July, 2002

Disclaimer: Not my characters. But my story. There really are bigger crimes to think about than writing specs, for God’s sake. >.< Elements of this spec are drawn from the N. Jordan and D. Geffen film of IWTV. Not meant to infringe upon their copyright. The poem is In Memoriam, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Forgive my French translation—I only really know Tourist French.

Spoilers: IWTV/TVL. Disregards the frankly silly version of this scene as portrayed in The Quagmire Armband The views in this spec are that of Claudia and do not necessarily reflect those of the author.

Special, special thanks to Mercredi, who quite frankly improved this spec a great deal with her honest and insightful suggestions.

****

“…Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.”
- Tales of a Wayside Inn, Henry W. Longfellow

“’Alas, how have these offended?’
‘The death of young wolves is never to be pitied.’”
- The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster

***

“What did I do wrong!” This, more a statement than a question, as the hysterical Madeline struck her bruised and bloodied hand against the narrow brick entrance. She howled in outrage at the answering jeers and taunts from the other side of the sealed door. “And why do you mock me?” she screeched, turning and clawing at her own face so that she drew fresh scratches alongside the wounds they had inflicted on her.

Claudia stopped her pacing and turned to regard Madeline with icy blue eyes. They glittered in the grey light of the narrow little courtyard. “It will do no good, Madeline,” she said in a measured tone which sounded strange coming from the mouth of a child, “…they will not listen. They want you to go on.”

Madeline stopped and regarded her in the brief interlude that ensued. Her chest heaved with exhaustion as she fought to control the tired and hurt sobs that gurgled from her throat. Claudia continued to gaze at her, to try and lull her into that sense of quiet that had sometimes worked on Louis. “The little one thinks herself a schoolteacher!” laughed a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. Her harsh Parisian accent was a wicked reminder of their hopeless situation, and it drove Madeline back into her hysteria.

“There has to be a way out!” cried Madeline, throwing herself at the door once again. The wood was already splintered and cracked in numerous places as she clawed into it, but Claudia knew that even if she did manage to break through, a host of jeering vampires would surround them in an instant. Madeline wailed for their mercy, she begged the holy Vierge to save her, she had to, because Madeline had always been good—

The vampires that listened outside the door burst into peals of laughter. They imitated her wailing, their mocking voices rising to a crescendo in time with her terrified sobs.

Claudia despised her in that moment; despised her for her weakness, for letting their murderers gain further enjoyment out of hearing her pathetic cries. She wished to block all this out. She had known, from the moment that her father had raised his troubled grey eyes and murmured that she had tried to kill him, that she was doomed. No, it was earlier than that. It was the time when Armand’s eyes had been cold to her while at the same time regarding Louis with that possessive wonder Lestat had always displayed towards him.

The thought made her tremble. Louis was out of his depth with these savage and knowing vampires. Their whole family was, even the fierce Lestat who had fought desperately to be heard at their trial. Neither of them could save her, she knew that now. Her lower lip still bled a little from a cut. The vampires of the Theatre had known her for the demon she was, rather than the doll with the golden hair and blue eyes Louis and Lestat had taken her for.

Then, why did the odd strangled sob of fear still erupt from her throat?

She had remained mute in the darkness of that miserable little room where the three of them, Louis, Claudia, Madeline, had been condemned to death. Lestat, shaken and scarred, had not met her eyes, the coward, as he had confirmed in that rasping, wounded voice, that yes, she did it. She had taken the knife to him. She had risen up against her master. Yes, he had conceded to Santiago’s questioning, she must die. It was the law. But Louis…

And the fire in his eyes as he had fought for Louis’ life! Hadn’t she always known that their silent and aching love for each other was different, fiercer than the guilty affection that they had showered on her? Hadn’t she always…but to be faced with the reality of it all in that humiliating room, with the vampires of the theatre laughing at her, the demon child. The defeat had been crushing. She didn’t care for Louis’ urgent pleas for mercy, didn’t rail at each accusation thrown at her by Lestat.

