singillatim | 🩸 you know, you know, you know it all went wrong

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🩸 you know, you know, you know it all went wrong — open.

Who: claudia et al.
What: may catchall — continuing tdm stuff and settling in.
When: end of april through may.
Where: throughout milton.

Content Warnings: typical vampire stuff, maybe animal death, lots of discussion of fire and burning bodies, murder plots, terrible relationships with vampire dads, will add more as they come up!

i. milton
Nothing about this place feels right to Claudia, who has still half-convinced herself that it's some sort of almost cosmic punishment. She thinks she stopped believing in that sort of thing when the fire in her house started raging, before she even laid eyes on the angel who became Louis, but maybe in her core there's something still there, a kernel of belief in divine punishment. It's stupid. It's childish of her, and she is no child, no matter how much she might look like one to some. The circumstance means nothing, it makes no difference. She isn't being skinned or pulled apart or fed to demons, so she can survive it, whatever it is.

She comes out only at night, resolute to be alone, a slight and small figure identifiable primarily by her head of thickly curly brown hair. She can be quiet when she wants to be, but not silent; the supernaturally keen ear and eye she has used all her life to hunt are entirely gone, but she still has her instincts. Keep low, keep quiet, be unseen unless absolutely necessary. As soon as she can stomach it, she leaves the Community Hall entirely, taking her precious few belongings with her: her diary and pen, and a winter coat that seems far too glamorous for her surroundings, but at least it's fur-lined and warm.

She's not happy to play the role of a fourteen-year-old if she's approached, but it's safer, at least for now. Better to let someone underestimate her until it's too late. At night, she bundles up for warmth and writes in her diary by moonlight. Sometimes there's nothing new to record, but she writes it anyway, just to get the words out of her head.

ii. lakeside
The singular trip she takes to Lakeside is slow-going and unpleasant. She travels by day with the intent to avoid the sunlight while she's underground, but when she actually gets there, she still has to wait for the sun to set, hunched in the comforting protection of the mine's open mouth and waiting for the colour to leech out of the sky. She's tired and bitter by the time night has actually fallen, and to top it all off, Lakeside doesn't seem to have been worth the visit. She reassures herself by thinking that at least she knows it's here, at least she's seen the place once.

Determined to make the most of it, Claudia explores all she can of Lakeside, peering into the cabins whether they're inhabitable or otherwise, and doing a slow circle of the lake in the process.

iii. wildcard
[ hit me up if you want something a bit more specific, or we could backdate something with one of the TDM prompts! shoot me an PM here or on

crowders if you want to plot. ]

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Lestat has indeed been doing his damndest to get back in Louis's good graces, helped along by Louis's guilt about his role in the attempted Mardi Gras murder. But Louis would not hear a word against Claudia. (He remembers how Lestat carefully handled their family photo--) Louis and Lestat spent their months alternately being angry and soft at each other. There is more than one way to be snowed in.

Lestat knew she was here and didn't tell him. He could have simply hung around the General Store like a gadfly and found him. Another slight to add to the pile of hurts. Louis should have expected that Lestat might want to delay the inevitable onslaught of dirty looks and catty remarks--Claudia learned from the best. Or maybe Lestat had less finesse than that. Maybe he was just feeling petty.

He cradles the side of her head and the fall of curls like she is his own little girl again--forever a little girl in a doll's body she hates.

"This place has taken our gifts," he explains first, because it's the easiest thing to start with. "Or numbed them, I don't know how. That's why we suffer from cold and whatever's in the air outside now. Sometimes it gives back, but different. Lestat can speak to anyone but not hear. I can run like I used to, but I ain't strong. Don't you worry, I'll find you food when you need it."

"What kinda food?" Claudia has a feeling she knows already – it's how she's been surviving herself, trailing to the edge of the forest, snatching small rabbits when she can. They're more alert than she is now, their hearing more honed than hers. She hadn't realised how much she relied on the gifts she'd been given, until they were taken away from her. It's hard. She hates it. She's hungry. But there's a small part of her hoping there might be some other way, some flow of human blood they can take advantage of. Surely Lestat himself hasn't been eating animals all this time too? It's naïve and she knows it, but she's feeling a little indulgent of her naïveté right now.

