Stained Glass Eyes broke me. I dont know how many times I watched that scene and sobbed through it but then I got inspired and started to write. I hope you'll like it.
...
Lestat got used to the Muses. But standing behind the beaten down counter full of greasy fingerprints. That wasn't a muse. A stranger wearing his daughter’s face. His dead daughter’s face. Except. She wasn’t his daughter.
Oh Lestat could see the resemblance. Even a blind person could have seen it. The same stubborn tilt to her jaw. The slant of her nose. The grimace she didn't even try to hide to express her dislike towards anyone or anything. Now the subject of that dislike was him. It wasn't anything new. He had been subjected to the same expression a hundred times. A thousand.
Except. It was new. Lestat didn’t know this person, Regina, if her nametag was anything to go by who stood behind the counter and was looking at her annoyed and tired. Lestat lifted his gaze. The eyes that looked back at him were dark, dull, tired instead of vibrant, alive, full of emotion, full of life. Always so full of life.
“But I look like her.” she, Regina, insisted. And now as he looked at her again Lestat changed his mind. Similarities still existed of course but no. She did not look like Claudia. She wasn't anything like Claudia. His dark child. The evil of his evil. He pushed away from the counter and left without a backward glance.
“Is Louis trying to hurt me more?” his mind supplied the question but he shook his head. No. That wasn’t the case. He saw Louis’ face in the car. Anguished. Burdened with guilt and pain and grief. He was hurting, clinging to a false hope that Lestat now had to crush.
Eyes followed him as he made his way back towards the studio. Vibrant eyes glowing under the lamplit, or throwing sharp looks at him. Always the same pair of eyes. He would know them anywhere.
He barely arrived, his feet carried him to the piano, his mind repeating the same never over and over again. Claudia, Claudia, Claudia… Lestat never wanted Claudia. He turned her for Louis and only for Louis. He turned her even though he knew she would reach her and sooner than later and forever was a false promise to her. He didn’t expect to care for her. Never wanted to love her. But love her, he did. How could he have not.
As his feelings raged inside him like a storm, his fingers started to play the piano. The piano. His instrument but also the one which he taught Claudia to play. They had spent countless nights sitting side by side on the stool, Lestat’s hand over hers as he guided her fingers, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Then enough time passed and she did not need his guidance anymore. He watched as she played a piece from beginning to an end before looking up at him, eyes vibrant, glowing with happiness when he nodded in approval. They played together after, those same eyes glinting with mischief when she messed up a part just to make him sigh in annoyance. Those eyes, those beautiful, expressive eyes.
Those eyes that lit up whenever Lestat bought her a new dress. Those eyes that squinted when she laughed, that were somehow even bigger and rounder whenever she asked for something that he and Louis did not want to give her right away. Lestat always had been the first to cave, whether she knew it or not. Those eyes that once looked up at him in wonder, eager to please, to learn anything from him that he offered to teach. Those eyes that turned cold whenever she looked at him after a while like he was a bug she must squeeze under her shoe.
Those eyes that turned to him, begging him to help her as she burned on the stage in Paris. Claudia resented him, he knew it well, and if he was honest he couldn’t blame her for it. And yet. She looked at him. For a fraction of a second she looked at him like she used to when they were living on Rue Royale, those eyes asking him to do something, do anything but Lestat couldn't. She burned but the memory of those eyes were forever burned into Lestat’s mind.
His voice broke on the last note. He slipped the headphones off of his head, bringing the heels of his palm to his eyes, to catch the blood tears leaking from his eyes. When he brought them away, taking control of himself he looked at the few streaks of red blood. They were vibrant against his alabaster skin. Vibrant. Just like her eyes….
