Chapter 1: Welcome To The End Of The World (pull up a stool)
Summary:
The Bar at the End of the World
There’s a bar at the end of the world, a liminal space at the edge of time, in a place that doesn't exist on any map, Where gods, monsters, and immortals go to lick their wounds and the broken-hearted gather.Here regret is drowned in aged whiskey, scars are compared , and occasionally drinkers laugh too loudly just to forget.
Each drink poured carries a story, each silence stretches longer than a mortal life. It's not about redemption, it's about remembering, about surviving, about telling the tale with a little more flair than the last time. Pull up a chair. The night is eternal, and misery loves company. A found-family crossover of the beautifully broken, with sharp tongues, and bad decisions.
Notes:
This idea was completely inspired by the extremely talented Pika-La-Cyniqe's Girls Next Door series. I would never have thought to throw all these fandoms and worlds together without her inspiration. I hope to create something that is enjoyed even half as much as her story is.This is the first chapter in an ongoing story with a changing cast of characters.
Please rate and comment! It means more than you know!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The Bar at the End of the World was a place stitched together from half-forgotten dreams, broken timelines, lost memories, and the dust of forgotten empires.
The music in the room was usually subdued, melancholic, as if the very air of the bar itself understood the weight of its patron's broken hearts. The air was thick with forgotten dreams. Dim lighting cloaked the corners in shadows and the only constant was Decim behind the bar, polishing a glass that didn’t need it.Time moved strangely here. Some even claimed it didn't move at all.
Decim, stood pale and silent, polishing glasses with mechanical precision, his silent presence as reliable as the ticking of a clock. His silver hair caught the low golden light, his expression unreadable. Cold gaze, meticulous hands, the only steady things in a place built from chaos. He was the one thing that seemed to anchor the bar’s ethereal atmosphere. He was the ever present bartender.
He rarely spoke unless spoken to. He didn’t need to, he only poured drinks with the kind of stoic precision that could be mistaken for a prayer. The ones who ended up here weren’t looking for conversation. Not usually. Until tonight.
A low hum began as the ancient jukebox, located on the wall at the end of the bar, shuddered into life, courtesy of the golden-haired vampire slouched against the machine. Lestat de Lioncourt, dressed in a silk shirt that shimmered like spilled wine and black trousers tailored to his lithe form with decadent precision, leaned back with his usual air of amused detachment. He tapped a ringed finger against his glass, the music echoing his mood, slow, sultry, and soaked in melancholy. It was one of his own songs, of course.
Poof.
With a pop of displaced air and a fine mist of glitter, a figure appeared in the center of the room. Glitter drifted down like cursed snow, sticking to every surface. The shimmering burst of stardust in the center coalesced into a tall figure. He appeared in a swirl of velvet and arrogance, a wild crown of silver blonde hair, an outrageous midnight blue velvet coat, tight breeches, and a smile made of temptation and broken promises.
Jareth, the Goblin King himself, stood with arms outstretched, soaking in the muted groans of the room like applause. Glitter fell like light rain, coating the bar in its shimmering particles. The air in the bar was immediately saturated with the unmistakable scent of warn velvet, amber, and musk, faintly cloying, but unmistakably regal.
Spike jerked back with a disgruntled snarl and a disgusted oath. "Oi, bloody hell. It’s rainin' disco again." He was bleach-blond, and clad in black leather, all restless energy and jagged smiles, shook glitter off his battered duster. “Ugh, really?” Spike groaned. “Enough with the glitter already. I see the profoundly tragic king has arrived. Again.”
"If I have to see you glitter into this bar one more time...” Crowley began, rubbing his temple in exasperation. Across the bar, he adjusted his sunglasses with the exhausted air of someone who had long since stopped believing in mercy.
All sleek lines and sin, with hair the color of fresh blood and a black suit that cost more than some nations, he slid his snakeskin boots off the barstool. He muttered darkly as he nursed his whisky. “If I have to sweep glitter out of my wings again, I swear I’ll smite something.”
“It is a bit much, even for me.” Loki said. From a booth tucked in the gloom, he leaned forward, a man draped in a slim-cut black coat stitched with green thread. His sapphire blue eyes flashing and his raven colored hair curling rakishly at his collar. He lifted an eyebrow in mild amusement, a lazy smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He looked like a daydream dressed up for a funeral. Exactly how he liked it.
Lestat, still lounging against the ancient jukebox raised his head with all the feral grace of a wolf at rest, lazy elegance wrapped in dangerous charm, he looked every inch the libertine he claimed to be. "Enfin," he said, voice thick with amusement. "The circus has arrived, I see." He smirked.
Jareth, unfazed by the complaints and glares of his fellow patrons, left a trail of stardust glitter behind in his wake. He was the self-proclaimed tragedy king and he was a symbol of everything that made this bar what it was:, a refuge for the wounded, the broken, and the endlessly dramatic.
He sighed. “Honestly, you’d think none of you had seen a simple enchantment before. I only add it for the sake of glamour. You’re welcome by the way," he announced, voice dripping with wicked sarcasm. "I thought the evening could use some sparkle and a dusting of style."
He strolled up to the bar with all the poise of the monarch he was, in leather and velvet He scanned the room as if judging it and finding it wanting. His mismatched eyes locked at Decim, in his crisp white shirt, dark vest, and silver hair, he moved with the careful calm of someone who had seen much worse things in this bar than glitter.
Decim said nothing but slid a goblet of golden fairy wine across the counter with all the surety of someone who had been expecting this exact, glittery entrance, his silence was the loudest judgment in the room.Jareth caught it and gave him a practiced wink.
The hiss of a new record starting filled the air with the soft scratch of vinyl before a sultry French ballad poured from unseen speakers, smoky, slow, drenched in heartbreak. Lestat, raised his glass in a lazy salute to no one in particular. "Music should ache, mes amis,” he said, voice rich with smug satisfaction. “It should bleed like a wounded heart.”
Spike grimaced. “Thought someone was stranglin’ a cat.” He said as he jabbed his cigarette in the air, as if it were a dagger meant for the speakers. “What is it with you posh bastards and makin’ everything sound like the end of the damn world?”
Lestat placed a hand to his chest in mock offense, eyes wide and glittering. “Philistines. All of you. This is Edith Piaf. She weeps in velvet, which is more than I can say for the younger generations.”
Jareth rolled his eyes. “Velvet doesn't weep. It just stains easily.” He said as he gave an exaggerated sigh and leaned back dramatically against the bar, a glitter-dusted hand to his forehead. “Must we always be subjected to your funeral dirges, Lestat?" He lamented, eyes half-lidded In a pained expression. “Some of us still retain the will to live, you know.”
"Barely,” Crowley muttered, in a voice as dry as desert heat. He didn’t even bother to look up. He simply took a long, deliberate sip of his drink, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “But sure, let’s blame the music and not an all powerful creator."
Loki looked at Crowley with a smirk twisting his lips “I don't mind bleeding hearts, darling.” he said, voice smooth as sin and twice as dangerous. “I just prefer when they’re dressed better. Misery is no excuse for bad tailoring."
Jareth scoffed, plucking a crystal from midair and looking deeply into it. “Finally, someone with standards.”
“Low as they are,” Crowley muttered into his whiskey glass.
Loki smirked, tilting his Absinthe glass toward the demon in a lazy toast. “Coming from one who wears sunglasses indoors, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Crowley lifted his own glass in response. “Better blind than boring.”
A cold ripple threaded through the smoky air.
Without fanfare, without glitter, the shadows near the door deepened, like a tear through the fabric of the room, and a tall, pale figure stepped quietly into view.
Lord Morpheus, also known as Dream of the Endless wore black like a second skin. A long black coat that moved around him like mist, black boots silent against the worn wooden floorboards, and hair so dark it seemed to swallow the light. His skin was as pale as bone, his eyes twin black voids flecked with starlight.
The scent of rain and long forgotten gardens clung to him, soft and unsettling. He stood there, statuesque, as though considering whether the place, or the people in it, were worth the cost of interaction.
Spike caught sight of him and gave a sharp bark of laughter. "Christ, and here I thought I was broody."
Crowley raised one crimson eyebrow over his sunglasses, lips curling around his whisky glass. “New recruit for the 'World’s Saddest Bastards Club'?”
Loki tilted his glass toward Dream in lazy salute. "Welcome." His smile was knife-sharp. " Waistcoats are optional. Existential dread is not. Take a seat, stranger. As they say, misery loves company."
Dream approached the bar like a man condemned, each step soundless but final. Decim, without a word, produced a heavy black wine bottle covered in dust and an ancient silver chalice, setting them on the bar with the reverence of a ritual. Dream accepted them in silence, not out of desire, but out of inevitability.
He claimed his drink with the air of a king accepting a crown he didn’t particularly want, his pale fingers wrapping around the silver metal of the glass, staring into the dark liquid. He did not thank Decim. He simply moved, as he always did, like a shadow made flesh.
He lifted the chalice slowly, turning it in his hands as if measuring its weight in grief rather than silver. The wine was dark as spilled ink, and he stared into it, not to drink, but to divine. It held no answers, of course. Only memory.
Spike leaned back, boot propped on the rung of his barstool, twirling his cigarette between his fingers. "So," he said, exhaling a ring of smoke toward the ceiling. "What brings a face like yours to a dive like this, mate? Heartbreak? Betrayal? Existential crisis?"
Dream said nothing. He cradled the chalice loosely,, his gaze locked on the dark surface within as if it were a mirror showing every loss he had ever endured. Not hope, not escape, just the bitter comfort of recognition. He didn’t look at anyone, just moved to a seat at the bar with the weary elegance of someone who had carried sorrow too long to set it down.
Crowley snorted, low and sardonic. “That’s a yes.” He leaned back in his chair, his snakeskin boots were now crossed at the ankle, He let his glass dangle between two fingers.
Loki lounged in his seat, fingers tapping a lazy rhythm. "He’s the perfect picture of suffering, isn’t he?"
Dream finally spoke, voice a low, hollow echo. "Love is a foolish endeavor. It corrodes. It diminishes. It leaves only emptiness behind. Once, I loved a woman who wove flowers into her hair and sang the stars to sleep. I thought she loved me in return."
There was a moment of silence around the bar as Spike and Crowley exchanged a look, one of those quiet, soul-deep recognitions passed between men who’d lived through too many bad nights.
"Blimey," Spike muttered. "What a bloody downer."
Crowley raised his glass in mock salute. “To corrosion, then.”
Dream continued, full of bitterness, heavy with the slow, inevitable pull of grief. "She left me for a mortal. Said I was... too distant. Too cold. She needed warmth I could not give her." There was a heavy pause.
"Shit," Spike muttered under his breath, the word rough, almost reverent. Something about the way Dream said it, flat, resigned, utterly broken, hit too close to home. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thick. Dense with the echoes of all their various failed relationships and regrets.
Lestat leaned forward, eyes glinting, the very picture of decadent mischief. "Mon dieu," he purred, swirling the blood-red liquid in his glass. "That was... poetry. Tragic, self-loathing poetry." He tilted his head, considering. "I could set that to music, you know. An aria, perhaps. Something slow, something haunting and aching. A song for forgotten kings mourning their ruined kingdoms." He flashed a smile full of white teeth and dangerous promises.
At the next table, Jareth shifted, the faintest flicker of irritation crossing his perfect features. He reclined languidly in his seat, one leg thrown over the arm of the chair, tossing a stray bit of glitter from his knee-high boots with an exaggerated flick.
"Really," Jareth drawled, voice rich with wounded ego. He waved a gloved hand vaguely toward Dream. "How tedious. I've been making misery an art form for centuries." He let out a long sigh of dramatic exasperation.
“Honestly,” he said, voice dripping with disdain, “the room dims, the shadows get poetic, and suddenly everyone forgets who brought in the drama in the first place." He threw a pointed glance at Dream. “Is all it takes to steal an audience's focus these days a pouty sulk and high cheekbones? Pathetic. Everyone is a tortured soul now."
Spike stubbed out his cigarette with a snort. "Mate, you're about as subtle as a bloody peacock on parade."
Loki chuckled. “At least he sparkles while he suffers,” he said, voice smooth as silk. His eyes flicked toward Dream with a glint of amusement, not exactly cruel, but not exactly kind either. "Tragedy’s always more attractive when it's all dressed up in sorrow and beauty.” He took a leisurely sip, letting the silence stretch just long enough to be theatrical. “Really gives the whole brooding-through-eternity thing a certain desperate elegance.”
Dream said nothing, merely sipping his drink, seemingly untouched by the bickering around him, or perhaps simply used to the way lesser beings filled the silences.
Lestat chuckled low in his throat, reclining like a man bored of mortals but fond of drama. “Ah, but you see,” he said, “we are all connoisseurs of sorrow here. Some more glittery than others.”
Crowley didn’t even flinch. He was sarcasm made flesh, "You lot wouldn’t know subtlety if it set your trousers on fire.",
"Seems like you've found the right company." Loki said to Dream with the ghost of amusement playing at the corner of his mouth.
At this, Dream looked around at the patrons of the bar. His eyes were dark and fathomless, unreadable. “Have I?”
Spike gave a grim smile. "Oh, mate. You have no idea."
And for the first time that night, a shared smile, thin, crooked, reluctant, flickered around the group. It was a beginning.
Notes:
Have you got any suggestions for someone who you would like to see drop in at The Bar at the End of the World? Send me a message or write it in a comment. I'm always open to suggestions.
🍷 A Note from the Management 🍷
Welcome, traveler. Pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and know this:
Everything you see here is purely for amusement. No coin is exchanged, no kingdoms toppled, no copyrights claimed. We borrow these fine (and occasionally troublesome) gentlemen only for storytelling mischief.Crowley--- that slinky demon in shades, David Tennant from Good Omens © Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Jareth---the glittering Goblin King himself, David Bowie from Labyrinth © Lucasfilm, Brian Froud, Jim Henson
Spike--- bleach-blond bad boy, James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer © Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy
Lestat---the Brat Prince, Tom Cruise from Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Chronicles © Anne Rice
Loki---God of Mischief, Tom Hiddleston from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and yes, Norse myths did it first) © Marvel/Disney
Dream--- Lord of Dreams, Tom Sturridge from The Sandman © Neil Gaiman & DC/Vertigo
Now drink deep, laugh loudly, and remember: we don’t own them, we just invited them in for a round.
Chapter 2: The Coven’s Code
Summary:
A gathering of gods, monsters, and fallen kings stumbles toward something like a support group. Between theatrical introductions, bitter toasts, and arguments over fashion, music, and tragic love affairs, they draft a set of dubious “rules” to keep the peace. What begins as banter slowly sharpens into a pact, and by the night’s end, they christen themselves with a name worthy of their melodrama and misery: The Last Lament.
(Please spare a moment and leave a kudos/comment. They mean a lot and help to encourage the author!)
Notes:
This idea was completely inspired by the extremely talented Pika-La-Cyniqe's Girls Next Door series. I would never have thought to throw all these fandoms and worlds together withouther inspiration. I hope to create something that is enjoyed even half as much as her story is.This is the first chapter in an ongoing story with a changing cast of characters.
