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There is one thing that has taken decades for Claudia to truly understand. Maybe if she had paid more attention back in New Orleans, she would have gotten it sooner. Lestat’s lecturing and Louis’s spineless choice in who got his love. Maybe if she had ever given up, gone limp in Bruce’s grasp instead of trying to scratch his eyes every chance she got. Maybe if she had looked through the stained glass window of Louis’s head and seen that she’ll never come first to him, no matter how much he thinks he’s protecting her or catering to her. When it comes down to it, Claudia’s hopes, desires, fears, her life-- it’s always been up to some fuckass man who thinks with his dick.
There is a solution to this however: stop spending so much time around fuckass men who only think with their dicks.
Now, that isn’t exactly what she’s thinking when she peers into Madeleine Eparvier’s failing dress making shop, but it’s certainly the underlying subconscious thread that keeps snagging on the bobbin of her brain.
Madeleine is exhausted, not a little unpleasant, but she is unafraid, even as Claudia slaps a fistful of bloody money and a necklace on the counter, and demands what she came here for, a little of that spoiled New Orleans child rearing her head.
And is that so wrong? Should she not also get the things she wants in Louis’s Parisian paradise, no matter who she has to steal from or threaten or maim in an alleyway? Childishness is what they all expect of her, anyway. Leading with it just cuts out the middleman.
It is that recognition of like to like, maybe, that draws Claudia to Madeleine like a vampire to a fireplace. Madeleine is unafraid because that is the only way left to her. She is selfish because even if she was selfless, there would be no reward for it. The only benefit to going along is more expectation, more pressure.
Claudia hadn’t realized it was going to be like that when she joined the coven. She hadn’t realized that community could be just as caustic as loneliness.
Madeleine knows. Claudia can feel it at the edges of her thoughts always, as she watches Madeleine from the shadows. It’s not that she’s trying to listen, exactly, it’s just that it’s like Madeleine is calling to her without realizing it, reeling her like a spool of thread dropped on the floor.
The comfort of men does not last. Both of them are well-acquainted with this fact. Louis is no longer her father, nor is her her brother now he’s gotten a whiff of Armand. He only feels entitled to her affection when he can not stand to get any from the wandering hands of a man. That soldier was a fleeting pleasure compared to the unabashed humiliation Madeleine is still being put through by the people of Paris. The display cases in her windows are no longer for her dresses but stockades for Madeleine to stand in as she is jeered at, night after night.
Before those vile humans force Claudia to reveal her hand, she and Madeleine don’t get much time together. Even if Armand hadn’t specifically banned her from any and all contact, Claudia feels weirdly nervous around Madeleine, as if one wrong move will shatter things, and the only one who understands her will turn her nose up, and Claudia will no longer have anything left to wonder at.
It is harder than she thought it might be, not to come unmoored, not to spread the blood of those who held Madeleine down and would have violated her up and down the city streets as a warning. But that would not have protected Madeleine, and she’s in enough hot water as it is.
Still: she did it. She finally went “bang!” And Madeleine was right: what could they do to stop her? She feels incandescent, beautiful and powerful, and she sees that reflected in Madeleine’s eyes as the dressmaker reaches out for her hand, now scrubbed clean of blood, and kisses it, whispers a thanks for the rescue.
This is not a simple explosion, either. There are more bangs to come. Ask Armand to turn Madeleine-- bang! Get Louis to do it when Armand refuses to get his hands dirty-- bang! Slip out of Paris and learn what it is like to be so settled in a single person as to know contentment-- bang!
They fall into the depths of each other, and it is so pleasant that it aches. Claudia aches as Madeleine kisses the blood off her mouth and deftly pulls the dress she made off Claudia’s body and throws it off to the side of the hotel room, like it isn’t precious, like she has time to make a thousand more just like it, just for Claudia. And she does.
Claudia aches as she stumblingly tries to love Madeleine the only way she knows how, all consuming and feverishly and overprotectively, and she aches as she is finally given the chance to be grown that she has been drowning for since New Orleans. This is not the false equal footing between her and Louis that could rear its head at any moment. This is not the patronizing, grudging respect that Lestat cast upon her. This is not the gleeful, knowing condescension of the coven. It is a love she never dreamed could fall into her lap.
That must be why the two of them, the wanderer and her destination, don’t get to keep it. Instead she watches it all crumble to ash and smoke. The sun hurts more than she remembered. But Claudia can only rail against them all for so long, can only take being something for Louis and Lestat to grieve over instead of her own person for so long. She finally gives up as Madeleine declares Claudia to be her coven. Better to die together.
They hold each other, breathlessly whisper things that don’t matter, clutching at their last seconds with shaking claws, clutching at the only privacy they have left now. These words are just for them, the only piece that is not wrenched off and offered up like meat at the butcher shop. Nobody in this fucking theater gets to know what they said.
There is little satisfaction and no consolation in this, but for a single, solitary moment, the stage is just for them.