“Please, you have to listen—“ Louis had begged over their laughter and the shouts of accusation. His hands had been opened in a begging gesture, he turned to Lestat and pleaded with him to have mercy, but Lestat had as little control over this as his fledgling.

What would it have been like in those moments, to have been able to turn to Lestat, and to feel safe and protected in his fierce shadow as they always had in New Orleans? Rather live in his domineering love than tremble at the mercy of this spiteful Parisian coven. She felt a strange sense of kinship with him at that moment, one she had lacked for many, many years. They both despised these theatrical morons, she could see the contempt in his eyes even now; they both wished to be free. They both knew that in that miserable room, all they had was each other.

Of course, trust Louis to try and preach his New World values to them all. Louis simply didn’t understand. He may as well have argued with a pack of starving wolves. His touching morals and his bourgeois sensibility mattered not one whit in a darkened cellar where undead ghouls wanted blood. Louis’ handsome face was stained with crimson, bloody rips gouged along his cheek from the struggle. His soft black hair was thick and matted with crusting blood. It drove the vampires around him into further states of excitement; they regarded him with glittering eyes and sneering grins as he shouted to be heard above the cacophony of voices.

“Please, Lestat—you have to tell them—we didn’t know anything of the rules—“

“You still rose up against your master!” screeched one vampire.

“But he didn’t—“ began Lestat.

Santiago cut him off quickly. “Treason, to attempt to kill your own master! Lestat should have his revenge. Lestat should find retribution.” He turned to the scarred and unhappy man standing before him. “Isn’t that what you came here for, my friend?”

Lestat had struggled to keep his focus on the trial. Santiago ran rings round him verbally, tricking him into incriminating his fledglings further, and all the while, Armand’s auburn eyes glittered from the distance, sometimes melting into the shadows, so that Louis never once lay his eyes upon him, but always watching. “Yes,” Lestat had said, “but let me do it my way! Let me take him back to New Orleans with me—“

“What?” Louis had said, incredulous.

“I’ll give you back your life, Louis!” Lestat’s voice was pleading. He knew what Claudia did; that there was no hope here. He was desperate to get Louis away. He was trying to tell him that he would be shown no mercy otherwise.

Santiago was laughing harshly, “I promised you nothing!” and then in the argument, the sound of something being dragged along the floor. They all turned, the prisoners and the kangaroo court, to see the coffin that was opened up and prepared for Louis.

“Get that thing away from here!” Lestat gasped in horror.

Santiago ignored him. He turned to Louis, caressing the black silk of his hair. “For you, murderer…eternity in a box. Nobody to hear your cries.”

“You promised me!” snarled Lestat furiously, “You said I could take him back to New Orleans—“

“I promised you nothing!” laughed Santiago, and then the whole crowd was laughing with him as Lestat fought to stop him, stumbling as he was pushed back into the throng of accusers. They had surrounded Louis, who fought desperately against them, clawing, biting, kicking. He was begging for Armand to help them, begging Lestat in turn to stop the crowd, but they were both overwhelmed. He was punched and kicked, thrown into the coffin that was quickly sealed shut.

Madeline screamed and shouted out his name again and again, then tore at herself. The coffin was hoisted away, borne through the crowd as the cries of the three adults, Louis, Madeline and Lestat, were drowned out by contemptuous laughter.

Santiago turned to Claudia, a malevolent smirk on his face. She knew what he was telling her, that this was Armand’s doing, and wasn’t it fun? She regarded him with detachment. She regarded the whole spectacle, mundane and human in its own way, with the focus on cruelty and pomp, with a detachment that surprised her.

Lestat was struggling against the other vampires. Two held his arms down as he gasped and cursed and fought to follow those that had dragged Louis away. “You promised!” he had cried, “you can’t kill him! It wasn’t—“

They had burst into peals of silvery laughter as he stammered and cried, tears of shame and fear rising to his eyes. Claudia felt that she should be concentrating on something else, but all she could focus on at that moment was that she had never seen Lestat cry before.

“And the child. Claudia. She took the knife to you, didn’t she?”

Blood tears again filled Lestat’s eyes. He had ceased his struggling, and in the quiet room he hung his head and nodded. “Yes. She did it.”