Please rate and comment! It means more than you know!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Loki raised his glass, swirling the green Absinthe thoughtfully before flashing a grin that was all mischief and menace. He was dressed in sharp, black layers with green accents and, he looked every bit the fallen prince.
“Well, since we’re all theatrically miserable strangers in a bar that shouldn’t exist let me begin the introductions. "I am Prince Loki of Asgard, God of Mischief, burdened with glorious purpose, devastatingly handsome, infinitely charming, and possessed of a flair for the dramatic.”
Spike let out a low whistle. “And so Modest, too.”
“Tragically so.” Loki said with a raised brow as he gestured lazily with his glass. He glanced around the room, eyes glittering with curiosity. “And who might the rest of you be, besides brooding silhouettes with excellent taste in alcohol and questionable taste in fashion?”
Spike tipped his cigarette ash into the ashtray with a sigh. Bleach-blond and leather-clad, he slouched with practiced defiance. “William the Bloody. Most call me Spike. Vampire, punk, poet, disaster with a lighter and a conscience. Got myself tangled up with a Slayer once. Things went downhill from there.”
Jareth adjusted the cuffs of his glitter-dusted sleeves with exaggerated care, the velvet catching the light just so. The gleam in his mismatched eyes rivaled only the knowing curve of his smile. “Jareth, King of the Goblin Kingdom and the London Underground. Also known as 'that beautiful man in the tights'. I offered a mortal dreams beyond her wildest imaginings, and I was repaid with rejection. Mortal girls are terribly ungrateful creatures.”
Lestat, lounging against the ancient jukebox in a French silk shirt unbuttoned to a scandalous degree and carelessly seductive, tilted his head with a wolfish smile. “Lestat de Lioncourt. Vampire, immortal artist, occasional rock star. I fall in love with mortals like I breathe. And I end up regretting most of it, exquisitely. I once had the foolish notion that love could save a monster but he was too infatuated with his own humanity. His name was Louis.” He gave a little shrug, as if the wound didn't still fester all these centuries later.
Crowley, boots propped up on the table, tipped his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose flashing his yellow snake-like pupils and a bitter smile. He looked sleek and infernal in an expensive black suit. His red hair flared like flame.
“Crowley. Former angel, former serpent of Eden, current connoisseur of chaos. Specialist in temptation and extremely good music. Fell from grace for asking too many questions, and fell even harder for an angel who still can’t quite admit he even likes me.”
"We spent six thousand years dancing around each other and when it finally mattered, he chose Heaven over me." He knocked back the rest of his drink in one swallow. "And if any of you are planning on starting the apocalypse again, I will personally unmake your sou6l one atom at a time and I'll whistle a jaunty tune by Queen while I do it.”
From the shadows, Dream emerged like a fantasy given shape, clad in black as if stitched from night itself. His pale skin and star-flecked eyes were otherworldly. “I am Morpheus. King of Dreams. Shaper of stories. My family calls me Dream, and I am brother to the Endless. The number of lovers I’ve had is legendary. My grief writes itself into all my stories endings. I’ve had my hand in creating millions of love stories, yet I have lived none that ended well.”
A heavy silence followed. Even Jareth, for once, didn’t have a quip ready. Spike broke it with a dry scoff, lifting his glass. “Well. That’s bloody tragic.”
Loki raised his own drink in a languid toast, a smirk playing at his lips. “To heartbreak, hubris, and the ones we loved anyway. To ruined kings and gods and monsters. To we who strive to love things that can never love us back."
Crowley lifted his glass with a lazy shrug, voice rough with the fiery whiskey in his tumbler. “To the ones we tempted, the ones we lost, and the ones still too bloody noble to admit they liked it.”
Dream held his glass like a relic as he fixed his gaze on some half forgotten sorrow. “To the echoes of love, and the silence that follows.”
Jareth twirled the stem of his crystal glass, mismatched eyes gleaming. “To illusions spun of silk and longing. And to the fools who believe they can dance with desire and not bleed.”
Spike raised his glass halfway, cigarette dangling from his lips. “To love that burns you down to the bloody ashes and yet you crawl back to them anyway to be burnt again.”
"To beauty, to ruin, to the delicious ache of mortality. To the mortals who haunt us long after they’ve gone.” Lestat said as he swirled the liquid in his own glass around, thick, crimson, and perhaps not from a vineyard. "You know there’s something perversely poetic about misery that sparkles. Dream drapes himself with grief like it’s bespoke. And Jareth? He turns heartbreak into haute couture.”
Dream’s gaze was still distant, his voice low and smooth. “Grief is the only garment that never wears thin. And my sorrow does not sparkle."
Jareth gave a languid smirk, one leg draped carelessly over the arm of his chair, brow lifted in theatrical disdain. "Oh, please. At least I know I’m melodramatic. I don't act like the universe has singled me out for heartbreak or that the galaxies themselves plotted to break my heart. And if I must suffer, I’ll do it clothed in velvet and stardust."
Spike scoffed as he exhaled a lazy curl of smoke, eyes flicking over Jareth like he was reading a dossier. "Didn’t take long to clock your type, Sparkles, brooding, and a bloody wardrobe that screams ‘emotional damage'. You've turned remorse into a fashion. Bit rich, all that talk of tragedy."
"I've heard about you, Jareth. Your love story is a pair of star-crossed lovers and a castle full of glitter. Nothing says 'doomed romance' like kidnapping a teenage girl and throwing a masquerade ball about it. And I say that as someone who fell for a Slayer less than half his age. You're the type of bloke who would try to rewrite Romeo and Juliet in glitter and fairy dust. Not that I’m judging, takes one doomed romance to know another.”
Jareth arched a finely shaped brow, unbothered as he leaned in, voice like velvet over broken glas. “At least I am dressed for the part. Your story is well known as well Spike. You brooded in basements and called it love. I gave her magic, mystery, and a ballroom full of glamour. I may have a flair for the dramatic but I don’t make a habit of wallowing in the dirt, begging to be loved.”
Loki’s silver dagger flashed in the low light as he idly twirled it between his fingers, his tone smooth but carrying the weight of warning beneath the velvet. "Now, now, boys. While I do enjoy a bit of verbal sparring, preferably with wine and better lighting, perhaps we save this brooding contest for later?”
He flashed a sharp smile. “We’ve only just met, and already you're baring your tragic little love lives like peacocks flashing their tails. Save it for the support group, I believe that’s what this is beginning to be.” He sheathed the dagger with a flourish and looked between them. “Otherwise, I’ll be forced to separate you two like squabbling children. And trust me, I’m very creative when it comes to time-outs.”
Spike stubbed out his cigarette in the nearest tray with a flick and a sigh. “Right then. If we’re all in agreement that we’re bloody doomed and fabulous about it, maybe it’s time we did something about our issues. Or at least pretended to.”
He leaned back on his bar stool, arms stretched behind his head. “I’m thinking we make it official. Not just tragic strangers with good cheekbones and worse decisions in a bar. We should form a gathering, perhaps? A society? Something with rules? Or at least a name.”
Jareth tilted his head, intrigued. “Are you proposing we form a club, Spike? A support group for gods and monsters with a flair for the dramatic and a penchant for impossible love?”
“Yeah, a support group.” Spike said nodding. “A bloody cabaret of cosmic heartbreak. Misery loves company, right? Might as well put it on a stage and charge admission.”
Lestat’s eyes glimmered. “Les Infernaux Cœurs. Très chic. It does have a certain je ne sais quoi.”
Dream, ever solemn, nodded once. “A gathering of those who know the price of longing. Who understand that to love while eternal is to be forever haunted.”
Crowley snorted. “You lot are insufferable. But fine. I’ll bite, metaphorically, of course. What’s the first order of business to be? Patching up each other’s wounded little hearts with poetry and eyeliner? We could at least call it The Infernal Hearts Club. Weekly meetings. Whiskey mandatory. No redemption arcs allowed.”
“And velvet,” Jareth added. “Velvet is always mandatory.”
Lestat gave a languid laugh. “And blood. Let’s not forget blood. Emotional or otherwise. We could trade tragic love stories like mortals trade tales of ghost around a fire.”
Spike gave a crooked smirk as he answered Crowley’s question. “Nah. I say we start with a simple challenge. Everyone has to confess their worst romantic decisions. No lies. No holding back. Lay it bare. That way we know who we’re dealing with. Besides,” he added with a wink at Lestat, “makes it easier to judge each other.”
Dream gave the smallest nod. “A game of grief, then. Fitting. Good stories always begin with wounds.”
Loki raised a brow. “Oh, excellent. Now this is getting interesting. I’ll have T-shirts made. Although, I don’t care for Infernal Hearts Club. Too on the nose. We need a name that reeks of heartbreak and drama. Something worthy of a Greek chorus. Our motto could be 'where theatrics meet tragedy'.’”
Jareth tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Do we get jackets? Something embroidered, maybe? With titles. The King of Regret, The Patron Saint of Bad Decisions, The God of Messy Situationships.”
Crowley muttered, “You’re all completely mad.”
Lestat leaned forward, chin in hand, fangs just barely showing. “What about… The Last Lament?”
The others paused.
Spike arched a brow. “Bit dramatic."
“Exactly,” Lestat purred. “It sounds like something whispered in candlelight or carved into a mausoleum. It sounds like us.”
Jareth raised his glass. “To The Last Lament, then. May we mourn beautifully, may our tragedies be timeless, our exits dramatic, and our eyeliner never run.”
Lestat swirled the crimson, liquid in his glass, icy blue eyes gleaming. “To The Last Lament. May our broken hearts remain exquisitely shattered.”
Spike raised his glass with a crooked grin. “To The Last Lament, doomed love and bloody good stories.”
Dream, quiet and solemn, lifted his goblet. “To The Last Lament and to longing that lingers beyond eternity.”
Crowley groaned, but lifted his glass anyway. “Fine. To The Last Lament. But I draw the line at therapy.”
Loki smirked. “Too late, darling. This is therapy.”
Spike set down his empty glass and leaned forward. “Right, then. If we’re doing this proper, we need some bloody ground rules. First one: anyone new walks in? They’re buying the next round. No exceptions.”
Crowley raised a brow. “What if they’re skint?”
Loki waved a hand dismissively. “Then they shouldn’t be consorting with heartbreak royalty, should they?”
Dream, from his corner, murmured: “I suggest a second rule. I am not to be blamed if the weather turns.”
Jareth arched a brow looking over at Dream. “You conjured a thunderstorm inside the bar last week because your paramour ended your relationship.”
Spike shook his head and muttered darkly: “It rained in my pint. Bloody good waste of alcohol. Rule Two: no indoor storms.”
Crowley stretched lazily, that dangerous grin playing on his lips. “Fine. Then Rule Three: no shapeshifting into anyone’s exes. Unless, of course, you want to be forced to listen to Queen’s “I Want to Break Free” on loop until they apologize.
Loki uttered under his breath. “That’s only happened once.”
“Twice,” Lestat chimed in, without looking up from his glass. “And both times were wildly inappropriate.”
“Rule Four,” Jareth cut in, “No dueling unless the bartender gives express permission. Or unless it’s poetic.”
“Define poetic,” Loki chirped as he looked over his glass with a devastatingly charming smile and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“You’ll know it when you see it,” Jareth replied with a wink.
Lestat leaned forward with a pointed sigh, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the glass of the old jukebox. “Then we must establish Rule Five: no hijacking the music unless we all agree. This is not a disco, Jareth. We’re not in the Labyrinth, and this certainly isn't your personal David Bowie tribute hour."
Jareth huffed, a mischievous glint flashing in his mismatched eyes. “Says the man who played his own music for six hours straight last week. What was it you called it? ‘Vampire rock and roll?’”
Lestat’s eyes narrowed, and he gave a dramatic roll of his eyes. “I’m an artist, mon cher. Not a... dancing man in tights."
Loki raised his glass of Absinthe, his grin widening as his eyes flicked to Crowley with a knowing look. “Rule Six: No summoning old lovers into the bar after you've gotten drunk. Some of us aren’t keen on spending eternity watching you lot attempt to rekindle old flames. In particular, it’s painful to watch your attempt at flirting, Crowley. Some of us would prefer not to have to endure the spectacle more than once.”
"How is this directed at me?” Crowley snapped, his snake-pupiled eyes flashing with indignation.
Loki sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes. “You summoned some chubby little bookseller here mid-meltdown last week, Crowley.” He took a long sip from his glass before adding, “The jukebox started playing ‘Love of My Life’ by Queen, and you cried on the floor for an hour after he left. ”
Crowley shot Loki a sharp look. “I was having a very emotional moment!”
Dream stirred again. “Rule Seven: no brooding-induced property destruction.”
“That’s not even a real thing,” Spike said.
The jukebox at the end of the bar suddenly shot out a fountain of sparks and began blasting out a scrambled and sped up version of a Sex Pistol's song before it flickered off and began smoking.
Lestat, jumped away from it wincing as the music died and a cloud of black smoke rose into the air. His blue eyes narrowing in disapproval. “There goes the music,” he muttered, brushing the smoke away “Now that's not fair, no more ambiance.” He gave the jukebox a frustrated tap, as if it were the source of all his woes and releasd a world weary sigh. “You see, this is why we can’t have nice things.”
Spike smirked, shrugging. "Fine,” he snapped, glaring at the jukebox. “Real enough.”
Loki raised his glass with a flourish, eyes gleaming like polished sapphires. “And finally, Rule Eight: Decim’s word is law.”
All heads turned toward the end of the bar, where Decim stood, utterly motionless, as if carved from moonlight and resolve. He didn’t fidget, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe loudly. His silver hair shimmered under the dim lighting, and the shadows at his feet pooled around him as if they, too, deferred to his judgment.
Jareth tilted his head, watching the bartender with cautious intrigue. “Does he even speak?”
Decim didn’t answer. He simply raised one perfectly arched brow.
The air thickened. A hush swept through the room like a velvet curtain falling. Even the smoking husk of the jukebox seemed to hold its breath.
Crowley stared at his empty glass and swallowed. “Right. So we’re all in agreement, then.”
Lestat sighed as he exhaled in long-suffering melodrama. “This is the most dysfunctional coven I have ever joined.”
Loki smirked, toasting the group with wicked delight. “Oh, but you love it.”
Notes:
Have you got any suggestions for someone who you would like to see drop in at The Bar at the End of the World? Send me a message or write it in a comment. I'm always open to suggestions
Chapter 3: The One Who Wouldn't Stay
Summary:
In a forgotten bar outside of time, gods and monsters gather over drinks to trade stories of love lost and hearts broken. When Jareth finally speaks of Sarah, the woman who defied him and conquered his Labyrinth, the air shifts. Memories stir. Pain lingers. And each of them, Loki, Spike, Dream, Lestat, Crowley, must face the quiet truth: even immortals bleed when love leaves.
(Please spare a moment and leave a kudos/comment. They mean a lot and help to encourage the author!)
