face because her mother had the same. She was a very short woman too, shorter than Claudia even. Didn’t know her dad but him too. And he died from it. No, he killed himself really. Drank himself to death, vomited up his guts before hopping into his automobile and driving into the river.
And her maker, Bruce? Wouldn’t you know it, he worked at a car factory before his fangs came in. There was never a time in her life that wasn’t tied to the rotation of axles and rubber on roads. There’s Shreveport. There’s the lake and the drawbridge, there’s the fire. It’s not the campfire and it’s not the roaring of the engine. That’s the roaring of the crowd, screeching under the spray of syrup blood. There’s Santiago and the woodcutter and the projection’s doomed squirrel and yes even though she had to craft a story for all of this too— it was almost scary to admit she could want something this bad. It was frightening to feel the need to applaud so many times throughout a show and only just reel herself in to save it for the end. The white grease paint and the syrup blood and the scent of the real deal— god when she heard the level creak and the distant thump of the body down below. It was nothing but want want want.
The Theatre was her chance to look at Louis out the corner of her eye and smirk. Oh, this isn’t what you’re used to. This isn’t what you’re prepared for. Don’t you have that photographer to look up to? But that was mean. That was petty shit. Louis’ specialty honestly. And after all he was the one to bring her to the others. This was maybe the first real time he provided her a chance to be something other than a modifier of himself. The stage held not only art and bloodlust but the possibility of true identity. You chose a cloak or a mask or a prop but it’s still you underneath— you choose that. She wanted that greasepaint cracking on her face. She wanted to stalk forward with the cape trailing in her wake, tapping that death toll into a victim’s heart. That first bite. Her deigning the audience with her expression, her bloody red smile.
The situation wasn’t perfect, she knew this and Louis knew it and that picture of Lestat on the wall stared down at them like he knew it too. Louis was still a leaking faucet, and he could’ve tried to bury his thoughts deeper. But luckily for the both of him and his disdain for the shows was an open and more odious secret to the collective than any trepidation about an old founder. And despite his disgust and boredom for the plays and their shared burden, Louis was happy to see her happy, and that was a relief after so many nights of buoying in his gloom. And ultimately, the best thing he could do was hate this art she busied herself with. It provided her a solid chance to put her foot down. She’d told Louis she was going back. It was not a question. She was not asking for permission. And she was not asking him to join her in their troupe.
That request came from Armand. Looking back Claudia chided herself for being too eager and forgetting what should've anticipated, maybe she had wanted to ignore: the effort required to ignore Louis’ attempts to sneak some proximity to the Theatre. The lustful spillover on his end was a predictable and loathsome occurrence, but it was the brief shock of Armand’s hunger that rattled her. In the seconds it took her shutter her mind she caught his desire prowl past on heavily muscled legs and padded feet. You’d think the man had never eaten before in his life. She was grateful— as she always was— that she never had the ability to hear Lestat’s thoughts if this was the lust all men felt for Louis. And worse, how he reacted in turn. But lately, that was easing.
Louis was eager to speak about his escapades in the city and the clubs but his mind had fallen to silence since he’d started seeing Armand regularly. Maître, rather. That was something she had yet to get used to, but every grouping of individuals had it rules and customs and if she needed to call him “Maître” to join the family then he was Maître. What was a title to a vampire? There was no blood between them, he did not linger in her house. Floorboards never creaked under his weight, and she'd had yet to hear him scuff his boots across the threshold in lieu of greeting. The others had their quirks and noises and expressions, but she convinced herself all of this was normal for a theater, especially one of vampires.
Claudia committed the names to heart: Estelle, Merd’em, Pascal, Planche, Gustave, on and so forth and so on. Instinctual recalling of names was a reflex made in family units, with a collective it had to be an active decision. This was something she called proactive and Louis called paranoia; add that to the growing list of covenhood behaviors he had neither interest nor respect for. This wasn’t surprising, there was never a moment where Louis didn’t shy away from even the most basic aspects of vampirism. She needed to be a vampire where Louis couldn’t, and it gave her breathing room. Really, it was when he sauntered back into the theater, Maître at his shoulder, where the bulk of her damage control lied. He was a shit liar and god awful at playing off any strong emotion. Even the blind could see the disdain he brought to each performance. And yet Armand had permanently reserved a box for himself and a pouting pretty boy with taste too “refined” for a well aged theater company.
Every night in her pucehood Claudia could hear the play above her, like it was heaven. She watched the bodies fall down the trap door like sacks of meat sent down to hell. She could busy herself with menial tasks no problem. Rue Royale had trained her in such mundanities, and there the rats were just for Louis to eat. Now they served a practical— if not grisly— purpose.
“Maître’s sent for you, Puce.” Santiago smirked, grease paint caked and cracking with his smirk. He’d already started dabbing the makeup from his forehead, his rag stained pinkish from the sweat on his brow. She hated sweating, when it came with the corpse she was dragging across the floor now, but under those lights she could weather it.
Another habit Claudia trained herself to think of as mundane, avoiding the direct gaze of every vampiric face that wasn’t Louis’. The first trick there was to remember the existence of every corner in every room, and to angle her eyes just so to retain enough peripheral for a phantom’s glance and nothing more. The second and most important one was to make a conscious effort to pretend she was both dumbly interested and ashamed of her interest in Lestat’s portrait. And some of the questions were genuine in a way. Was he really such a good actor? It required being paired with the mechanical burden of looking up at him. And pretending as if the thought wasn’t repulsive; to not only look up to his prowess but on her stage no less!
But this corner she chose tonight had a particularly large spider lazing about on its web and that was good enough of a distraction. She could only just make out Santiago smiling, lips looking pinker as his grin widened. “He around?” she asked.
“Haven’t seen him myself, had to hear it through the grapevine. You’ll find him though, I believe in you, Puce.” The prop scythe scraped the floor loud enough to draw Claudia’s attention, easy enough to ignore but harder to not jolt at. Santiago laughed, patting her on the shoulder. “Chin up, you’re almost there.”
“Almost there” was a concept very familiar to Claudia, and infuriatingly so. From an actor’s lips it was less of a burden, especially from one so versed in her dream role, but she still had to deal with the acrid taste of being given the run around. Santiago wasn’t too off base though. She had become an enviable tracker in her time on Earth. In their worst days Louis needed vermin dropped into his coffin as if she were his cat. And the rat box always found a way to leak it’s hosts every now and then. Another humiliation among her many had her hunched over or on her knees trying to claw them out of the crannies and catacombs.
Searching the streets was far preferable. And, Claudia figured, fleas had many legs. Go ahead and hop and spring her way around Paris were she to be one.