She also doesn't much like the idea of Lestat being able to get in her head after all this time. It had been such a relief to know that was the one place he could never go, the one area of her life into which he could never intrude. The thought of his voice slinking through her head makes her shudder a little, and she returns her attention to Louis completely again. "We gotta get you fixed up," she murmurs. "That fog out there, it's like the sun. It burned me when it touched me. How long were you out there?"

"Not long. I didn't even get as far as the treeline before I had to turn back."

Loathe as he is to let her go, he begins struggling to his feet like he's actually in his old age. Louis is lucky to be in Claudia's good graces enough for her to fret over his state. It's a funny sort of reversal, the little daughter-sister caring for her caretaker. She's always been more resilient than him despite her moods. She endures.

"I go after deer mostly when I'm not settin' traps. I know how hungry you get. Bad idea to tangle with a wolf, even if they attack people now."

He'd take Lestat's annoyances via the new Mind Gift versus a wolf attack. Louis explicitly told Lestat not to use it on him, making allowances for slip ups while already in conversation anyway. He should not be so surprised that Lestat hasn't contacted him like that. Lestat wants him to come back to him. Every longing glance or hurt look says so as much as his words.

There's a part of her that thinks she should be angry at him. She should be yelling at him for what he did, what he failed to do, and not talking about tending to his wounds like he deserves her pity after everything. But she can't bring herself to do it. Not now. Maybe once the dust has settled, things will be different, and she'll find it easier to dredge up her anger towards him. But now, especially with Lestat still hanging over their heads, Claudia can't seem to access any genuine anger towards him.

She watches him get up, and scrambles up herself after a moment, glancing at the back of her hand. It's violently burned, but Louis seems worse off. He was out in it longer than her. She turns in a slow circle to see what there is in the room that will help. No first aid kits, but that'd be too much to ask for.

Her heart's not in a complaint about drinking animal blood, so she lets that lie too. She's letting too much lie for now. It'll bubble over later.

"Why didn't he tell you?" she asks, still standing in the middle of the room, looking for something she can clean his burns with. "What game is he playin', keepin' that to himself?"

It's all so much for him to unpack. Claudia's arrival has turned him upside down. He's off kilter, useless. The members of their little vampire family have that effect on him. Louis doesn't have a ready, solid answer. He only speaks after gently cradling Claudia's burnt hand.

"I used to think him a mastermind. I think... I thought too highly of my teacher."

Did Claudia not best Lestat when she tried to murder him? He was caught in a trap only someone close to him could concoct. Lestat said that who but Louis could hurt him so well, though Louis doubts Lestat would allow himself to sound so sentimental about Claudia. The double standard is not lost on him, but once again Louis was silent on the matter.

"He... I... I think it was just petty. You know he has always resented it when he's not the center of attention. He's a deeply lonely man."

Perhaps he doesn't sound as bitter as he ought, and he fails to underscore that Lestat would probably love it if he got their minds in a tizzy about it all. Narcissus was always a lonely tale. Claudia is the one with fire and anger; Louis is just tired and remorseful.

Claudia scoffs so violently that it's almost a snarl, the need to clean him up thoroughly wiped from her mind. "Lonely 'cause he makes himself lonely," she says. "Lonely 'cause he deserves to be alone. Lonely 'cause he dragged you by the neck into his well of misery and you still make excuses for him."

They've never had time to talk about it. Louis might have been here for months, but it's all so painfully fresh in Claudia's mind, and it feels like it should be for him too. She feels as raw as the blister on the back of her hand, raw all over.

"What's he been doing all this time you've been here together, Louis? Tryin' to win you back like he's done before? Pretending he's a fuckin' victim?"

He crosses his arms, a sure sign of him shriveling and wilting into himself under the precise burn of a magnifying glass. He doesn't sit, even if he feels like he could do with a rest.

"He doesn't have me," he insists, voice raspier than it should be. He has to insist this to himself, to Lestat's face, to the ghost of what they had he carries with him. He tasted of him recently--

"I lie down alone in a cold coffin with nothin' but rats for company. Said he was lonely, not a saint. Lord knows he ain't no saint. He act like the Devil.

"I'm not sorry we left," he lies, and he even believes it himself half the time. "But when we--when we did," he can't even say killed Lestat, "we left everythin' we knew. And there ain't nothin' in this God forsaken place we know except each other, the three of us. But it's not the same, how could it be, and... it never will be."