Notes:
✨ An Announcement from His Majesty, the Goblin King ✨
"You there , yes, you. Before you get too comfortable, a word of warning. None of this rabble belong to you, or to our host. They belong to their makers, their actors, their scribes. We’re merely on loan, conjured up for a bit of diversion and a glass (or three) at this bar at the end of all things."
Crowley--- that infernal serpent in sunglasses, David Tennant from Good Omens © Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Spike---bleach-blond predator with a poet’s heart, James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer © Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy
Lestat---the brat prince with very sharp teeth, Tom Cruise from Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Chronicles © Anne Rice
Loki---trickster, liar, silvertongued god, Tom Hiddleston from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (though the Norse had him first) © Marvel/Disney
Dream---brooding monarch of the realm of sleep, Tom Sturridge from The Sandman © Neil Gaiman & DC/Vertigo
And of course, myself, Jareth, the Goblin King David Bowie from Labyrinth © Lucasfilm, Brian Froud, Jim Henson
"So there. Not mine, not theirs, not yours, but you’re welcome to watch us dance, bicker, and drink until the world falls down."
Signed (in glitter),
Jareth 👑✨Please rate and comment! It means more than you know!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
As if on cue, Decim moved down the bar, soundless, precise. He refilled each glass with a motion so fluid it barely disturbed the liquid. No words, no flourish. Just a silent offering: blackberry wine, dark whiskey, something golden and bubbly that looked far too innocent for this crowd, glowing green Absinthe, and something that looked like wine but smelled like blood.
Crowley leaned back in his booth, one arm draped lazily over the backrest, red hair catching the low light like a flare in the dark. His shades were still on, despite the gloom. It made him look like he had something to hide, and absolutely no intention of hiding it well. Crowley eyed his now-full glass and muttered, “I’ll never get used to that.”
Lestat lounged against the no longer smoking jukebox in the dimly lit bar. The machine had miraculously turned itself back on and the soft glow of neon lights cast an ethereal halo around his golden locks, with an indulgent grin, blue eyes flashing. His lean frame exuded a magnetic charm as he ran a hand through his hair.
The vampire looked as if he’d just stepped off a Parisian stage, his shirt tailored within an inch of decadence, his open shirt hinting at danger. He was every inch the rock star worthy of worship. “He may not talk, but his presence speaks volumes and he has impeccable timing.”
Loki’s dagger flashed once again in the dim light, spinning between his fingers with idle elegance. He lounged with all the effortlessness of someone who never questioned whether the room belonged to him. Dressed in his usual elegance, black stitched with green, boots polished to a mirror shine. Dangerous. Beautiful. Bored.
"Truly, Jareth," he drawled, his voice dripping with sardonic amusement, "Dream undoubtedly takes the prize in the heartbreak competition. The man seems to collect doomed romances like a dragon in a fairy story hoarding treasures."
Across the room, Dream finally lifted his gaze. Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, wore shadows like a tailored suit. His long coat whispered as he moved, his black boots made no sound at all. His skin was moonlight white, ethereal. His eyes, voids flecked with dying stars, met Loki’s without blinking. Dream didn’t flinch. He simply met Loki’s gaze, ancient and impassive. “They were never meant to last.”
“No,” Loki said, his smile curling like smoke, “but you always think they are. That’s what makes them all the more tragic.”
Jareth, in midnight blue and hauteur, ever the showman, arched a brow. He lounged like a sculpture posed for admiration, his velvet coat gleaming with glitter beneath the flickering lights. Mismatched eyes sparkled with disdain.
The King of the Goblin Kingdom and the London Underground had once turned the labyrinth upside-down for love, and had been left behind by a mortal. “Speak for yourselves,” he said, tone sharp as cut crystal. “Some of us were rejected spectacularly. Only once, and for reasons that defy logic.”
Crowley let out a snort. “Still clinging to that? Let it go, mate. She was what, sixteen?”
“She was offered her dreams,” Jareth said, softer now, the bravado slipping at the edges. His voice wasn’t sharp anymore, it was low, roughened with something older than pride. “She refused power. She refused me.”
The temperature in the bar seemed to dip.
Spike, bleach-blond and slouched at the bar, leather duster creaking as he moved, he had the look of a man who’d fought angels and demons and still lit his cigarette with a match off the apocalypse. He rolled his eyes as he looked between Dream and Jareth."It’s like Baudelaire and Poe trying to out-seduce each other." He leaned toward Lestat with a smirk. “You reckon they’ll snog or smite first?
Lestat gave a slow, luxurious smile. “Why not both? Some foreplay simply requires a bit of cosmic destruction. If either of them ever felt joy for more than three seconds, the universe would surely collapse.”
Dream turned his head, face still and unreadable. When he spoke, his voice was soft as falling ash. “You offered her illusion,” he said. “She chose truth.”
"Oof," Spike drawled, lips quirking in a lopsided smirk that radiated equal parts rogue and cutting sarcasm. "Someone's still not over being traded in for IKEA and a boyfriend named Chad."
Jareth’s jaw tensed, “Reality is overrated,” he said softly, but his voice was rough at the edges, wounded pride trying to disguise itself as disdain. “Mortals crave wonder. They ache for something larger than their gray little lives.”
Dream tilted his head, eyes fathomless. “And yet they survive in that grayness. Thrive in it. Even love in it.”
“That’s the tragedy,” Jareth snapped. "Mortals crave wonder. They ache for something larger than their gray little lives. They choose mediocrity over magic. A mortgage over a throne. A plastic future over a crystalline dream."
Loki sipped his drink, clearly entertained. “Heartbreak does tend to linger when you’ve written it into the architecture of your realm.”
Crowley raised a finger. “And you threw a masquerade ball about it. You can't forget about the masquerade ball.”
Jareth turned a glare on the lot of them, his mismatched eyes blazing fury and wounded pride. “She danced with me. She looked at me. You don’t understand.”
“Mate,” Spike muttered, setting his glass down with a clink, “I once wrote bad poetry about a girl who ghosted me in 1880. We all understand.”
Lestat chuckled. “Oh, mon ami, you don’t come to this bar without at least one immortal wound festering beautifully beneath your silk and satin.”
Jareth’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing. His fingers curled slightly around the base of his glass.
There was a beat of silence, heavy as centuries.
Then, Crowley groaned and threw his head back against the booth. “Right. That’s it. Someone tell a joke before I start quoting Milton and ruin everyone’s night.”
Thunder cracked through the sky outside, sudden, and violent, rattling the windows. Rain began lashing the building, fast and furious, like the heavens themselves were trying to drown out the pathos.The lights flickered. Somewhere, a whiskey bottle trembled on its shelf.
Spike blinked toward the storm. “Bloody hell. Even the weather’s going all emo.”
The lights flickered, dimmer now, as though the bar itself had taken a deep breath and decided to sulk.
Loki glanced toward the storm with mild amusement. “Ah, pathetic fallacy. So reliable.”
Dream didn’t move. “Weather is not always metaphor. Sometimes it simply listens.”
Jareth lifted his glass at last, swirling the contents but not drinking. “The world bends more often than you know. Even reality can be seduced, if you’re charming enough.”
“Is that what you call it?” Crowley muttered. “Being charming?”
“Yes, I was charming! I turned the very stars for her,” Jareth snapped, voice laced with something sharp and aching. “She danced through illusions made real. Time bent. Space folded. And she still chose a life of clocks and homework over everything I wanted to give her!"
“Tragic,” Lestat murmured, eyes glittering. “But then, mortals so often prefer the cage they understand to the sky they fear.”
Spike tilted his glass in mock salute. “Welcome to the club, mate. Rejection’s the house special.”
Loki leaned forward, his fingers steepled beneath his chin, voice smooth as glass. “Seems we have our first volunteer for airing their own tragedy.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “So, Jareth, tell us about this girl. Was she impossibly beautiful? What drew you to her? How did you lose her?”
Jareth’s hand curled around his glass. The storm outside pulsed like a heartbeat, lightning flickering across the windows. “She wasn’t meant to call me,” he said softly, eyes far away. “Not yet. She was just a girl, too young to gamble in games of chance with one such as me. She was playing at fairy tales, drowning in resentment and loneliness. But I saw her long before that night. In dreams.”
“She used to speak to herself in mirrors,” he said. “But she didn’t know that beings hidden in mirrors could listen. She conjured me in pieces, words she read, songs she hummed. I was a shadow to her, stitched together from her stories, and when the moment came the words she spoke called me to her..” A beat passed. “She made me real, flesh and blood in her world. Like so many of the fae I lived in my kingdom, forgotten by mortals.”
“I found her one night inside one of her dreams in a corridor of the Labyrinth. In a pathway of unformed thought,” he went on, voice low. “Barefoot. Crying. She was young, yes, but vivid. She dreamed in color. I watched her build castles out of spite and poetry. I followed her down halls of memory that weren’t yet real to her .”
He looked into the golden liquid in his glass as if it's reflection might show him her face. “She was beautiful,” he said. “She glowed like a flame. Brown eyes full of fury. Wild, dark hair like something stolen from a Renaissance painting. And clever, clever enough to break the rules and to write her own story. Her name is Sarah.”
Jareth’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look at Loki. He exhaled slowly. “You asked what drew me to her, Loki. She believed in me. Before the world could teach her not to." he said finally. “Curious. Defiant. She had no idea what she was doing." He laughed, bitter and soft. “That’s what mortals do, isn’t it? They summon gods, fall in love with us, and then ask us to disappear when the spell breaks.”
“She didn’t just walk into my world,” Jareth continued, voice low. “She stormed it. Tore through my illusions like they were tissue. And then...then she didn’t just turn away. She conquered."
“Because she was brave?” Dream asked, tone unreadable.
“Because she was foolish,” Jareth snapped. “Or maybe… maybe because she saw something in me that scared her.”
Lestat swirled his wine. “Or something in herself.”
Jareth flinched, almost imperceptibly.
Loki cocked his head. “And yet here you are, years have gone by yet here you are, still nursing a wound she never meant to leave. Tell me, do you love her?”
Jareth folded his arms and stared down into his untouched drink. “I wrote her a song,” he said, voice low and brittle with memory. “A love song of exquisite beauty, woven with magic, longing, and tragedy. Every note meant something. Every word was a spell. And she left it behind like it was… nothing.”
Dream inclined his head in Jareth's direction, his expression solemn as a tomb. “I know.” Jareth looked up sharply, but Dream’s gaze was steady, distant. “She dreamed of it,” Dream continued, his voice like a quiet wind over graves. “Long after she left the Labyrinth. The song echoed in her sleep. Sometimes it was twisted, or fractured, but it was there. You lingered. She dreams of it, of you, still.”
Jareth looked up sharply.
Then, finally, Crowley groaned and tipped back his drink. “Brilliant. We’re officially one violin solo away from an existential breakdown.”
The storm outside cracked again, as if the sky agreed.
“I could feel her yearning at the end,” Jareth said, voice low, almost reverent. “The desperate desire to submit, to fall into the story, our story. I could see her heart breaking as she spoke the words that rejected me. Her words said no, but her heart, her soul...” he exhaled, sharp and bitter, “...they were already mine.”
“When she left the Labyrinth…” His voice faltered, the cracks showing now, raw beneath the velvet. “I could not function. The entire kingdom faltered. The walls twisted in on themselves. The hedges withered. Even the clocks refused tick.” His fingers traced the rim of his untouched glass. “The magic recoiled. It felt her absence. As did I.”
He lifted his gaze again, but it didn’t land on anyone, it was far off, watching a memory unfold. “I see her still.” he said. “In mirrors. In reflections. She brushes her hair and doesn’t know I’m there, but she feels it. That shiver at the nape of her neck, that’s me.” A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth, equal parts haunting and haunted.
“I keep the pathways open. When she’s ready, when she remembers, it will call her to me again. Because she was never meant to stay in that dull little world of beige walls and mortal boys with calloused hands and frightened hearts.”
“She cries for them sometimes. I watch. I see the tears. But none of them understand her. They can’t. They don’t know the taste of magic, or the pull of moonlit seduction.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “They don’t know what it is to be truly loved..”
“She will never be happy there. Not truly. She doesn't yet know that the reason all her romances fail is because she can never find happiness with a mortal lover. She left her heart in the Labyrinth, and she’s only just beginning to realize that. One day…” His smile returned, slow and certain. “One day, Sarah will come back.”
Even Crowley didn't dare speak, though his glass had stopped halfway to his lips. Dream simply watched Jareth with eyes that had seen the end of empires, unmoving. In the hush, the rain outside finally began to fall a little softer, a slow, steady rhythm like heartbeats against the windows.
Then Loki, ever the opportunist, tilted his head with interest. "Well, well, well," he purred, stretching the words out like silk caressing skin. "There it is, a tragedy cloaked in velvet, glitter, and heartbreak. A tale of love, loss, and the eternal dance between predator and prey. How deliciously tragic.. You lost her,” he said, not unkindly, just honest. “But not to another man. To herself.”
Jareth’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t speak.
Loki leaned back, mock-thoughtful. He spun his dagger idly across his knuckles, eyes glittering. “It’s delicious, really. You offered her everything. Power. Worship. A kingdom molded from her desires. And what did she do?” He smirked. “She chose herself.”
There was a low chuckle from the end of the bar. Lestat, reclining with all the nonchalance of centuries. “Mortals do that. They reject gods, break oaths, leave behind paradise for the promise of aging gracefully in suburbia.”
Crowley rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen angels and demons beg for less than what you offered her, Jareth. You must’ve scared the hell out of her.”
Jareth's grip tightened on his glass, knuckles turning white. The Goblin King had seen many battles, won and lost, but this was a war of the heart. "She was scared," he admitted softly, "but she was brave. That's what I loved about her the most." He took a slow, steadying breath. "She defied me. And yet she still dreams of me. I knew it, even before tonight. I could feel her shadow self still moving through the pathways of the Labyrinth.”
Dream's gaze flicked toward Jareth, unreadable. "She does. In the quiet hours, when the mortal world fades.”
That landed like a stone dropped in a still pond. The others watched, transfixed, as Dream continued, "She dreams of the Labyrinth, of you. Not every night, but enough. When she's restless. When her heart is bruised. She walks through the stone halls again, calls out your name. She misses the dance, the masks, the way you made her feel seen."
"And yet," Loki said, a little too brightly, "she hasn't returned."
"Not yet," Jareth murmured, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. "But she will. In time."
Spike, who had been silently nursing his drink, finally spoke up. He didn’t look at anyone in particular as he said, “Careful, mate. That way madness lies.” He tapped ash into a glass tray, eyes hooded. “You give everything for a girl, your pride, your soul, your bloody self, and still end up staring at her back as she walks away.”
He glanced sideways at Jareth, voice dropping lower. “Sometimes they do love you. Just not in the way you want. Or not in time.” Then, with a sardonic smirk: “And sometimes they don’t, and you’re just the villain in someone else’s coming-of-age tale.” He leaned back, letting the silence settle again. “Either way, it’s hell.”
Lestat, ever the romantic, fixed Spike with a disapproving look. "Ah, but you don't understand the allure of the chase, the thrill of the hunt. The lady may protest, but deep down, she longs to be caught."
