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When their eyes meet, Armand feels a shock of emotion, as strong as the moment he first saw him.
It’s an ache of recognition, as painful as a stab wound or a bite, and it sears through Armand all at once. Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, as he was a century ago, still awful, still wonderful, still intent on destroying what little Armand has left. In Lestat’s eyes, Armand sees the same bitterness, the same pain, and it passes between them.
Hello again, Lestat thinks, in the eerie quiet of the tower. Louis cannot hear it but Armand does, and the sound of Lestat’s voice in his mind staggers him.
Armand stays silent. Petulant as a child. I owe him nothing, he reminds himself. It was Lestat who left him. Lestat who rejected him. Lestat who burdened him with Nicholas, that wretched, miserable child.
Mon maudit ange, Lestat thinks. Armand can look at him no longer. He fixes his eyes on the walls of Magnus’ tower. You have not changed.
It isn’t a compliment. Lestat’s voice is scathing and heavy with judgement.
You still cling to that which is repulsed by you, Lestat says.
Humiliation makes Armand feel nauseous and exposed. He lashes out.
And you, he thinks, angrily, once more curled up in Magnus’ tower and abandoned by your own fledglings. How are you any better?
Lestat’s lips twitch into a smug smile. Louis doesn’t see it, but Armand does. I’ve won, that arrogant little smirk says.
When Louis kisses him, Armand tries to ignore Lestat’s eyes on him, but they burn and they pierce. I hate him, Armand tells himself, over and over and over again. The lie is a warm embrace, and it shelters him from the truth of it, that he still longs for Lestat, that he always has. Painful as it is, pathetic as it is, he still feels Lestat’s rejection all these years later. It festers and stings like a wound that refuses to heal.
“What was he like, when you knew him?” Louis dares to ask, drunk on the blood of some boy he met in a bar.
Armand tries not to notice. He forces himself not to erupt with anger and resentment at the mention of Lestat. Louis is all Armand has, his sole companion. Armand must keep it that way, no matter the cost. They lie together on their bed, the space between them a familiar thing. Lestat is a constant presence, however much they pretend he isn’t.
“The same.” Armand murmurs, his voice calm and steady, though inside, he tremors. Lestat was a lovely storm, Armand thinks, chaotic and beautiful, overturning all of his rules and rituals. Armand can still taste his blood in his mouth, if he tries hard enough.
“Did you love him?” Louis asks.
Don’t we all, Armand thinks. You, I, the rest of the damned world.
“He infuriated me.” Armand says. “With all of his grandeur and new ideas. But I wanted him with me. I wanted him to myself. I- Yes, I loved him.”
Past tense. Once, I loved him. Now, I don’t. Easier than the truth. If only Armand could hate Lestat the way Lestat hates him.
Armand recalls the look in Lestat’s eyes, when their gazes met in the tower. Loathing, plain and simple. It was full, all-consuming. But hate and love are not so different, Armand tells himself, just a step apart.
After Louis leaves, Armand cannot escape Lestat.
He is everywhere, now, on television screens and in newspapers and on every radio. It is a cruel torture. Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, the name no longer falling from Louis’ lips but from the rest of the world’s. Without Louis for company, Armand cannot drown him out.
He retreats beneath the ground, as far from Lestat’s voice as he can go. Down here, Armand retreats back into himself. He murmurs his prayers. He drinks his own blood. He ignores even the call of the Talamasca and the news of Louis’ bloody path of destruction. He tries not to think of his new fledgling, his only child, his wretched creation. Armand wants to remember who he is, but his mind is clouded, and he longs for company again.
Lestat, Armand calls, one night, feverish with loneliness and desire and bloodlust.
What do you want? Lestat asks, as if Armand is a burden, a curse, his own personal poltergeist, refusing to leave him be.
Armand thinks of Lestat on the stage, wondrous, glorious. He thinks of Lestat bent over Nicholas’ body, fury bright in his eyes. He thinks of Lestat’s teeth on his wrist, sharp and sweet. He thinks of Lestat in Magnus tower, small as he’s ever been. He thinks of Lestat on his television screen, suave and pretty. And Lestat’s voice on the radio, refusing to leave him be.
You, Armand thinks to himself, you, you, you.
Are you with Louis? Armand asks instead. He imagines them intertwined and burns with rage. They’re his, both of them, but they have abandoned him and left him like this, a walking corpse.
Louis has chosen his own path, Lestat says, soaked in blood and vengeance. I worry for him.
And what about me? Armand thinks to himself. Who worries for him as he rots beneath the ground?
I am with your fledgling, Lestat continues, he is… provocative.
A splinter of coldness in him, Armand agrees.
He exposed you, Lestat says, laid you bare on the page. He captured your voice so perfectly that, while reading, I thought you were there with me. That is why I have hired him. I want him to capture me just the same.
Armand closes his eyes and listen to the rise and fall of Lestat’s voice.
He asks after you, you know, Lestat says, He longs for you. He asks me to speak to you, but I have told him no, no, I will not. How cruel of you to turn him and abandon him like this.
And I long for him, too, Armand thinks to himself, and Lestat and Louis, and everyone he has ever known.
You’re still such a wretched thing, Lestat says, How do you bear it?
I do not, Armand says, I never have.
Silence, then, underground.
Do not call on me again, Lestat says to him, at last.
Must I be left alone? Armand asks, desperately. Want me, need me, please. He could mould himself into anything if it meant Lestat would love him at last.
We are both alone, you and I, Lestat says, Perhaps we ought to be.
For a moment, Armand feels as if Lestat is with him. The words embrace him. In their shared loneliness, they are together once more.
It is over almost as soon as it has begun. Lestat is silent, now. He has left him. Armand feels his rejection as keenly as the first time. Lestat, he calls, over and over, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
But Lestat is gone. He does not want him. He never has.
If Armand could, he would rip his own damned heart out. But instead, he lays beneath the ground, in a tomb of his own making, and longs for the day someone will want him again, rotten as he is.