He looks at the floor and is surprised when he sees a drop of red fall from his eyes there.

"I was never enough," he murmurs softly to the floor, "for either of you."

"Don't say that."

That's not to say she disagrees, not entirely. Claudia won't do him the indignity of lying to him. Sometimes he wasn't enough for her, and that's when she had to leave – but other times he was just right. Gentle with her, and by her side, and indulgent of her, and finding her necessary and important. Sometimes, the way he looks at her, she knows she's wanted, knows she's treasured. She'd never felt that before Louis, not with her Auntie or with anyone who came before her. Charlie, maybe, but that had been a surface-level thing. He'd known the outside of her, never cut her all the way through, but Louis was different. Is different.

"Doesn't do anybody any good to dwell on it," she says, her voice softening a little, charitably. When Louis curls in on himself, the barbs digging inwards, she pities him. Sometimes she can push past it and hurl at him something that really stings. But he's hurting enough already. "What's everybody else around here think of him? Do they know what he is?" She means to ask if they understand precisely what kind of monster Lestat in particular can be, but she'll take any answer Louis gives her. Whether people know what they all are. Whether people care. Whether—

She shakes her head, waves a hand as if to knock that question away before he can answer it, in favour of another. "Are there more of us here?"

As much as they were three, they were also two, Louis and Claudia. Isolated as they were from other vampires, only they carried on unspoken conversations, sometimes brutally honest when they could not keep their thoughts in check. So Louis folded like a paper fan. Louis knows Claudia is dwelling on their betrayal--her plan, his complicity (his knife). If it is fresh for her, how could she not? Louis screamed when he first saw Lestat here, hale and hearty except for the scar on his neck.

Whenever he missed him too much despite living in the same cold town, Louis imagined Lestat at the piano, at the opera. At inopportune times, he imagined his bleeding body on the floor with hair fanned out. He imagined the reverse, Lestat taking his revenge with a gentle draining of his blood, a sweet death. And he imagined Claudia, not with her murderous intent and blood on her dress, but poring over books or strolling with him in Jackson Square or--yes--at the piano like Lestat.

Memory is a monster, and it poisons his time with them. It causes Louis too much pain, and he is selfish. He would rather take her questions than her barbs, and one at a time. Let Claudia spin her wheels in pursuit of some other thing.

"There are a few humans who suspect. Fewer who know. Small town, I'm not lookin' to get lynched for any number of reasons, take your pick..."

Louis has reason to believe not everyone may conduct themselves in the manner of his idea of a backwards Southern town, but Louis also knows that people turn ugly in times of trouble. Did he not see houses go up in flames because one racist asshole died?

"He's better at keepin' the secret than me. More practice I suppose. That does not make for bosom buddies. If he has one, I do not know."

His mouth twists sadly with the old jealousy. Lestat claims to love him above all others, but will there be another Antoinette?

"We talk to people. I run a store. Had to do somethin' other than look at deer shit. He hunts. He's good at it. Now... those who are not human... If I don't pry, I don't open myself up to such scrutiny. But yes, there are... beings. Some are immortal, or as good as. But you be careful. They ain't friends."

Claudia doesn't care if Lestat has found someone else, although she'd be tempted to hunt them down just to give them a piece of her mind, mostly to sate the bitter little husk inside her that wants Lestat to be as miserable as she and Louis are. But that's not the point. Lestat is not, should never be, the point of all this. It still grates at her, the way he'd dug into that one persistent insecurity of hers: purpose, meaning, a definition. She does not want Lestat to be the point of her existence. But sometimes she can't get away from it. It'd drive Louis insane if he thought about it like that too, so maybe that's why he doesn't.

"Who are they?" she asks, taking a step closer to him. She's trying to be cautious and it's clear in how deliberately she moves, as if she doesn't want to betray her excitement. Because she is excited. Surely there has to be someone here, drawn to this place from some far-flung world, who's a little bit like her. "I wanna know. Tell me."

Louis is quite insane already as he flounders, wondering who he is without Lestat. The General Store, which he rechristened Marché du Lac, is a part of that search, and even there he lapsed back into old habits. Businessowner, dealer, lord of his own small domain. And he likes to sit in a public place near a window with a warm drink in hand that he doesn't actually drink, the closest he can come to haunting a café.