Crowley, who had been remarkably quiet up until this point, finally chimed in. "I don't know, Lestat. Seems to me the lady's made her choice. Chasing after her might just end in more heartbreak."
Dream, ever the impartial observer, spoke up. "The heart wants what it wants. Even if the mind says otherwise. Desire does not bend to reason, nor do they heed refusal. They are a being of intense stubbornes."
Jareth's gaze darkened. "She is mine. In every dream, every echo of that ballroom, she’s still mine. She always has been, and she always will be. I'll move heaven and earth to get her back."
Spike scoffed. "Good luck with that, mate. Sounds like she's done with you."
Lestat leaned forward with a wistful smile. "Ah, but the best love stories are the ones that defy all odds. I, for one, am intrigued to see how this plays out."
The others nodded in agreement, each lost in their own thoughts as the rain continued to fall, casting shadows across the dimly lit bar.
The storm whispered against the glass, as if the night itself was listening.
Decim silently refilled their glasses, knowing that the night was still young, and the stories were far from over.
Notes:
Have you got any suggestions for someone who you would like to see drop in at The Bar at the End of the World? Send me a message or write it in a comment. I'm always open to suggestions
Chapter 4: A Poet’s Soul Drenched In Blood
Summary:
As the storm howls outside, Spike opens up to the table of gods and monsters, revealing the twisted love that made him and the burning light that changed him. From his obsession with the mad, prophetic Drusilla to his complicated love for Buffy, the Slayer who broke and rebuilt him, Spike bares the soul he fought to reclaim. In a room full of immortals, his confession resonates with those who know the cost of change and the ache of loving what you can’t hold.
(Please spare a moment and leave a kudos/comment. They mean a lot and help to encourage the author!)
Notes:
🖊️ A Word from Spike (’Cause the Git Behind the Bar Made Me Do It) 🖊️
Right, listen up. This whole shindig? Just a bit of fan-made fun. Nobody’s makin’ money off it, and none of these blokes belong to us. They’re all the property of their clever writers, studios, or whatever big wigs sign the checks. So don’t go gettin’ your knickers in a twist.
Crowley---demon in designer shades, David Tennant from Good Omens © Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Jareth---sparkly ponce in too much eyeliner, David Bowie from Labyrinth © Lucasfilm, Brian Froud, Jim Henson
Lestat---fancy-pants French vamp, Tom Cruise from Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Chronicles © Anne Rice
Loki'--the god with a stick up his… well, you know, Tom Hiddleston from the Marvel Cinematic Universe © Marvel/Disney
Dream---gloomy sandman, Tom Sturridge from The Sandman © Neil Gaiman & DC/Vertigo
And yours truly, Spike, the gorgeous James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer © Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy
There. Done. Now sod off and buy me another pint. 🍺
Please rate and comment! It means more than you know!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The storm raged against the windows, the wind like a beast pacing just outside. Inside, the bar felt quieter now, less like a tavern and more like a confessional.
Spike stared into the amber swirl of his beer, eyes hooded. “Right,” he said, voice rough with smoke and memories. “Since we’re all confessing sins and sob stories…” He swirled the glass once. “I was in love. Twice. My first love was mad, really, twisted. Her name was Drusilla.”
The others shifted subtly, drawn in by the low, measured cadence of his voice. Lestat arched a brow with the interest of someone familiar with beautiful disasters. Crowley, lounging as always, gave an almost imperceptible nod. Dream’s gaze drifted toward the shadows, but he listened. Jareth pretended to be preoccupied with looking into the crystal in his hand but his head was tilted towards Spike.
“She was... well, she was cracked, wasn’t she?” Spike continued. “Heard voices, saw things no one else did. Proper lunatic. But she had this way of making madness look like poetry. Like the world made more sense from her side of it.”
He smiled, soft and bitter all at once. “Turned me, you know into a vampire. I was just a bloody awful poet before. William. I wrote verses no one ever read. Fell in love too easily, cried too often. Then she picked me. Called me her knight. Said I had ‘a poet’s soul drenched in blood.’ Who says no to that?”
He took a slow sip of his drink. “I loved her so fierce it burned. Would’ve killed the world if she asked me to. Hell, I did, more or less. Cities. Families. All in her name. She was lovely. She had a face like a porcelain doll left too long in the attic, cracked, delicate, haunted. Dark eyes wide with secrets, a cruel sort of innocence lingering on her lips. Long dark hair fell like mahogany down her back, and when she smiled, it felt like the moon had turned her gaze on you just before the tide pulled you under."
There was a silence, uneasy and reverent.
“But then,” he said, tapping his glass against the wood, “there was this other pull. A whisper of something else. Didn’t make sense at the time. Just a flicker at first.”
Loki, the picture of casual indifference, but the glint in his eyes betrayed a mind actively dissecting every detail he was hearing. “Ah. The Slayer.”
Spike’s lips curled. “Yeah. Her.” He glanced up. “Figured you'd guess that. I wasn’t exactly subtle.”
Crowley lounged deeper into his seat, one boot hooked over the other, a lazy smirk curling on his lips like sin made flesh. “A Slayer? You mean one of those cheerfully homicidal teenage assassins in leather trousers?”
“Yeah. One of those ,” Spike said, and for a moment, you could hear the smirk in his voice. “Buffy. Small but fierce, like a flame that refuses to go out. Golden hair, sharp hazel eyes, and a presence that hit harder than any punch, sunshine forged into a weapon. She doesn't need to be tall to tower over the room; her strength comes from the way she moved, like the world belonged to her and she dares anyone to prove otherwise. She has a habit of throwing me through walls when she's not feeling affectionate.”
Lestat reclined with theatrical ease, his smile the kind that made saints shudder and sinners lean closer. He chuckled. “Sounds intoxicating.”
Spike’s eyes flicked over to him. “She was. Is.”
Loki reclined with the practiced elegance of a man who knew exactly how dangerous his smile was. He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Wait. The Slayer? The one with the apocalypse fetish? That Buffy?”
Spike tilted his glass in salute. “The very same.”
Crowley raised an eyebrow and snorted into his drink. “Bit of a shift, isn’t it? From gothic madness to holy vengeance?”
Spike chuckled. “Tell me about it. I was supposed to kill her. Tried. Over and over again. She kicked my ass six ways from Sunday, and I kept coming back for more.”
He leaned forward now, elbows on the table, voice lowering. "She's brilliant, you know? Not just strong, though, God knows, she is she strong, but... alive. Burning at both ends, always rushing to save everyone but herself. I hated her for it.”
He glanced up, eyes flashing fire for a moment. “And I couldn’t stop watching her. Couldn’t stop thinking about her.”
Lestat’s laugh slid through the air like silk over a blade, seductive, sharp, and entirely self-assured. "You were obsessed,” Lestat murmured, knowingly.
“Course I was.” Spike didn’t deny it. “But not the same as with Dru. Dru... she made me lose myself. Buffy made me want to find something better within myself. Even when I was still trying to off her."
Dream looked up then, voice soft. “You recognized a light you thought was beyond you.” "His stillness wasn’t silence, it was weight, the hush of galaxies between heartbeats.
Spike paused. “Didn’t know what it was at the time. Just knew I couldn’t kill her. Not really. Not like the others.”
There was a beat of silence, broken only by the clink of Decim refilling their glasses.
“You’re serious?” Settling further into his seat, Crowley crossed his legs, his sunglasses reflecting the light with an unrepentant gleam." He said finally. “You? Mr. Leather and Cigarettes, fell for the Chosen One?”
Spike gave him a sideways glance. “I was leather and cigarettes before she came along. Afterwards…” He trailed off, expression twisting. “Well. Still leather. Less nicotine. Bit more soul.”
That earned a collective pause.
Crowley's gaze was lazy, half-lidded and heavy with the promise. “Let me guess, you decided to help her instead?”
Spike shrugged. “Took a while. Had to get chipped first. But even before that... something about her. She saw through the show I put on. Called me on my bullshit. Didn’t matter how many threats I tossed or how hard I fought. She knew me.”
Loki's smirk came slow and deliberate, like the curl of a dagger unsheathed in moonlight "And that terrified you,” Loki said, too gently.
Spike stared into his glass again. “Yeah. More than anything.” He smiled but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Thing is… she made me want to be better. And I’d been worse than most.” He looked around the table, at gods and monsters and immortals pretending not to ache. “You lot know what that’s like. Trying to crawl out of your own damn skin ‘cause someone looked at you like maybe, just maybe, you were worth saving.” He tipped the glass back and swallowed hard. “Tried to change for her. Got a soul for her, if you can believe that madness.”
Loki raised an eyebrow and began to laugh. His laughter was a melodic ripple, yet there was an undercurrent that hinted at secrets and perhaps a touch of delightful chaos. "That’s not madness. That’s romance.” He said, his voice full of delight.
Spike snorted. “No, mate. Romance is candles and chocolates. This was crawling through hell on your hands and knees through broken glass hoping you come out less of a bastard.”
Loki blinked. His gaze sharp and assessing beneath a veil of polite interest. “You really got your soul for her?”
Spike didn’t look at anyone when he answered. “Wasn’t for her. Not entirely. Did it ‘cause I couldn’t stand what I’d become without one.” He reached for the whiskey again. “But yeah. She was the reason I wanted to change.” He took a slow drink, letting the burn fill the pause. "She didn’t ask for that,” he added, quieter now. “Didn’t want it, really. Not from me.” He laughed once, sharp and bitter. “No guidebook, no reward. Just pain. Just... needing to be more.”
There was a stillness to Crowley, that made angels want to shift uncomfortably. "And you thought changing would fix it?” Crowley asked, not unkindly.
Spike gave a dry laugh. “No. Thought it’d make me worthy. Still do. Some days.” He exhaled cigarette smoke slowly, letting it coil upward. “It’s not that simple, though. Never is.” He looked away, jaw tense. “I hurt her. Worst thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve done plenty. Not just a fight or a wrong word. I crossed a line no one comes back from.” He set the glass down a little too hard. “Didn’t mean to but ‘didn’t mean to’ don’t fix a damn thing.”
Silence fell again, but this one was softer, like the breath held after a confession.
Crowley’s gave a smirk that said he owned your soul , if he bothered to collect it. "So what happened, after the soul?”
Spike tapped ash into a nearby tray, eyes narrowing with the memory. “Went mad, didn’t I? Soul shredded me. Every sin I’d ever committed came roaring back with teeth. Thought it’d make me clean, turns out, all it did was make me bleed.” He glanced around. “But she saw it. Saw what I’d done. What I was trying to do. And when the final fight came… she let me stand with her.”
Lestat observed the world with a mixture of amusement and a profound, almost weary understanding of its fleeting nature. He leaned in, expression unreadable. “The apocalypse?”
Spike gave a humorless smile. “One of many. Big one, though. Sunnydale fell into the earth. Slayers all over the bloody globe woke up. Changed the world, just a little.”
“And you died. You traveled through my sister's realm,” Dream said softly. The void behind his eyes wasn’t absence, it was infinity, staring back with quiet judgment.
“Yeah.” Spike nodded. “Went out in a burst of flame and amulet magic, holding off a horde of monsters while the others got out. Figured that was it. Final chapter, redemption arc, clean exit.”
“But it wasn’t,” Loki said, more a statement than a question. His eyes flicked from beneath his long lashes, calculating, amused, as if he were already five steps ahead.
Spike huffed. “Bloody lawyer. Former employee of Wolfram & Hart, real charming type, brought me back. Ghost first. Then corporal again. Landed in L.A. with Angel, of all people.”
Crowley winced as his fingers tapped out a rhythm only demons danced to. "Oh, that must’ve gone down smooth.”
“More like jagged edges forced to fit. Scraping and splintering the whole way.” He dragged on his cigarette, the ember flaring in the dim light. “Angel and me, we tried to save the world. Our own warped versions of heroism. Thought maybe if we threw enough punches at the darkness, it’d drown out the screams we left behind.”
He exhaled slow, eyes far away. “Didn’t change what we were. Two monsters in nicer coats. Him with his guilt, me with my swagger. Still carrying the stench of everything we did.” His jaw clenched. “We cut a swath through Europe. Left cities painted red. Tore through families, left children screaming in their beds. And I...” his voice dropped “...I killed two Slayers. Felt proud of it, once. Thought it made me someone.” He ground out the cigarette in the ashtray. “So yeah. We ended up in another bloody apocalypse. Nearly died again. And maybe we deserved to.”
He picked up his glass again. “After that, I kept moving. Didn't go back to Buffy right away. Thought maybe she'd moved on. Hell, hoped she had, for a while.”
“And now?” Lestat asked. There was a decadent air about him, a sense of having tasted all the world had to offer and still finding it endlessly fascinating." You said you fight side by side.”
Spike’s voice softened. “Yeah. These days, when the world’s about to end, and it always is, we find ourselves on the same side. She’s got a whole network now. Slayers everywhere. Watches them like a general watches her troops.”
A faint smile played on Loki's lips, a subtle curve that suggested he knew something the rest of the world hadn't quite caught on to yet. "And you?” Loki asked.
“I’m the stray mutt she lets sleep on the porch,” Spike said, a wry grin pulling at his lips. “Not official. Not wanted, really. But I show up, throw punches, keep the fledglings off her back.”
“She speaks to you?” Dream asked, gently. He stood like a shadow made flesh, posture poetic, voice the echo of a forgotten lullaby."
“Yeah. Sometimes.” He looked into the fire burning at the end of his cigarette. “Never about the past. Never about us. We talk tactics. Strategies. The next threat. And that’s enough, most days.”
Crowley sprawled with deliberate insolence, eyes hidden, grin sharp. “And the other days?”
Spike didn’t answer right away. Just took a long drag from his cigarette and let the smoke curl out of him like regret. “On the other days,” he said finally, “I remember what it was like to be seen, not for the monster or the man, but for the damn fool trying to be better. And I fight like hell to deserve that memory.”
None of them, not gods, devils, or dreamlords, dared argue with that.
“Does she love you ?” Lestat asked, softly. His eyes, pools of liquid shadow, that could hold centuries of secrets and yet sparkle with a mischievous, almost childlike delight.
There was a long silence. Spike stared into his glass like he might drown in it. "She told me she did once,” he said finally. “But I thought she didn’t really believe it. And I sure as hell didn’t.”
Crowley's smile wasn't an invitation; it was a dare, edged with the amusement of someone who knew all your secrets and found them terribly predictable. "You still love her?”
Spike didn’t answer right away. He just lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. "Every bloody day,” he said, voice low. “But I’m not what she needs. Not yet.” He exhaled smoke like a prayer and stared into the storm. His hand, still wrapped around his glass, tightened just slightly.
Loki caught it. Said nothing.
Spike sat back, cigarette smoldering between his fingers. “We fight side by side now, some days. Save the world, make awkward small talk, pretend we aren't the mess we were.”
“And does she know?” Loki asked, so softly it almost wasn’t a question, more a truth he already knew. "Does she know you still love her?"
