Warning: This spec contains sexual situations between adults of the same sex.
Spoilers: IWTV, TVL, QOTD, TOTBT
Notes: This is a series of specs that began with an angst spec I posted to alt.books.anne-rice. It was a depressing speculation about Louis going into the earth and Lestat being unable to stop him. However my friends Isilwath and torch weren't prepared to leave it there. Izzy wrote me a beautiful piece about Lestat's response and torch brough back more angst with David's point of view.
Archiving: Permission is given to publish this speculation at http://digitalmidnight.simplenet.com/archive/ otherwise it must be requested from auden@siliconhenge.com with the url of the archiving page.

(Louis)

I can't see anything. It's dark, and cold. I can taste earth in my mouth, glutinous mud. I wonder how long it will be until dawn. Down here I cannot tell the hours of the night. But the death sleep has yet to take me. This time when it does it will not be for just a day, this time I will stay buried here until I can face life above ground again. When will that be? Maybe never.

I've never gone into the earth before. But if what I have heard is true this will ease my pain. Death is but a sleep and a forgetting. I hope that I will be able to forget - that I will wake with no memory of who I am, or how I came to be.

Please don't let me remember my maker. For as surely as the thought of Lestat has driven me into the earth this time, should I ever see him again I will go into the sun. I will have no other choice.

Lestat has betrayed me, as I knew he would. And now I am alone. Tonight I decided I could not bear it any longer. For weeks I have been roaming the streets like a leper. Never resting for more than a few moments, save when I stand outside their house and look up at the lit windows. I sleep in cellars like an animal, an unwanted creature, a stray dog. The earth is not so different from a cellar. They are both cold and dank. But the earth encloses my whole body. It is my shroud, my coffin.

I wonder if they will notice that I am gone. If someone will tell them I have disappeared. Perhaps. If so, what will they say? I know they will do nothing. They both have what they want now. Why should they care for me?

Lestat was angry when I left. He told me I was abandoning him again. But he didn't try to stop me and that told me more than he knew. David watched from the shadows. He watched as he always did, always observing, always there. After Lestat made him it was impossible for us to be together as I had hoped. I thought that our reunion in this century would lead to better times for us. Let us have one another, I said, and he refused. I should have known then. Should have realised that my time was over, my chance gone. He has a new lover now.

They complement each other. They are both so alive, so vital. I am the melancholy shadow. Unwanted, an accessory, a third wheel to a happy union. They hunt together like tigers. Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. What am I? A reluctant hunter. A wounded predator. I do not have their joy in life. Joy in death. The only joy there ever was for me was Lestat and I lost him. The first time in Paris two hundred years ago. The second time three months ago, when David Talbot was born to darkness in a young and beautiful body that stirred Lestat the vampire as the elderly David had stirred Lestat the mortal. I remember Lestat in that body, pressing against me. Kissing me. He was almost irresistable. Almost.

Only the blond demon who took my life will ever be irresistable to me. Anything else I can overcome. Any other need I can deny. And it is for fear that this one overpowering desire will destroy me that I have buried myself here.

Lestat is lost to me. And I am lost to myself. The light left me when I realised I no longer had any claim to him. I would see them kissing fiercely when they came in from the night, sated after the kill. I watched them retire to one bedchamber, to drink from each other, making love long into the night. I saw how Lestat's eyes lit up whenever David came into the room, his glance aside as he waited for me to absent myself. I saw this and knew I had to leave.

One thing I allowed myself. One last gratification of a love that had always been hopeless. Before I told him I would go I kissed him. A long langorous kiss, revelling in the taste of him, of the feeling of him in my arms. When I drew back I was dizzy with love and longing. But Lestat had looked at me blankly and then I had told him I was leaving.

It was easy to go. I took nothing with me. I knew that it would come to this eventually. This is the rightful place for me. For I am dead, am I not? Above me are the graves. I burrowed down beneath them. But I can still smell the decomposing flesh through the soil. That will not happen to me. I am denied the solace of death.

Death claimed me once, and he was an angel. Now it is too late for another death. I will sleep here, for while I continue to exist I may yet dream of him. When the dreams are too much, or too little for me, I will go into the sun. But even the sun will be an inadequate substitute for my burning angel. Hell burns with a fire like a furnace, and yet it is black. I am in hell. For I am burning, and for me there will only ever be night.