I'm so normal, totally normal about everything that everyone has said. This is making me want to write about Louis in a way that I've not seen many people do.
Louis was a good man. A respectable man. At least, that was the version of him Legundo had always heard about from Owen.
To Owen, Louis had been something almost holy, a saint in vampire's skin, untouched by cruelty or selfishness, a man who always knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do. Owen spoke about him with the kind of reverence usually reserved for angels or martyrs. As if Louis had lived for centuries without ever making a mistake.
And perhaps Louis could be those things. Gentle. Loving. Wise.
But no one survived for centuries by being innocent.
Living that long meant learning how to adapt. How to survive. How to persuade. Louis had made mistakes; of course he had. He had hurt people before, manipulated situations before. Not cruelly, not like Scott did. Scott’s manipulation was sharp teeth and open violence, obvious once you noticed it.
Louis was softer than that.
Louis learned manipulation because it kept people alive. Because humans were stubborn creatures who constantly dragged themselves toward destruction, and sometimes they needed a careful hand to guide them somewhere safer. Somewhere better. Louis had always been good at understanding people, at studying them, at learning exactly which words would settle into someone’s mind and bloom there naturally. He never liked forcing anyone into anything.
He simply nudged them toward the “right” choices. And after centuries of doing it, it became second nature.
So when Louis died, and whatever remained of him lingered in Oakhurst like a restless phantom, he found himself doing what he always had: watching people. Watching Owen most of all.
Louis stayed close to him constantly, clinging to him in the only way a ghost could. He watched Owen exhaust himself trying to carry guilt that should have buried him centuries ago. Louis wanted desperately to hold him again, to pull him into his arms and tell him he did not have to destroy himself or others for him anymore.
But ghosts could not touch.
And while watching Owen, Louis noticed the doctor.
A man so desperate to be useful that he was willing to carve himself apart piece by piece if it meant helping someone else. A man who gave and gave until there was almost nothing left of him underneath it all. Louis saw it immediately: the exhaustion, the self-sacrifice, the quiet way Legundo treated his own life like something expendable.
And Louis thought... perhaps he could borrow him.
Just enough to help the town. Help Owen.
The first time Louis slipped into Legundo’s body, it felt like drowning in sunlight. Warmth flooded through him so violently it almost hurt. Breath in his lungs. Blood beneath skin. A heartbeat. After centuries trapped in cold nothingness, being alive again was overwhelming.
And Owen could see him again.
Louis told himself it was temporary at first. Only when necessary. Only until things became stable again.
But the more time he spent inside Legundo’s body, the less Louis wanted to leave. Returning to that empty, endless realm of nothingness felt unbearable now that he remembered what living felt like. What loving felt like.
Why would he? Everyone seemed happier when Louis was there. The town listened to him. Owen smiled more. Even Legundo himself seemed to believe people preferred Louis wearing his skin over the man underneath it.
The vessel wanted to disappear anyway.
.Louis told himself it was mercy.
Legundo was already killing himself for people who would never truly understand how much of him they consumed. He gave away pieces of himself so freely it almost seemed instinctive, carving himself apart in the name of being useful, necessary, good. Louis had only offered to make that sacrifice worthwhile.
Owen could have the man he loved back.
The town could finally have someone capable of saving it.
And Legundo, sweet, exhausted, self-destructive Legundo, would finally become what he had always wanted to be: Important. Necessary. Loved.
Really, when Louis thought about it that way, it barely even sounded cruel.
It sounded fair. A simple exchange. A win-win situaiton.
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