“Probably.” Spike looked up. “But knowing and believing are two different beasts.”
The others let that sit. For a while, no one spoke. They just listened to the wind, to the storm, to the ghosts circling the edges of memory.
Notes:
Have you got any suggestions for someone who you would like to see drop in at The Bar at the End of the World? Send me a message or write it in a comment. I'm always open to suggestions
Chapter 5: Endless Affairs and Desire’s Game
Summary:
In a quiet bar at the edge of reality, the timeless denizens of myth and dream gather to share tales of lost loves and cosmic heartbreaks. Dream, usually silent, unburdens himself with a litany of past lovers, queens, muses, fae, and mortals, each relationship marred by his pride, the cruel meddling of his sibling Desire, and the impossibility of love for an Endless being. His confessions are met with sympathy, sardonic humor, and reflections from others who have suffered their own torments: Loki, Spike, Crowley, Lestat. As the jukebox hums a mournful tune, the bar becomes a confessional, a sanctuary where divine and damned alike nurse their grief with drink and bitter memories.
(Please spare a moment and leave a kudos/comment. They mean a lot and help to encourage the author!)
Notes:
🌙 A Whisper from the Lord of Dreams 🌙
All things you see here are but stories, woven from shadows and memory. They are not possessions, not profits, not bound to those who summon them. We do not own them. We do not claim them. They belong to their creators, their actors, their keepers of myth. We are but echoes gathered in this place, speaking for amusement, fading when the dream ends.
Crowley---serpent and tempter, David Tennant in Good Omens © Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Jareth---king of glitter and labyrinths, David Bowie in Labyrinth © Lucasfilm, Brian Froud, Jim Henson
Spike ---estless poet in leather and blood, James Marsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer © Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy
Lestat---eternal prince of night, Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Chronicles © Anne Rice
Loki---god of lies and longing, Tom Hiddleston in the Marvel Cinematic Universe © Marvel/Disney
Dream---the Endless himself, Tom Sturridge in The Sandman © Neil Gaiman & DC/Vertigo
Remember: what is written here is illusion, conjured for laughter and for play. And like all dreams… it is not ours to keep.
Dream, Lord of the Dreaming
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
No one rushed to shatter the silence with platitudes or false comfort. Here, vulnerability wasn’t weakness; it was a testament to survival. Crowley, with a sigh that spoke of millennia of toil and regret, tilted his head back and drained the last dregs of his shot glass.
A muttered curse, something about the cyclical nature of suffering and the questionable taste of oblivion, escaped his lips. The ancient jukebox at the end of the bar, a relic from a forgotten era, hiccupped, its lights flickering erratically before it miraculously whirred back to life, a mournful blues tune filling the space.
Decim, in his crisp white shirt and dark vest, moved behind the bar with practiced grace, silver hair catching the dim light like the edge of a blade. He made no comment on the conversation or the lingering glitter, merely poured with quiet efficiency, refilling each glass with the solemnity of a priest offering sacrament.
Dream, stood like a shadow made flesh, his coat whispering behind him, starlit eyes fixed on nothing and everything. His presence was silence dressed in mourning.
He had been a mostly silent observer, a creature woven from the very fabric of night and contemplation. He moved with the languid grace of a predator, his hands folding before him on the worn surface of the bar. His voice, when it came, was a low thrum, the texture of aged velvet brushed against stone. “I, too,” he began, his gaze distant, “have stories. None of them end well.”
He sat with the stillness of a shadow cast by a cold moon, untouched by the relentless march of time yet bearing the immeasurable weight of its passage. The other denizens of this liminal space stilled their movements, their own tales momentarily hushed as if the very air had thickened with the gravity of his presence.
“I have had more lovers than I should have,” Dream continued softly, his eyes fixed on some unseen point beyond the smoky haze of the bar. “Less than I wish I could have. Queens who commanded empires with a glance, muses who breathed life into dying stars.”
Loki twirled a glass between long fingers, the green-threaded cuffs of his coat slipping into view like secrets waiting to be discovered. The dark fabric draped around him in theatrical folds, more cloak than coat, as if he were lounging on a throne rather than a barstool.
He always needed something to occupy his hands, a glass, a dagger, a coin, some small stage for his restless mischief. With the air of a man indulging a favorite vice, he drawled from the shadows, “Oh, do go on. I never tire of tales riddled with misplaced affection and cosmic melodrama.”
Jareth scoffed from where he sprawled in his chair, leg draped over the armrest like a fallen prince who never quite learned how to kneel. His gloves had been peeled off, discarded beside a half-finished drink, as if even pretense had grown too heavy tonight.
“Says the man who faked his death twice for applause and a half-hearted eulogy,” Jareth quipped, but there was no venom in it, only the weariness of one jaded immortal to another. He picked up his glass, swirled it, then set it down untouched.
“You all speak of lovers like they were stories you didn’t get to finish.” His voice was softer now, eyes catching the barlight with an ache too old to name. He exhaled. “Not tragic enough to mourn, not monstrous enough to slay. Just… forgotten.” He raised his glass finally, not to drink, but as if offering a silent toast to all the almost and never-wases. “I envy you your endings, even the cruel ones. Some of us don’t even get a final page.”
A hush settled around the bar like fog. Even the jukebox, as if in sympathy, softened its tune.
Dream’s gaze flickered almost imperceptibly. “There were witches whose power tasted of wild magic and ancient earth, and fae whose beauty could break the sanity of gods. And then there were the mortals,” a faint tremor touched his voice, “women who dared to touch a dream, and gods who foolishly believed they could possess one.”
He traced the rim of his glass with a pale, slender finger, the movement utterly silent. “I ruined them. Or they ruined me. Or perhaps the relentless machinations of something else intervened. Desire saw to that.” His gaze flickered, encompassing them all and yet focusing on none.
“My sibling…Desire is neither brother nor sister, but something more precise, more… cruel. They weave their tendrils into the fragile connections I make, turning affection into obsession, longing into a weapon. My own history is a tapestry woven with their cruel amusement. A game to them. A curse to me.”
Loki raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, a knowing smirk playing on his lips. “Ah, yes. Family. They are always the keenest blade, aren’t they? They know precisely where to twist.”
A slow, bitter smile, edged with a sharpness that belied any hint of wistfulness, touched Dream’s lips. “Indeed. Their intimacy with my being allows for a particular… artistry in their torment.” He looked up then, dark eyes fathomless. “I offered a kingdom once. Another time, a star. I built walls around my heart as high as the gates of Hell, and still,” a sigh escaped him, thin and cold, “I was left bleeding.”
Jareth gave a dry, elegant laugh, one hand lifting to brush a stray strand of platinum from his brow. “A kingdom,” he said, voice rich with velvet irony. “Yes, I know that tune. Offered one myself once, gilded and gleaming, filled with dreams and danger and just enough darkness to make her curious.”
He leaned back In his chair, leg draped over the side, a study in decadence. “I shaped the Labyrinth for her. Let her rewrite its rules. All she had to do was take my hand.” He paused, the sharp glint in his eyes belying the ease of his tone. “She said no. Said it wasn’t real. That I wasn’t real. That love should come without conditions.”
His fingers tapped an absent rhythm on the table, slow and precise. “But there’s always conditions. We make ourselves into myths for them, give them kingdoms, power, devotion beyond time itself…” He smiled, slow and cruel now. “And still, they walk away. As if turning their back on magic is bravery.”
“There was Nada. Queen of the First City. She shone with a fire that could rival the dawn, a pride that echoed in the architecture of her magnificent realm, and a clarity of vision that pierced through the illusions even I sometimes wear. A mortal,” his voice softened almost imperceptibly, “radiant and wise.
“She loved me… and in doing so, she saw what I truly was, the endless, often cold, architecture of dreams. When she turned away from that truth, unable to bear its vastness, its inherent loneliness… I, in my pride and wounded vanity, condemned her to Hell.”
From his position leaning against the humming jukebox, a figure draped in shadows and the faint, intoxicating scent of old blood stirred. Lestat de Lioncourt, his wine-colored silk shirt dangerously unbuttoned, revealing a hint of alabaster skin, swirled the crimson liquid in his crystal glass. “Ah,” he exhaled softly, a knowing glint in his violet eyes. “The arrogance of divinity. The delicious agony of divine pride. A vintage I know well.”
“I sought her again,” Dream continued. “Begged her forgiveness. Released her after ten thousand years.”
Spike, perched on his stool, nursing a pint of bitter, earthly ale, blinked rapidly, his brow furrowed beneath his bleached hair. His black tee and worn leather duster looked like it had survived a dozen apocalypses . “Ten thousand years? Blimey, mate. Talk about holding a grudge.” Spike said, wide-eyed,” My lot usually moves on to shagging something else after a century or two.”
Dream didn’t blink. “She had refused me twice.” He said as if that explained everything. And it did, if you understood the arrogance of Dream, and the price of loving something so vast and unyielding. For beings like him, refusal wasn’t just rejection, it was an affront to the very essence of who they were.
Crowley, lounging in a booth as if he owned the place, or at least had blackmailed the owner, wore his usual black-on-black ensemble with infernal swagger. His sunglasses stayed on and his blood-red hair curled like a flame around the devil-may-care smirk he wore. “Hell, mate. Talk about a commitment to misery. You really know how to pick ‘em.”
“Then there was Calliope,” Dream said, his voice now carrying a deeper register of sorrow. “A muse. Inspiration incarnate. We had a son… Orpheus. His gift for music surpassed even the celestial harmonies. But mortality is fragile. His life was stolen by violence, a melody cut short before its crescendo. In the face of that crushing loss… I failed her. I retreated into the cold comfort of my endless duties, unable to truly share her grief, to offer solace that wasn’t hollow with the weight of my immortality.”
Lestat, who had been quietly observing, the crimson in his glass still, finally spoke, his voice low and imbued with a sorrow that mirrored Dream’s own. “To lose a child… it leaves a wound that time itself struggles to heal. Imprisonment, then… a desperate, misguided attempt to contain an agony that threatens to consume everything.”
“Indeed,” he murmured, his voice carrying a weight that transcended his own immediate confession.
“It wasn’t I who imprisoned her, not directly,” Dream corrected, a shadow passing over his face. “A mortal author, seeking inspiration, ensnared her. But my pride… my inability to face the enormity of our shared loss, my withdrawal into myself… it left her vulnerable. I did not protect her. I did not intervene. My silence was its own form of cruelty, a tacit abandonment in her time of need.”
The self-reproach in his voice was palpable. “I freed her, eventually, once I became aware of her plight. But the music of Orpheus… it remains a ghost in the silence between us. A constant reminder of what was lost, and what I could not save.”
Jareth’s gaze flicked toward Dream, a rueful smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I too once sought the imprisonment of the one I loved, not out of malice or the internet to harm but from the desire to protect her from the cruelty’s of her mortal reality.” He said softly, each word edged with regret. “I crafted her a cage. A beautiful one. Crafted from crystal and longing. But a cage all the same.” His eyes gleaming beneath the heavy sweep of his hair. “But love doesn’t grow in cages, no matter how gilded. And she left as the clock struck thirteen.
“There was also Alianora,” Dream said, his voice tinged with a melancholy that spoke of a shared, significant past. “A being created by Desire who aided me in reclaiming the Dreaming from ancient gods. We fought together, and for a time, there was a connection, a warmth in the cold of my realm. But as is my nature, that connection faded. I created a sanctuary for her within the Dreaming, a realm of her own, anchored by a piece of myself. Eventually, she passed, though even in my own end, a trace of her lingered.”
Spike downed his beer and muttered, “Sodding hell. That’s rough, even for a poncy git like you. Makes my exes seem almost… normal. Almost. Cheers to the big leagues of misery, I suppose.”
Lestat twirled the stem of his wine glass. “You wear your guilt like a crown. Regal. Tortured. Almost charming.”
“Killala of the Glow. It was through the nascent exploration of her Glow that she reached the Dreaming, and in that liminal space, we met.” Dream sighed. “For a time, a brief, incandescent eternity, we fell in love. A whirlwind romance, you might call it, one that consumed my focus entirely.”
A shadow flickered across his face, a hint of the raw pain of that loss. “But during a gathering of cosmic entities, a convocation of the very manifestations of the Universe, Desire, in their insatiable need to inflict pain, turned their attention to Killala. They whispered illusions, played upon her burgeoning understanding of the cosmos, and twisted her affections. She fell in love with Sto-Oa… the very sun that nurtured her world.”
Dream’s gaze drifted, lost in the memory. “I saw them. In an embrace of pure light and heat. A betrayal orchestrated by my own sibling. Killala, terrified by the revelation of the true nature of the beings around her, the living spirits of the Universe, retreated into the familiar warmth of her sun. They remained together until her light eventually faded, at which point Sto-Oa embraced her essence for eternity.”
His voice dropped, heavy with the weight of that ancient heartbreak. “Desire’s cruel manipulation of Killala and Sto-Oa… it severed whatever fragile thread of affection or even tolerance I might have held for my sibling. It was a wound that time has not entirely healed.”
“Smooth,” Crowley drawled, taking another shot. “Play the mysterious deity, get your cosmic heart broken by sibling shenanigans. But that’s a nasty bit of business,” Crowley observed, “Even for Desire. Messing with suns and starlight? That’s a new level of petty.”
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, his gaze distant. “I was in love with Thessaly. A witch of ancient power, a survivor. Our connection was… unconventional. Not born of gentle affection, but forged in shared trials. There was a respect, a hard-won understanding. When I ceased to be, in my previous form, her grief manifested not in tears, but in potent ritual. Acknowledgment, perhaps, of a significant shift in the cosmic order, even one involving a being she did not… love.”
Lestat tilted his head, a thoughtful expression on his ageless face. “A bond of power, then, rather than passion. A different kind of tie, but powers no less real.”
Loki smirked, leaning forward. “So many fleeting connections, so much sorrow. Perhaps, the common denominator in these tales is not always the meddling of Desire.”
Dream opened his eyes, bottomless and ancient. “Desire fans the flames, Loki. They may not be the fire itself, but they delight in watching the world burn. And who provides the tinder, god of mischief? Who whispers the doubts, fans the insecurities, and lays the groundwork for their cruel little games?”
“Now that,” Loki said, “sounds familiar.” He grinned wickedly, but his eyes stayed sharp. “They say Gods and kings make such poor lovers.” He said, glancing between Dream and Jareth.
A shadow passed through Dream’s gaze, something quiet and deep, regret worn thin by time. “Perhaps they do,” he said, his voice like wind through ruins. “We offer eternity when what’s needed is presence. We promise kingdoms instead of comfort. We love as forces of nature do, immense, inescapable… and often, unbearable.”
A flicker of something not quite anger, but older, colder, passed over Dream’s face. “Vulnerability is the price we pay for loving anything at all. But do not mistake that for ignorance.” His voice darkened, like a lullaby sung in a graveyard. “Desire doesn’t wound with knives. They use whispers and reflections, show you what you crave, twist it until it devours you from within. Their cruelty lies not in what they give… but in what they never let you keep.”