Armand approached him then, out of the shadows. He ignored Claudia and in the din that ensued, he was whispering something to Lestat, running his yellow hair through his fingers mockingly. Then he disappeared into the crowd once more, his large brown eyes detached and cold to all around him.

“The verdict!” laughed Estelle.

“Yes, yes, the verdict!” they all shouted, taking up her cry.

“Death for the others.” Said Santiago in a harsh and final tone of voice.

Madeline screamed and tore at them as she was led away. A rough hand grasped Claudia’s arm, bruising the soft flesh of her chubby limb. She did not struggle as she was paraded through the crowd. She did not look up to see their grinning faces or the righteous and haughty looks. She was led past Lestat, who was still held back by his captors.

She caught his gaze, just the once. He glanced at her, through a fringe of tousled blond hair, his grey eyes miserable and defeated. He did not make to speak; there was nothing to say. They locked gazes for that one moment, and both knew that this was the end. This was the moment when betrayal begot betrayal, and it was as inevitable and as sad and as crushing as it was expected.

His body trembled with humiliation and fear. Stripped of his good looks and his strength, he looked so vulnerable, so young! Yes. Condemned. He must have suffered greatly in the long years they had been apart. How else to explain how he still limped a little, how great must his shame be at his lowly position, that he tried to shrink back into the shadows?

On the night she had risen up against him, his blue eyes had been soft and gladdened at her ‘peace offering’—the two boys whom she had fatally drugged. Looking back on that night, as she had, time and time again on the ship as they fled the burning Rue Royale, or in the carriages that drove through Germany and Romania and all the ancient lands, she noticed different things. She realised how his voice had softened a little, how he had choked out the words; “so we forgive each other, then?” She recalled the look of affectionate bemusement on his face as she had led him into the other room, intending to kill him.

Most of all, she recalled how proud he had been in these moments, how unwilling he was to share his feelings with herself or Louis. And truly, wasn’t this worse than death, for him? To have to stand there, naked in his emotions, stripped of all dignity, to beg and plead for one fledgling’s life, and to testify miserably against another, when he so obviously despised those ‘helping’ him? And what must it be like, to know the same misery that she had, that a body too young or a battered and scarred body would not earn the same looks from Louis as had been blessed on Armand? The vulnerable and pathetic creature standing before her was no more the truth of his own soul anymore than she was a five-year-old child. The real Lestat was trapped somewhere in there, and it occurred to her with a simple clarity that perhaps it was better for the soul to be released than to struggle on in this painful way throughout the years.

She wanted to catch his eye, she wanted to whisper something to him, that perhaps they were even. But he, of course, would not look at her, and she knew it to be more than his guilt. It was that he was ashamed. Yes, at last, they were even.

She did not protest as she was led away. She had felt the misery of her being alone for a long while now, first with the initial darkness, and then the unexpected loneliness when they had been without Lestat, and, of course, when Louis had unwittingly grown cold and distant to her in his grief for Lestat and then his lust for Armand.

They led her through the narrow Parisian corridors, and somewhere, she thought she heard Louis shouting, screaming her name. The pungent smell of mortar came to her nostrils. Then down another corridor, here a turn, into a darker opening, and the noise was lost into the labyrinth. Her captors still laughed and mocked her. Their shadows danced along the narrow brick walls, like the elongated and terrifying puppets in that play that Lestat had once taken his two fledglings to see, at the Theatre d’Orleans.

The vampires walked on either side of her, and at the front and back, singing an ancient Latin dirge. Their voices sounded like monks on the way to mass. They enjoyed the spectacle of it all, their faces grim and sombre as they performed the Marche Funebre.

O salutaris Hostia
Quae caeli pandis ostium
Bella premunt hostilia
Da robur, fer auxilium

She wished she could turn, and strike Celeste, and scream with a woman’s cold rage at this brutal treatment. She felt degraded, insubstantial. Her shadow against theirs was small and frail. The bruising grip on her wrist was so strong that it was stopping the blood from flowing through her hand. She was dragged along by their quicker strides, fighting desperately to keep up with that running gait of a child following an adult. She fought to retain a dignity about all this, fought to take this as an adult should, and to her intense fury, they seemed to find this all the more hilarious.

