⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀the townhouse of rue royale was in shambles. books, newspapers, clothes piling across its floors. i hardly recognized it. i hardly recognized myself, inside it.
and i had my fill of big houses, with big walls. kept inside those walls. kept inside, with just a small impression of sunlight for hours at a time, for days at a time.
but i made do. i made the most of it.
my body stopped bein' a woman and started bein' somethin' else. somethin' that distracted herself with chores, with louis, with the house that was once lestat's. but it was ours, now. and i felt that i needed to protect it. protect louis. the way i could not protect myself, when that monster of a man hurt me.
i see louis. i look at him. i can not look away. even when i notice his burgeoning distance, his pain splitting us into two halves of some unholy, tortured whole. louis' form was a wreck of grief and raw nerve endings; for a long time, he could feel nothing but pain. lestat had thoroughly broken him in ways that even i could not fathom. the bastard would break my legs, over and over again, makin' sure they wouldn't heal, makin' sure i couldn't run, but he never bruised my face. too pretty, he said.
but louis' beautiful face is ruined. his pale eyes are hurt, like a dog from a bad home. his skin is bruised, bluish, reddening, yellowing with pus. i am sure he is far removed from the man he was before he ever met that white hell demon.
he carries his grief like a precious treasure. like it defines him, makes him real. maybe his life was one sad thing after another, after meeting lestat. or maybe this is just louis, his inner world defined by his pain, his suffering, his skin.
i don't complain. i don't tell him that this is a flaw in an otherwise perfect character. i let him feel what he needs to feel. i think that is all he can do, sometimes, in his half-broken state.
louis. my louis. miserable, broken, pitiful louis. with his bruises, and his fractured bones, and the way he looks at me. like he has already decided what i wanted. like he already knew what i was gonna say. chasing after the next pretty, traumatic thing that would break him into more pieces, pieces of a shattered man who was once the dark prince of storyville. the pimp. the definitive expression of black domination in a sickeningly white world.
we stroll through the french quarter like daughter and father. like a man and a woman pulled into this moment, this life, as if there was nothing else. i stay close to him, my hands eager to hold him up, to support him. i have gotten used to it. i have even come to need it; to need being needed. i would curl an arm around the bend of his elbow, and help him through the world beyond the townhouse.
he is contemplative. pensive. i can sense it without having to read his mind, a turbulent paracosm of self-pity and the steady, persistent stinging, aching of bodily pain.
i want to ask him what was wrong. why he treated us like a bad idea, now. as if lestat was ever a good idea. as if louis can be trusted to know what was best for me, or himself.
but he tells me, soon enough. soon enough, he resigns himself to the idea that i don't need him, or want him. that my life was better without him.
i stare at him. i wonder, for a moment, if he was right.
but my own thoughts only lead me to dismiss him. i am not a doll. i am not a child. i do not always have to agree with him. i had thought i was better off without him before, and that hubris had led me to my torturer. the bastard. the killer. bruce. i hate writing his name. i hate sayin' it.
i look at my lap. i look at his hands. and then i reach for them, fingers touching his knuckles, enveloping his palms. to remind him of the present. to remind him that whatever grief he feels is mostly in his head. like mine.
"we'll see the world together," i tell him. and then, haltingly, my throat tightening, "lestat was right. vampires are cruel. but i have you. and you have me."
i tell myself that i am being sentimental. that i am being too kind. but, a part of me knows that i do not want to be alone again. without him, again, isolated and trapped.
i never called out to louis, when that bastard kept me inside his walls, under his floorboards. a part of me did not want him to know. a part of me knew that he would never look at me the same way again, if he knew. and i didn't want that. i needed him to look at me the way he always did; like i was a light in the dark. like i was pure, and warm, like fire.
even when my insides feel like ice. like nothing.
"this ain't always about you, louis. you think you need me. but i need you, too."