Crowley chuckled darkly, swirling the remnants of his shot. “Oh, that’s the gospel truth, Dream. A right little artist of agony is Desire.”
Spike snorted. “Sounds like a right git, this Desire bloke… or she-bloke… or whatever they are.”
Lestat sighed softly. “The embodiment of longing… a potent and dangerous force indeed.”
Jareth tilted his head, a slow smile curving his lips, knowing, dangerous, and tinged with something darker. “Desire,” he mused, swirling the last of his drink, “They don’t need to build cages. They simply show you what you ache for most… and let you build it yourself. They forever dance just out of reach, so we fools keep chasing shadows.”
Dream’s gaze softened slightly, a weariness settling upon him. “Indeed. And one with an endless fascination for the intricacies of my… failings in the realm of connection.” He picked up his empty glass, the silence in the bar once more becoming thick with unspoken understanding. “
Crowley swallowed the last of his shot, his serpentine eyes behind the glasses fixed on Dream. “You know,” he said, his voice a low purr, “for a being who embodies the very fabric of stories, you seem remarkably consistent in the ‘they all end badly’ department. Almost… predictable.”
Loki chuckled softly, swirling the liquid in his glass. “Perhaps Desire simply understands your particular narrative arc. A recurring tragedy is, after all, a classic.”
Spike snorted, wiping foam from his lip. “Right, well, my love life’s been a right shambles, but at least I usually manage to avoid snogging the actual sun. You lot and your cosmic dramas.”
Lestat, ever the observer of the human (and inhuman) heart, offered a more somber reflection. “It seems the capacity for heartbreak is a universal constant, regardless of power or origin. The scale may differ, but the pain… the pain is familiar.”
Dream regarded them, his expression unreadable. “You find amusement in my history?”
“Amusement?” Lestat raised a blonde eyebrow. “Intrigue, perhaps. A morbid fascination with the consistent spectacular failure of an entity as powerful as yourself in the realm of… well, that.” He gestured vaguely with his wine glass.
Loki steepled his fingers under his chin, a thoughtful look on his face. “Perhaps the Endless are not meant for such fleeting, messy mortal or even immortal entanglements. Perhaps your very nature… resists such ephemeral bonds.”
Spike frowned. “That’s a hell of a lot of exes for someone so emotionally constipated and ridiculously theatrical as you are.”
Crowley smirked. “He’s the bloody anthropomorphic personification of dreams. Of course he’s dramatic.”
“And the unnamed mortals?” Lestat asked. “Don’t pretend there weren’t others.”
“There were others,” Dream whispered, a whisper in the vastness of his memory. “Mortal and immortal, lost to the turning of ages. Mortal names lost to time. Moments. Shadows. They are but echoes,” Dream said. “Ghosts that haunt not just memory, but the essence of what I am. They were not mine to keep. “His mouth curved slightly. “Desire ensured I never lacked for company. But fulfillment? No.”
The group fell quiet. Even Spike looked thoughtful.
Loki finally lifted his glass. “To the ones we lost,” he said. “To the ones we drove away. And to the ones who never really existed at all.”
They drank in silence, surrounded by the weight of stories not yet told.
“Or,” Spike interjected, ever the blunt one, “maybe you’re just crap at relationships, mate. No offense.”
Dream remained silent for a long moment, his gaze distant, as if contemplating the truth in their words. The mournful blues from the jukebox filled the void.
“Perhaps,” he finally conceded, his voice low, “you all have a point.” He looked down at his empty glass. “Another round? The night, as they say, is eternal.”
Notes:
Have you got any suggestions for someone who you would like to see drop in at The Bar at the End of the World? Send me a message or write it in a comment. I'm always open to suggestions
Chapter 6: Where Angels Fall and Demons Wheep
Summary:
In the dim, otherworldly bar where timeless beings gather, Crowley finally opens up about his fall, not just from Heaven, but from grace, from purpose, and into a love he was never meant to feel. As Bowie’s haunting instrumentals echo through the room, memories of nebulae, rebellion, and Aziraphale rise to the surface. His confession stirs old wounds in others: Dream reflects on exile from his realm, and even Loki allows the vulnerability beneath his wit to flicker through. Through dry humor, reluctant admissions, and shared ache, the patrons confront the pain of losing their thrones, celestial, literal, or emotional, and the loves that linger in their shadows. Some falls are dramatic. Others are slow descents. All leave scars.
(Please spare a moment and leave a kudos/comment. They mean a lot and help to encourage the author!)
Notes:
🐍 Crowley’s Little Disclaimer (Because Apparently Lawyers Exist Even at the End of the World) 🐍
Right, so here’s the deal. This whole circus? Not ours. Definitely not mine. Nobody’s making a bloody profit, and no one’s about to sue anybody, least of all me. We’re just here for a laugh, a drink, and maybe to weather out the occasional apocalypse.
Aziraphale’s other half- me, Crowley (and let’s be honest, the better-dressed half) David Tennant in Good Omens © Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett.
Jareth---glitter-drenched Goblin King with a fondness for drama and tight trousers, David Bowie in Labyrinth © Lucasfilm, Brian Froud, Jim Henson
Spike---leather-clad vampire with a nicotine habit, James Marsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer © Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy
Lestat---self-proclaimed “Brat Prince” (and he’ll remind you of it every five minutes), Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Chronicles © Anne Rice
Loki---chaos in a well-tailored suit (he does love to preen), Tom Hiddleston in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with a nod to Norse myth) © Marvel/Disney
Dream---the brooding one who somehow makes the rest of us look positively cheerful (and that’s saying something), Tom Sturridge in The Sandman © Neil Gaiman & DC/Vertigo
So. Not mine, not making money, not the end of the world. Well… actually, scratch that last bit. Could still be the end of the world. You never know.
Crowley (don’t say I didn’t warn you) 🐍
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Dream stood with a stillness that seemed to absorb the very sound. His long, dark coat flowed around him like liquid night, and his eyes, when they caught the faint, pulsating glow of the jukebox, held the distant glimmer of galaxies yet unborn. He was an echo of forgotten myths made manifest, a silent weight in the room that spoke volumes without uttering a word.
At his words, the soft clink of glassware ceased, a momentary hush falling over the bar. Then the jukebox hummed to life again, not by coin or touch, but by mood, and the slow, mournful piano of David Bowie’s “Bring Me the Disco King” spilled into the silence. A jazz funeral in velvet, laced with smoke and ruin. The perfect soundtrack for Crowley’s confession, for sins he couldn’t name, regrets he refused to bury, and the fragile, foolish hope that absolution might still exist somewhere beneath the ash.
Behind the bar, Decim, tall and ghost-pale, moved with a quiet precision, his silver hair catching the jukebox’s light like frost. He was an ever-present observer, his expression unreadable as he polished glasses with a silent reverence, now moving in time with Bowie’s haunting melody.
Crowley, lounging in a booth with an air of casual dominion, his black attire a stark contrast to his fiery red hair, let his sunglasses slip, revealing the molten gold of his serpentine pupils. The low thrum of the bass seemed to vibrate through him as the familiar smirk played on his lips. “Well,” he drawled, his voice a low rumble that barely rose above Bowie’s instrumental opening, “if we’re passing the bottle and spilling our guts, I suppose it’s my turn.”
Loki, elegant even in this den of shadows, leaned against the bar, a glass of absinthe twirling between his long fingers. The green threads in the cuffs of his dark coat seemed to shimmer in the bar’s amber glow, the saxophone mirroring a certain languidness in his posture.
His sapphire eyes, sharp and observant, flicked from Crowley to the softly glowing jukebox. A slow smile spread across his lips. “One must admit, the ambiance here is rather… conducive to tales of woe. The soundtrack alone could inspire a saga of tragic romance.”
“Tragic romance set to my soundtrack? Finally, some taste.” All eyes turned toward Jareth, draped across a high-backed chair at a corner table like royalty in exile. One leg was thrown carelessly over the armrest, his posture a studied rebellion against decorum.
The flickering light from the jukebox gilded the sharp lines of his cheekbones and glinted off the glittering fabric of his cuffs, catching in the riot of platinum hair that tumbled like starlight down his shoulders.
“Heartbreak,”Jareth mused, “always did sound better in a minor key… preferably one of Bowie’s.” He raised his crystal tumbler with a languid flourish, a half-smile tugging at his lips. His mismatched eyes, swept the room with theatrical detachment. “But don’t look to me for tears. Tragedy is just another form of applause, if you perform it well enough.”
Crowley gave a short laugh, sharp, humorless, the sound nearly swallowed by the mournful wail of the saxophone. “You want to know what really stings? It’s not Hell. Not Heaven. Not even the whole bloody Fall.” He swirled the amber in his glass, Bowie’s melody weaving through the pause like a ghost. “It’s loving something you were never supposed to touch.”
Silence followed, tense, suspended, as if the bar itself were holding its breath. The instrumental pressed on, a stark and haunting undercurrent to his confession. “You spend six thousand years pretending it doesn’t matter, cracking jokes, cutting deals, surviving.” The pulsing bass from the jukebox underscored the weight of time.
“Then along comes one angel with a bookshop and eyes like summer rain, and suddenly…” He shook his head, jaw tight, the light glinting off the edge of his lowered sunglasses. Bowie’s saxophone carried a raw, vulnerable note. “Suddenly, survival isn’t enough.”
Lestat de Lioncourt reclining with languid grace, the deep wine-red of his unbuttoned silk shirt catching the dim light from the jukebox. He swirled the crimson liquid in his glass, blonde hair haloed faintly by the glow, his blue eyes gleaming with aristocratic beauty, and something older, sadder. “Mon dieu,” he said with a dry, velvet laugh. “Six thousand years of restraint? You angels have far more patience than I. Loving the impossible… we do choose our poisons well.”
Crowley let the silence linger, let the golden glow of his drink catch the fractured light. Then, softly, with a note of wonder that didn’t quite match the bitterness in his eyes, he said, “We met before the Beginning. Back when I was still… well, me.” He didn’t look up, but his tone turned almost reverent.
“I was designing nebulae. Big, gorgeous things. Swirls of gas and light stretched across the fabric of the void. I thought I was just meant to make things beautiful. Didn’t seem unreasonable.” He paused. “That was before I learned beauty needed permission.”
Crowley leaned back, boots resting on the rickety chair before him. “Aziraphale, he was different then. Still prim, still full of rules, but…” A smile ghosted across his lips. “He used to visit. Said he liked watching the stars being born. Said it made him feel closer to the Creator.” His smile faded. “That should’ve been a warning.”
A slow, delighted chuckle slipped from Loki as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “So this is your great tragic romance with Aziraphale, is it? You and the pudgy little bookseller you drunkenly summoned here last week?”
Crowley stiffened. “I didn’t summon him.” Loki’s grin widened, predatory and amused. “Right. He just happened to appear the moment the jukebox started playing Love of My Life, and after he left you just happened to collapse in a puddle of snake tears. Very subtle.”
Crowley’s glare could’ve curdled wine. “It was a moment, Loki.”
“Oh, it was a moment.” Loki agreed, raising his glass. “One the rest of us had to witness. Next time, warn a god, would you?” He leaned back with feline satisfaction, the glint in his eyes wicked. “I almost felt something that might have been secondhand embarrassment.”
Crowley rolled his eyes skyward. “Must be exhausting, being that pleased with yourself all the time.” Loki smirked, unbothered. “Not at all. I find it rather energizing. Like sunbathing in my own brilliance.” He raised his glass toward Crowley.
“Some of us were built for greatness. Others… for brooding in dark corners with unspoken feelings and terrible taste in clothing. ”
Even Dream looked vaguely amused, if only by the chaos of it all.
Crowley let out an exasperated sigh and began his narrative again, as though there was heavy weight to remembering. “I started asking questions. How much trouble can I get into for just asking a few questions. Nothing dramatic, just little things. Like, ‘Why does ineffability have to be so… inefficient?’ Or, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we gave humans a choice instead of a test?’ And, well…”
He lifted his glass In mock salute. “Next thing I know, it’s Lucifer and the lads, standing around like they’ve just nicked the keys to the universe and want to show off. I didn’t have plans that day. Food hadn’t been great in the Celestial Kitchens lately. So I said, sure, why not?”
“I didn’t fall, not really,” Crowley continued. “Didn’t trip over my own pride or get thrown from the gates. I just… sauntered vaguely downwards.” He chuckled, dry as bone. “Didn’t mean to end up in Hell. I was just keeping bad company.”
Dream, his starlit eyes reflecting the dim light, finally spoke, his voice carried a weight of ages. “The descent. It rarely begins with a grand rebellion. More often, it is a series of small divergences. When you question authority, it often carries a heavier price than anticipated. And to lose a kingdom, even a celestial one, leaves a scar that time does not easily erase.”
Crowley glanced his way, a flicker of surprise behind his dark lenses, followed by something akin to surprise and reluctant acknowledgment. “Yeah,” he murmured, the usual layers of sarcasm momentarily peeled away. “That’s the bloody truth of it. You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”
Dream did not smile, but there was a subtle shift in the air, “I was not cast out,” he said softly. “But I was taken. Stripped of my tools, my name made myth, my kingdom left to wither in my absence. I was bound by mortals who did not understand what they had caught, and when I returned… the realm I had built was no longer mine in the way it had once been.” His gaze, vast and distant, met Crowley’s across the low-lit table. “It is a particular agony, to return to a home that no longer fits your shape. One does not need Hell to feel exiled.”
Crowley’s grin was humorless, but there was no mockery in it. “Yeah,” he said, voice rough around the edges. “Yeah, that’s the feeling, alright. Like the door’s still there, but it won’t open for you anymore. Or worse, like it will, but there’s nothing left behind it.”
Loki tilted his glass, eyes gleaming. “Gods and fallen stars, all brooding over lost thrones and broken crowns. Funny how we all end up here, pretending we never wanted them.” The words hung in the air a moment, sharp, but not untrue.
Crowley didn’t answer right away. He stared into his drink like it might offer a different past, the amber liquid catching the dim light, swirling slightly with the barely perceptible tremor of his hand. A shadow crossed his face, a fleeting glimpse of the pain beneath his usual sardonic mask. Then, finally, he looked up, the glasses failing to entirely hide the flicker behind his eyes, a raw mix of hurt and something akin to betrayal.
“Aziraphale, he stayed. White robes. Flaming sword. The whole bit. He watched me fall and didn’t say a word.” Lestat leaned back in his chair, a faint, rueful smile playing on his lips.
“Love never ends cleanly. It circles. Disguises itself as fate. Seduces us into believing we’ve moved on, when all we’ve done is orbit. You always find your way back to the one who saw you fall. The question is whether they’ll catch you, or just watch you fall again.” He swirled the dark liquid in his glass and added, almost as an afterthought, “Same dance, same pull.”
Crowley nodded, slower now. “Garden of Eden. Right after the apple business. We both pretended it was a coincidence, but…” He trailed off, jaw tightening. “He gave away his flaming sword,” Dream murmured, almost to himself. Crowley’s voice cracked a little.