Celeste was reciting some old poem or another, her voice soft and low, echoing slightly in the long chambers they led Claudia through. She hummed a tune to it, singing it as one would a lullaby.

Et tel est mon rêve; mais qu’est ce je suis?
Un enfant qui pleure dans le soir
Un enfant qui pleure parce qu’il veut la lumiere
Et avec pas de language, mais avec un cri

So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry

No words to describe the humiliation brought about by Celeste’s cruel rhyme. She turned her face away from them as they came to a stop at an oaken door. She heard the heavy scrape of iron bolts being drawn back, then the darkness was illuminated a little by the silent glow of stars and moonlight in the other room. She was flung into the narrow courtyard, which was covered with iron grating. A moment later, Madeline was hurled in, too, and with more laughter and cries of condemnation, the other vampires pulled the great oaken door back and bolted it shut. Their laughter came muffled through the door, and for the moment, it was easy to concentrate on Madeline’s gasps of pain and fear. Claudia turned and regarded her there, railing and crying, her red hair dishevelled, her silken dress tattered. She wondered why Madeline had to scream and fuss so; what was the point in panicking when they both knew that death was final and brutal and unmerciful? No pleas could help them now.

“What do they mean to do!” gasped Madeline.

“They’re going to burn us.” She deadpanned. She felt weary suddenly, as if all of this were a necessary thing but a nuisance, and she would rather it were done quickly.

For the next hour, Madeline screamed and cried. She kept fighting to be let out, and then walking over and embracing Claudia, telling her that she was all right, they would survive. Louis would rescue them, wouldn’t he?

“Louis’s gone.” Said Claudia coldly. “Even if he did break free, Armand would not let him rescue us.”

“He won’t let us burn?”

“Of course he will.” Claudia snapped. She felt her temper rising; the fury at her helplessness was only heightened by Madeline’s cries of horror. She had to do this right. She had to face it with Louis’ detachment—

If only he were here, to comfort her. Let him burn; let that be his penance, as Lestat’s was being humiliated at the theatre. She tried to gulp down the hot tears of rage and betrayal that threatened to spill over. Louis, perhaps, was the ultimate betrayer of all of them. Lestat had paid for Claudia’s rage with his pain. She was to pay for his with her life.

Louis…

Oh, she wasn’t stupid. She knew, as she had known the first night that they had come here and witnessed the killing of the woman on stage, that Armand wanted Louis. And Louis wanted him. She had to concede defeat with Armand; he was far cleverer, much more ruthless, in his systematic breakdown of their little family. Never mind that Louis would grieve, with his touching sensibility, his green sorrow. Armand would not let him die.

And that was the final, ultimate defeat, wasn’t it? She had slit Lestat’s throat and urged Louis to come away with her. He had dreamed, for years, of finding more of their kind. Weren’t they kindred spirits, eager to escape their maker’s shadow? And yet…and yet…she knew death. She didn’t romanticise it. She had taken lives before, and watched the families of those she had taken over the years. Of course, they’d mourn for you a while, wouldn’t they? And they’d wail that life wasn’t worth living, and then they’d forget sometimes, and then…

Well, perhaps it would be better that he cringed here and burned in the sunlight than go on to live with their murderer…

“Claudia!” Madeline cried in horror, “they’re going to leave us! They’re really going to do it!”

“Come here,” she said, “come over here and protect me, Madeline. Be a mother to me.”

Madeline obeyed, walking over and sitting down next to her, embracing her in her arms as a mother might cradle a child. She sang an old French liturgy to her. They ignored the laughter from outside, and so the others started to drift away.

The hour, their final hour, passed slowly.

There was silence in the next compartment. The other vampires had sensed the daylight coming, and had retired to their loathsome resting places. Claudia could feel it, too, and the dull ache in her bones that heralded the sun’s approach reminded her that at this time she should be laying in Louis’ arms, in their coffin.