"They're... just people, Claudia," he says wearily. Louis anticipated that Claudia would be excited. Louis would admittedly be too, if he had the comforting anonymity of a city to hide in. Here, everything is so bare and barren, stark against the snow. It turns the people stark as well, the old dead inhabitants as well as the Interlopers. For Claudia, he guesses that part of the search for other non-humans is to help her understand herself.

If Louis cannot dissuade her, he should arm her.

"Stay away from the big hairy one, Bigby, he's a cop. Claims to be a wolf, but he's yet to prove it. No, you can't eat him," he adds, as if he has any authority to.

"Miss Jessica, from just over in Shreveport of all places, she seems all right. Saw her with a bowl of definitely-not-gumbo. Young--too young..." He avoids Claudia's eyes then.

There's also Kieren and his special diet of brains, but Louis explicitly promised not to out him.

Claudia can feel her heart thrumming rabbit-quick in her chest, raw anticipation shooting through her like fizzing fireworks. They're all prone to a little bit of memory editing with the advantage of retrospect, but Claudia does it rapidly, extracting every word of warning from what Louis just said and putting it aside, somewhere far enough that she can't hear it now, for future reference. She'll come back to it later, just like she'll come back to the idea of patching him up. She can barely feel the burn on her own hand now; it's as if the adrenaline is masking the pain.

"Jessica." Claudia doesn't care much about the Bigby person – if he was the only one Louis had provided, maybe she'd be more interested, but Jessica catches her attention more firmly than anything else. Not a man for once, but God fucking help her, it's a low bar. "Is she like us? Where does she stay? You saw her around here? What's she look like?"

He'd tell her to just go and find herself a little girlfriend then, someone to swap lipsticks with, but people that members of their little vampire family tend to fixate on tend to... die. Lily, Antoinette, Charlie, any of the other unfortunates Louis did not even learn the names of but read their last words in Claudia's diary. (Louis closed up like a dying flower after the dalliance with Jonah ended in an argument with Lestat. Louis was a monogamous creature at heart anyway.)

His face pinches in annoyance--then in pain because the burn of the fog still hurts. "You think I walk around askin' everyone where they live? I don't follow people around like you." Or Lestat, he nearly says, and stops himself with a pursing of his lips, which is nearly the same as just saying it.

"It's a small town. Tellin' me you can't smell a fellow Louisianan a mile away? She's blond, pretty, you'll spot her..." Louis grumbles when he should be more sensitive to Claudia's fixation on her fellow creatures of the night as well as endowments she'll never possess, to use Lestat's turn of phrase. Claudia deserves better, a family that isn't dysfunctional and friends to confide in.

Claudia's expression shifts a little, caught between irritation and disappointment. Doesn't he understand why she needs this? Why it's so important to her to see and be seen by someone who isn't him, and someone who certainly isn't Lestat? He's not stupid, of course he has to know. He must've felt it himself, being the man he is and wanting the people he wants. It never feels good to be on the outside looking in, but it feels so much worse to not even have anywhere to look.

"And we're all keepin' it a secret?" she asks, folding her arms tight across her chest. She understands why. It's a danger for people to know their weaknesses, and blood-drinkers wouldn't be welcome in most civilized areas, never mind this horrible place. But there has to be a way. "All of us?"

"As far as I know. We been doin' it back home, just continued here. Some better at it than others. The humans ain't droppin' dead in droves or anythin'."

Louis finally can't muster the energy to stand anymore. He finds the nearest seat with a sigh. Despite the apprehension and fear, Louis had the hunger for a fellow creature in his eyes when Bigby revealed himself. But Bigby was a disappointment.

"I wanted to find others like us too, sis. I still do. I don't want Lestat to be the only one you know. There's good ones out there. I just... want us to be safe. It's a small town, difficult to leave, and we both know there ain’t no such thing as justice for people like us."

Black, vampire, you name it, all sorts of reasons for a small town to dislike them.

"You can hide out with me if you want, okay? Less drafty, my place, though it's still full of rats... I get hungry. The first months were hard."

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🩸 you know, you know, you know it all went wrong — open.

spoilers, folks

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