“Yeah. Said it was cold. Said the humans needed it more than he did.” He stared into the middle distance. “That was the moment, you know? When I realized… he wasn’t like the others. And after that, we kept meeting. Rome. Wessex. France. The Blitz. It was never official. Never allowed. Just…” He struggled for the word. “Ineffable.”
He laughed again, softer this time. “Six thousand years, and I still don’t know if he loves me or if he just didn’t know how to be alone.” The jukebox changed tracks again, something old and aching. “I asked him to run away with me once,” Crowley said. “He almost said yes. Almost. But in the end, he thought Heaven could still be reasoned with. That maybe if he played by the rules long enough, they’d change for him.”
Jareth, was a vision of careless poise and glittering menace. The crystal in his hand caught the low light as he idly rotated it between his fingers. He tilted his head, pale hair falling across one eye as he regarded Crowley. “They always almost say yes, don’t they?” he murmured, voice smooth as velvet and laced with something ancient. “Just enough hope to make fools of us. Sarah was right there. In my world. Danced my dance, she spoke the right words.”
A ghost of something softer crossed his expression, regret, perhaps, or its theatrical echo. “And still… she chose the ordinary. Mortals. So terribly predictable in their yearning for control. Even when it costs them wonder.”
Crowley stared into his glass, then set it down with care, as if the act might shatter something. “It all came to a head recently. Gabriel went missing, completely vanished from Upstairs. No memory, no miracle traces. Turned out he’d gone and fallen in love with Beelzebub, of all people. Gave up everything for her. His name, everything. Just to be with someone who understood him. Someone who chose him.”
Crowley gave a low, bitter laugh. “It was a mess. Heaven and Hell both teetering on the edge of another war, tearing up Earth. And there we were, me and Aziraphale, playing referee. Again.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if trying to press the memory out. “We stopped it. Or… no, he stopped it. Aziraphale, with some bloody inspired maneuvering. The reward?” Crowley’s voice turned flat. “They offered him the top job. Supreme Archangel. Said he could clean up Heaven, change it from the inside.”
Crowley leaned forward, fingers laced in front of him. “And me? I saw the writing on the wall. Knew what was coming. I asked him to come with me. Run away. Anywhere, nowhere, just away, from all their rules and games. Just us, finally free of the expectations. I told him we could leave all this behind.”
He fell silent for a moment, staring into the shadows. When he spoke again, it was quieter, more intimate. “I kissed him. Not like a temptation. Not like a dare. Like a promise. Told him, ‘We could have been us.’ Not angels, not demons. Not Heaven’s soldiers or Hell’s rejects. Just us.”
His jaw worked, tightening with the memory. “And he looked at me like, like he was on the edge of saying yes. Like he wanted to. But then he pulled away. Said I could be good again. Said I could come with him, back to Heaven. Be an angel. Be redeemed.”
He laughed, bitter and hollow. “Redemption. Like I’d been waiting for that all this time.” He looked up at last, and though the glasses still hid his eyes, his voice was stripped bare. “He chose them. He chose Heaven. Not because it was right. Not because he believed in it. But because he couldn’t stop needing to belong to something. Even if it meant losing me.”
He fell silent for a moment, staring into the shadows. When he spoke again, it was quieter, more intimate. “I kissed him. Not like a temptation. Not like a dare. Like a promise. Told him, ‘We could have been us.’ Not angels, not demons. Not Heaven’s soldiers or Hell’s rejects. Just us.”
Crowley’s hand tightened around his glass, the movement sharp, like he was trying to hold onto something fragile. “Right after the kiss, he said it. ‘I forgive you.’” The words hung in the air, bitter and raw. “As if it could fix what we were, or what we could’ve been. But it wasn’t about forgiveness, was it? It was about him telling me I was still broken, something to be fixed. Not ‘I love you,’ not ‘I want you,’ but ‘I forgive you.’”
Jareth let out a soft, bitter laugh, low and musical, like the chime of a cracked bell. “At least you got to kiss him. “The words hung there, casual in tone, but carried a weight that tugged at the air. “I spent an eternity building a world for her. Spun a kingdom out of stars and illusions, filled it with riddles and roses, all for one kiss.”
He paused, eyes distant. “But no. The clock struck thirteen, and she turned away. Left me with a ballroom full of phantoms and a kiss that never quite happened. It still lingers, though.” He touched his lips, absentmindedly..”Like the echo of a moment that never became real.”
For a moment, silence reigned, thick and reverent. Then Crowley exhaled, slow and uneven, as if the story had stirred something raw inside him. “Funny, isn’t it,” he murmured, eyes not on Jareth, but on the glass in his hand, “how the things we never get haunt us louder than the ones we do.” He let out a rough laugh, shaking his head.
“But forgive me? Forgive me for what? For wanting to be something more than part of their game? For hoping that, maybe, we could’ve had a life outside of all this? That kiss… it meant everything to me! But to him? It was just another moment to be forgiven! In the end, he chose Heaven. Not because it was the right thing, but because he couldn’t let go of it. And I was the one left behind. Again.”
Dream stood still as stone in the shadows, the haunting wail of the music curling around him like smoke. His long coat blended seamlessly with the darkness, and when his eyes caught the light, they gleamed with the weight of infinite distance. He spoke softly, voice barely rising above the music. “And yet… you walked away.”
Crowley didn’t answer right away. His gaze stayed fixed on the amber swirl in his glass. “Because it hurt less than staying,” he said at last. He set the glass down carefully on the worn table. “I didn’t want obedience. I wanted us. As we were. As we could’ve been.” His eyes flicked to the reflection in the glass, and he seemed to flinch at what he saw. “But that was never the story he wanted to tell.”
Loki leaned forward, the glow from his drink casting strange, shifting colors across his face. This time, there was no smirk, just a quiet understanding. “Some of us fall for the wrong person,” he said. “But we love them exactly the way we are meant to.”
There was a beat of silence, the kind that feels sacred, like the air itself dares not move.
Then Lestat exhaled through his nose, slow and sharp, as if the pain in Crowley’s words had cut him, too. “‘I forgive you,’” he repeated softly, almost to himself. “Mon Dieu. The arrogance.” He turned his glass slowly in his hand, eyes catching the candlelight. “He wanted to be your savior, not your partner. Some people can’t love without holding the higher ground.”
Crowley didn’t answer, but his jaw tightened.
Lestat’s gaze flicked sideways, sharp and sad. “Louis did the same. Offered me absolution instead of affection. Tried to purify what he could never accept. It’s not love when they only want the version of you that fits their fantasy.”
Loki leaned back, one arm draped lazily across the booth, though his voice carried none of his usual mockery. “He said ‘I forgive you’ after a kiss? That’s not absolution. That’s dismissal.” He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “We fall for them anyway. And we think we can shape them into something that fits our own chaos, but they just keep trying to fold us into theirs. Because they think love is about fixing,”
“No,” Dream said at last, his voice soft but absolute. “Because they are afraid of becoming unmade. And we, we are what unmaking looks like.”
Crowley let out a slow breath, the corner of his mouth twitching into something that almost resembled a smile. “And here I thought I was being dramatic.”
Loki raised his glass. “Dramatic? Perhaps. But isn’t that what love deserves? Pain makes poets of all of us.” A breath passed around the table, something between a laugh and a sigh. Not quite mirth, but the sound of recognition. Wounds laid bare, met not with scorn but the quiet reverence of those who’d survived their own.
The silence that followed Crowley’s confession wasn’t empty, it was thick with things unsaid, with histories too long and hearts too worn to be easily mended. Outside, the storm had passed, leaving the windows streaked with rain and the air murmuring its late-night secrets.
Loki leaned back in his seat, eyes distant, his fingers idly tracing the rim of his glass. Dream’s gaze had drifted toward the window, watching shadows move across the rain-slick glass as if searching for meaning in their shapes. Lestat simply studied Crowley, head tilted, the hint of an old sadness ghosting behind his polished mask. Jareth frowned at the spinning crystal ball he gazed into methodically.
No one tried to fix it. No one offered platitudes or promises. In this company, heartbreak wasn’t weakness. It was currency. Proof that you’d dared to love.
Notes:
Have you got any suggestions for someone who you would like to see drop in at The Bar at the End of the World? Send me a message or write it in a comment. I'm always open to suggestions
Chapter 7: A Symphony for the Damned (pt 1 of 2)
Summary:
Lestat tells the tale of his mortal life in 18th-century France, of his dreams, his defiance, and the love he shared with his dearest friend, Nicolas. From their days on the stage in Paris to the fateful night he was turned by a savage, wordless vampire, Lestat’s story unfolds as a fever dream of ambition and grief. Nicolas, left behind but unable to let go, eventually follows Lestat into darkness, but finds only madness. This is a story of two souls bound by music and longing, torn apart by the seductive rot of immortality. Lestat wanted to give Nicolas everything, freedom, eternity, beauty. But what he gave him was a curse. In the end, it was not fangs or fire that destroyed them, but the silence between them, and the dreams they could no longer share.
(Please spare a moment and leave a kudos/comment. They mean a lot and help to encourage the author!)
Notes:
🍷 A Declaration from Lestat de Lioncourt 🍷
Ah, a disclaimer. How tiresome. Still, if one must be written, allow me. These curious companions gathered here, they are not mine. They belong to their authors, their actors, their myths. Yet tonight, in this place, they become ours to admire, to mock, to adore.
Crowley---serpent in sunglasses, eternally slouching toward redemption, David Tennant in Good Omens © Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Jareth---peacock of a king, glittering and impossible, David Bowie in Labyrinth © Lucasfilm, Brian Froud, Jim Henson
Spike---leather and swagger wrapped around a surprisingly fragile heart, James Marsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer © Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy
Loki---god of tricks, dressed like temptation itself, Tom Hiddleston in the Marvel Cinematic Universe © Marvel/Disney
Dream---gloom incarnate, forever convinced no one suffers as profoundly as he, Tom Sturridge in The Sandman © Neil Gaiman & DC/Vertigo
And I, Lestat de Lioncourtn immortal, irresistible, unforgettable, the Brat Prince himself, Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Chronicles © Anne Rice
So yes, cher, they are borrowed. But do not mistake borrowed for diminished. In this bar, in this night, we shine brighter than our creators ever dreamed.
Lestat (with a smile sharp as his fangs) 🍷
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The hush held a while longer, each man remained lost in their memories. It wasn’t discomfort that kept them quiet, but reverence. This was sacred ground, after all. A confessional for monsters, poets, and kings. (And drama queens)
The music on the jukebox shifted, soft jazz bleeding into something darker, smokier.
Lestat stirred first.
He stood with one shoulder leaned against the jukebox, it’s retro glow painting soft colors across his golden curls and the silky folds of his wine-dark shirt. He cradled his glass loosely in one hand.
“Love,” he mused, his voice chilled like silk kissed by winter, “is the only true luxury the immortal can scarcely afford. And yet, we squander it, again and again. ”
He lifted his glass slightly, then made a lazy circle in the air with two fingers, a gesture both elegant and commanding. “Mon ami,” he said to Decim, “something dark and red for me. Let it bleed a little. And the poison of their choice for all my new friends, oui?”
As Decim moved with quiet grace behind the bar, pouring with the precision of a man that hadn’t spilled a drop in centuries, Lestat turned his eyes, old, icy blue, glittering with memory, back to the others. He moved as silently as a ghost exchanging full glasses for empty ones.
Loki sat with his long fingers curled around his newly filled glass of Absinthe, the liquid a luminous green that caught the light like a spell half-cast. He raised it slightly in silent acknowledgment, the faintest curl at the edge of his lips betraying amusement, or recognition.
Crowley cradled his tumbler of whiskey like a relic. He took a large swallow, the amber clinging to the sides like regret. His glasses hid his eyes, but the tightness around his mouth suggested the memories Lestat stirred were far from dormant.
Spike lounged back in his chair; a glass of beer held loosely in one hand. He rolled it slightly between his fingers before taking a long pull, watching Lestat over the rim like a man who’s heard too many confessions and offered too few of his own.
And Jareth, Jareth had not looked up. He still lazily spun his crystal between his fingers, a dance of light and illusion. But the muscle twitching in his jaw gave his emotions away.
This wasn’t just a gathering. It was a reckoning.
He accepted the refilled glass from Decim with a murmured, “Merci,” and let the rim rest just beneath his lips. A look of pain flitted across his face. “I’ve had two great loves in my life,” he said, “and a handful of obsessions.”
He paused, centuries flickering across his expression like candlelight through stained glass. “And then… Louis.” His voice softened, became reverent. “My Louis. My maddening, tender-hearted lover. We’ve burned each other, again and again. Yet he remains. He will not share my crown, but he shares my nights. And still, I love him.”
Lestat swirled his glass, watching the crimson liquid spiral rise along the crystal rim “That’s the trick of time,” he said. “It keeps the knife in. But it dulls nothing.”
He turned slightly, as If addressing some unseen audience behind the others, an actor slipping into monologue, though the wounds he invoked were no performance. His voice softened, but carried the weight of centuries.
“We call it the Dark Gift,” he began, his gaze distant. “The sacred act of metamorphosis from human into vampire, from mortal to immortal through the sharing of vampiric blood. The Dark Gift is vampirism itself, eternal, seductive, it is a dangerous inheritance. Over the centuries it has been romanticized, feared, coveted, and regretted, sometimes all at once.”
His shoulders drew in slightly, as if he labored under the weight of his explanation. “For some, to be a vampire is to live in a state of eternal contradiction, gifted with immortality, yet cursed with unending guilt. The act of killing to survive erodes our sense of morality. It leaves behind a hollow echo of our former humanity. We are forever severed from the natural world, unable to feel sunlight, to grow old, to evolve emotionally or spiritually as humans do.”
A bitter smile ghosted across his lips. “Instead, we remain frozen in time. Locked in the same thoughts, feelings, and regrets. Loneliness, despair, the slow grief of watching mortals we once loved wither and die… these become our constant companions.”
His voice grew quieter, the cadence shifting. “Nicholas and I were boys then. Foolish. Hungry for more than the world was willing to give. He was a violinist, soulful, haunted. I was the actor, always starving for the applause of an audience. Together, we imagined ourselves artists in a world that didn’t appreciate art.”
A ghost of a smile curled on his lips, nostalgic and sorrowful all at once. “We were born to nothing. Dusty manors, decaying titles, resentful silences, and disappointed fathers. Nicolas had music in him. The music he made with the violin was filled with all the sorrowful beauty of a world lost before the fall.”
Loki adjusted his grip on his Absinthe glass, his long fingers tapping once against the etched crystal. A clear chime rang out, sharp and delicate. The faint glow of the drink mirrored something unreadable in his expression.
“I know something of that,” he said, voice smooth but with an edge like a knife. “Dusty manors. Hollow titles. The illusion of a legacy passed down in gold and ruin. All the grandeur of inheritance, and none of the power to make it mean anything.”
He gave a thin, crooked smile, a mask that his emotions. “It’s a cruel trick, being born to kingdoms already crumbling. They teach you to reach for a crown and when you have it within your grasp you find out it’s cursed. ”
Crowley gave a low snort. “Try being a footnote to someone else’s fall. I didn’t get a crown or a throne, I was simply discarded. One day I was basking in the celestial light, the next I’m explaining what temptation to people who can’t spell it. No kingdom, just paperwork and disappointment.”