That cruel and silent Armand might have him. Lestat… she remembered how the other vampires had closed in on him like hungry wolves. Would he be facing this same fate? She doubted it—something told her that Armand also understood what it would mean to Lestat to go on so crippled and weary and wounded.

The sky was lightening further. Claudia’s body tingled with pain, each nerve lined with a fiery keenness. Madeline was crying out in agony. Her fledgling skin was already smouldering in the light. She sobbed that it was going to be all right, and Claudia felt a stirring of pity for her in that moment. She embraced her tighter, begging her to hold on…she had to hold on…

Somewhere, in a stinking room…in darkness… hadn’t she held someone like this? Hadn’t she begged her to wake up, they had to go? Insidious death was creeping over her as she had felt it then in that same infant body. She felt the same drawing down into a different kind of darkness—or was it light? So hard to tell in these moments.

The pain was making her delirious. An image faded in and out of the haze of light; the quaint little candelabrum that rested on the piano in the music room. She used to play with the yellow flames, trying to pinch them out at the bottom, where it burned blue. It used to concern Louis, who often sat nearby and watched her as Lestat taught her to play the piano. There, she reached up and pinched it again--

“Claudia, don’t.” Louis’ voice. A gentle hand pushing hers away.

“Why not?”

“It will burn.”

“Like the sun?”

“No, like the moon.” Chuckled Lestat.

She giggled. “I know that doesn’t burn, silly! It’s the wrong colour.”

He looked at her, bemused. “The wrong colour?”

“Yes,” she explained patiently, “It’s pale and white, like us. The sun is red and yellow, like the fire. It burns.” They had both smiled at her indulgently. She decided to demonstrate more of her cleverness. “I read a poem about the sun. It said that it was like a ball in the sky, like the moon, but it hurt to look at it, because it was so bright. Can you imagine that? Something so strong that it lights up every room, every wood and town?”

Lestat shrugged. “Of…of course we can. We’ve seen it, Claudia.” He lowered his head and concentrated on finding his place with the piano keys.

“Is it like that? Really that bright?”

“It’s beautiful,” said Louis, his voice soft. “It’s the thing I miss most—“ he checked himself.

“Why don’t I remember it?” she asked, and it was her earliest recollection that something wasn’t quite right…something was different about her experiences to their own.

“There’s no need to,” said Lestat smoothly, running his fingers across the keys so that they broke the stillness of the room with music, “really, Claudia, the night means more—“

“—I want to see it, though! I want to understand what the poet meant about ‘golden stripes on the lawn’—“

“You don’t,” said Louis, “it means something different to us.” Us was the word that detached them and their pale skin and their fangs and the night from them, the humans and their world.

“There are other things,” said Lestat. He glanced at Louis, and then began to play.

Someone was shouting outside, somewhere in the Parisian street….a grocer’s boy, unloading that day’s stock for the markets…the dream faded into pale light.

“Father!” She did not know whether she had sobbed that out loud. She hoped not. It sounded pained and child-like in that moment, too predictably emotional.

She closed her eyes, whimpering with pain as the sky lightened and grew warmer simultaneously. She hid her face further within the folds of Madeline’s dress, screwing her eyes shut in reflex to the damning light. And then, with a child’s curiosity, she had to see this apparition. There was no longer darkness behind her eyelids, but a bright orange light, like when she had sat at that piano and shut her eyes against the candlelight, imagining it to be the sun. It was too grand to miss out on, and she opened her eyes. They streamed with tears, blurring her vision. She forgot her pain and the anger and Louis and Lestat as the Parisian sky lightened to a blue she could not remember having ever seen.

The fiery benediction was delivered. Beautiful filtered sunlight, golden, warming, something to gladden even the heart of a creature trapped for over sixty years in darkness. It touched the edges of the bricks, turned Madeline’s flaming red hair into the lightest copper. They blinked and cried out in pain at the heat and the light, as each particle seared the flesh, as dried and crusting blood from their wounds exploded in the light. Her life had been governed by darkness and pain, and the sun, the heat, obliterated it all, bathing the noise and the darkness in silent, final light.

THE END