Dream’s eyes lifted then, slow and distant. “A crown is a burden,” he murmured quietly. “Even in a kingdom of stories, maybe especially there, power does not shield one from solitude and sorrow.”
Jareth rolled the crystal ball lazily between his fingers, draped across the chair like indulgence personified. “Still,” he said, his smile held no warmth, “we wear it, don’t we? The crown. The performance. The power. They adore us for it, until they don’t. Then all that’s left is empty echoes.”
Lestat tilted his head slightly, eyes gleaming like wine in candlelight. “Ah, kings and fallen angels, poets and gods. It’s no wonder we drink like this.” He said before picking up the thread of his story.
“There was Nicolas. Mon premier amour.” His voice grew quieter, the cadence shifting. “We were boys then. Foolish. Hungry for more than the world was willing to give. He was a violinist, soulful, haunted. I was the actor, always starving for the applause of an audience. Together, we imagined ourselves artists in a world that didn’t appreciate art.”
“We had run away from our provincial town, fled the bleak, wind-scoured chateasus and the disappointment of fathers who never understood us. A pause. His hand lowered slowly, fingers curling into a loose fist. In Paris, we found dimly lit theaters and smoke-filled cafés. We lived in squalor but it felt like paradise. Yet, even in Paris, amid the promise of all it’s many possibilities, Nicki hoped for failure. “
“He wanted to collapse under the weight of it all, to prove to himself, to his father, to the world, that life had nothing lasting to offer. He believed in nothing but beauty, and even that he questioned.”
He gave a dry, wistful laugh. “He had a bit of a spirit like Oscar Wilde’s in him. Said there was no good or evil, only good or bad art.”
“Poor Nicki.” His tone softened. Lestat turned slightly, angling his body as though drawn toward a sound only he could hear. “I watched as the light drained slowly from him,
Not with drama or violence, but like the last notes of a symphony fading into silence. His unraveling took place slowly, over time. His madness went far deeper than even I, his lover, knew.”
Lestat took in a large, deep breath and let it out slowly. “It was bitterness. Disillusion. An artist’s despair. Even as his sanity faded, his musical talent remained a powerful source of solace for me. I cherished those moments when Nicolas would still play.”
“I had found work as an actor, Nicolas was there with his violin in the orchestra pit. We were poor, practically destitute, yet I was full of reckless breathless ambition. And always, at darkenest edge of the theater, I saw him, this pale face in the audience, always there. Still as death. He watched me with eyes that burned like molten glass.”
“I was soon to find out his name was Magnus. A reclusive, ancient, and extremely powerful vampire who lived like a phantom in a ruined tower, just outside of Paris.” He looked down, briefly. “He stole me from my bed as I lay sleeping and he dragged me back to his lair.” He looked down, briefly.
“There were bodies there. A pile of them, young men, all blonde, beautiful, broken. I was only the latest in a long line of almost-chosen. He drained them dry. I don’t know why they were rejected or what about me he favored so much."
Lestat drew in a breath. Slow, deliberate. “And me? He gave me no choice. He turned me into a vampire. And then threw himself into the fire. He left me with no answers, no mentor, no knowledge of how to navigate this new life he had forced me into. I had no time to grieve my former life, to mourn the future that could have been mine, or any way to understand what I had become. There was only hunger. And silence.”
A flicker of something unreadable passed across his face before he lifted the glass and took a slow sip, savoring it like a memory. “I don’t know if Nicki ever could have overcome his depression and his cynicism if Armand and his coven hadn’t intervened. I’ll never have the chance to find out.”
Lestat leaned back, eyes narrowing at the shadows dancing along the walls, as if the past lived there still. “I cannot tell you all of my and Nicolas’s story unless I tell you of Armand and how his tale became entangled with my own.”
Loki tilted his head, the familiar glint of mischief tempered now by something deeper, melancholy, perhaps. “Tales intertwine, Lestat. “They ripple, twisting themselves into stories no written page could contain. “
“Nicholas, Armand, and you, your tales are all threads in the same tapestry, woven with longing, lust, betrayal, and the kind of beauty that hurts just to glance upon it. You three are like princes in a fairy story. Heirs to a fallen kingdom, noble and tragic. It’s always like that with those who burn so brightly, they extinguish themselves in a blaze of glory. You gravitate towards each other. That is your downfall. You soar briefly, but in the end you fall together.”
The cadence of Lestat's voice took on a sing-song quality, perhaps in relation to Loki’s comment about tales and fairy stories. “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful creature named Armand. The first time I saw him he appeared to me to be a cherubic adolescent boy, his visage conjured up comparisons of angels painted by Botticelli.”
“He was cupid with long, curly auburn hair and large brown eyes, seductive and ethereal. He was a relic from a world long forgotten, sculpted by love, cruelty, and centuries of superstitions. I’ve learned since then what he endured. What created him.”
Lestat’s lips curved into a slow smile, but his blue eyes stayed cold. He lifted his glass, swirling the crimson liquid thoughtfully. “Loki, you spoke of his story as if he were a character in a fairytale,” he said, voice low and smooth, “but in reality, it was a horror story.”
“You must understand, Armand had an incredible pull. Once you entered into his orbit, his pull was like gravity, drawing you closer, inescapable. He was born to be molded by beauty. His name was Armand when I met him, but that wasn’t his birth name. He was born Andrei, in Kievan Rus, what we now call Ukraine.”
“When he was about fifteen, he was kidnapped by Tartars, sold into slavery, and taken to Italy. Because of his great beauty, he was sold to a brothel. Armand was a zealot to the Christian god, pious, devout. He refused to perform the duties expected of him there. They beat him. Left him to die in the basement.”
A beat of silence.
He took a small sip, then lowered the glass, his fingers lingering on the stem. “The name of his rescuer was Marius de Roman. He was an old and powerful vampire. Marius lived the extravagant life of a respected Renaissance painter.”
“It was there that Marius found him. Purchased him and nursed him back to health in his pallazo. Armand was given an education that imbued him with a love for art, beauty, and a thirst for knowledge. Marius gave him the name Amadeo, believing it meant ‘Beloved of God. He was a mentor. And later… his lover.
Lestat’s voice dropped slightly, his words growing more intimate. He brushed his fingers along the rim of his glass, gaze flickering downward. “Marius hid his vampiric nature from Armand. He told me that he was entranced by Armand from first sight. Although he intended to make Armand into the perfect vampire companion once he came of age, he became Armand’s lover while he was still a mortal.”
“When Armand was about seventeen, an Englishman, Lord Harlech, fell madly in love with him. But though they had a brief fling, Armand never truly returned his affection. While Marius was away from the palazzo, Harlech broke in and attacked Armand with a poisoned blade."
Lestat’s fingers tapped once on the jukebox’s edge before stilling. “Although Armand killed him, he too was mortally wounded. Marius, out of love, perhaps desperation, and realizing he was going to lose him, gave him the Dark Gift.”
Lestat’s jaw clenched faintly, and his eyes narrowed, not in judgment, but in recognition of a tragic inevitability. “The Children of Darkness were an ancient vampire coven that lived in shadows, shunned beauty, art, and love. They adhered to strict, archaic codes of secrecy and self-denial. They saw Marius, who lived openly in Venice, surrounded by art, beauty, and human companionship, as a dangerous heretic.”
“They attacked Marius’s home, tried to burn him alive, and abducted Armand. Marius managed to save himself by diving into a canal, but he was severely wounded and believed Armand had been killed. The Children of Darkness presumed Marius dead.”
“Armand was brainwashed, tortured, and indoctrinated for decades. They forced him to abandon Marius and his teachings, to embrace their dark beliefs. They even changed his name to Armand. That was his name when I met him. He became loyal to their grim, joyless creed.”
Lestat’s gaze drifted toward the far wall, as though watching memories flicker across its surface. “Eventually, Armand escaped the coven and made his way to Paris. There, he established his own coven, also calling it the Children of Darkness, but now under his own leadership and with his own twisted vision.”
Lestat shifted his weight slightly, one leg crossing over the other as he leaned against the jukebox with a languid sort of tension. “He was both enraged and intrigued by my blatant disregard of their sacred laws. When I arrived in Paris after my vampiric transformation, I openly defied them, living among mortals, dressing lavishly, performing on stage for human audiences, revealing my supernatural abilities.” Lestat’s mouth twitched into a wry smile, sharp, but without mirth.
Crowley’s lips curled into a knowing smirk, eyes glinting with some dark emotion. “Fury and fascination, two sides of the same coin. It’s a dangerous game, that one. When someone like you, so utterly unafraid, so blissfully carefree, crosses paths with someone like him, it’s not just a clash of personalities. It’s a reckoning. And I’ll admit, I find it utterly captivating.” He leaned back slightly, tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair.
Lestat let out a soft, breathy laugh, half amusement, half defiance. “Yes, well. I’ve always had a talent for upsetting the old order.” He tilted his head, golden hair catching the light like a halo mocking sainthood. “They called it blasphemy. I called it living. I refused to crawl in crypts or whisper in shadows.”
He paused, lips curling into a smirk. “The elders named me Le Brat Prince, of course. Whispered it like a curse, spat it like a joke. But I wore it like silk. Because I am the Brat prince, bold, disobedient, dressed to kill, and utterly unwilling to play dead just because the old ones thought it proper.”
His expression darkened for a moment, a flicker of something harder behind the facade. “Armand’s eyes were always on me, even as he despised me, he wanted me. He coveted the things, the people, that were mine, the ones that I held dear.”
Then, softer, more introspective: “This would not be the last time he lusted after someone that belonged to me.”
“I didn’t destroy his coven out of malice. I simply lived. I walked among mortals, loved them, laughed with them. I challenged his coven’s beliefs and superstitions, arguing that their rules didn’t apply to me. Armand’s coven, they saw the way that I lived out in the open as heresy. I was beautiful. Powerful. Alive. Why should I pretend otherwise? I was everything they despised.”
Lestat’s mouth tightened at the memory. His fingers trailed idly along the edge of the jukebox, as if grounding himself in the present. “One night, shortly after I had been turned, Nicolas was taken. Not by fate, but by something darker, by Armand and his coven. What they stole was not his life, but his mind. They tortured him. They broke him. The music inside him was shredded, note by note, until there was nothing left.”
He turned his face slightly away, eyes fixed on some distant point beyond the room. “Nicolas unraveled completely in that place. Whatever fragile thread still tethered him to reason was severed in the dark. And yet still, I tried to save him.”
“Soon after, the members of Armand’s coven became disenchanted with him. Armand felt the coven itself was ruined, corrupted by all the ideas I had planted. He began to hunt them down and burn the members of his own coven alive.” His voice tightened, sharpened by memory. “I’m afraid I’m to blame for that. I showed them how much better life could be if they abandoned their dusty tombs and decay, if they dared to live among humans.”
Lestat’s knuckles whitened around the base of his glass. “I rescued Nicolas. He was distraught, ravaged by his experience. He begged me to turn him. He believed immortality would be his salvation. I reluctantly complied. Foolishly. Desperately. I thought the transformation might restore his sanity.”
His voice dipped lower. “But it didn’t. It couldn’t. The Dark Gift isn’t healing. It’s an amplification. The new sensations, the hunger, the power, only deepened his despair. He became erratic. Violent. Beautiful, still, but unreachable.”
“Even as Nicolas’s sanity faded, his musical talent on the violin remained a powerful link to his earlier self and a source of solace for me.” He rubbed his temple briefly, the motion weary. “Immortality doesn’t mend what was broken and it isn’t mercy. Not for someone like Nicki. He was already haunted, already drowning, and I gave him a deeper ocean to sink into.”
“I cherished those moments when Nicki could still play, he still had music in his fingers. I had already bought the theater by then. I gave Armand the stage, told him he could wear a mask and call it art. And so he did. That’s what the Théâtre des Vampires became, a church of blood, dressed up as theater. A confessional where the audience screamed and applauded then bled.”
Lestat’s throat worked around a swallow. He didn’t speak for a moment. Then, more quietly: “Nicki had grown to despise me. He went completely mad under the weight of eternity. I began making plans to leave Paris, to cross the sea to the New World. I charged Armand and his coven with his care for Nicolas hoping that with me gone, perhaps his mind would begin to heal.”
He shook his head once, slowly. “Instead, he worsened. Nicolas roamed the streets, raving. He made no attempt to conceal what he was. He terrified mortals, invited destruction. Armand, at last, had him restrained. Locked him away. Cut off his hands, so he would stop playing his violin like a man possessed.”
Lestat looked down into his glass as if seeing something long buried at the bottom. Then he drank, deeply. “When Armand finally released him, Nicki was broken beyond repair. Music had been the last thread tying him to the world, and without it, he slipped loose. He demanded a funeral pyre, a sabbat in his name, or he would burn the theatre to the ground.”
Lestat’s voice became hushed. “They built it for him. Lit the fire. They dressed in their finest. He danced into the flames with elegance and madness, and let it consume him. That was how Nicolas chose to end his eternity.” He swallowed, though his kind had no need for the gesture. It was a human reflex. A habit of grief.
Everyone was silent. Even Spike’s restless hand, which had been rolling his cigarette idly against the table, now rested flat. His gaze, usually sharp with irreverence, lingered instead on the rim of his glass, as if trying to drown a thought before it surfaced.
Lestat tilted his head back, eyes fixed on the ceiling as if searching for Nicolas in the rafters, in the smoke. “When I heard I…I …felt…” he faltered, then breathed, “…I felt relieved.”
The words seemed to cost him, his voice a whisper dragged across thorns.
“Not because I wanted him gone. Never that. But because… the violin was silent. He had stopped playing. He screamed more than he spoke. He didn’t eat. He hated the night. Hated me. And I…” His voice broke gently. “I couldn’t reach him. So yes, there was grief, yes. But relief, too. Because his suffering was finally over. And mine… had only just begun.”
A pause, drawn long enough for the silence to pulse.
“I still dream of his music,” Lestat whispered. “In the dark, when I close my eyes, I see his fingers on the strings. I hear the last notes echo through stone corridors. And sometimes I wonder… if I had left him mortal, would he have lived longer than he did with me”
He blinked once, slowly, grounding himself in the now. Then his expression shifted, just slightly. A flicker of practiced elegance returned to his posture, the prince reclaiming his stage.
Crowley had gone utterly still, save for one finger, which tapped idly against the edge of his sunglasses, the only sign of movement in a body otherwise frozen. The set of his mouth the only sign of the storm building beneath the surface. .“Pain like that never burns out, mate. It just changes shape. Becomes part of your architecture.”
Loki sat straighter in his chair, at attention. His arms folded over his chest, legs crossed. A subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed some emotion too complex for grief and too private for pity. He reached for his drink and let the glass hover at his lips before setting it down untouched. “There’s something cruel,” he murmured, “in granting eternity to someone who was already crumbling.”
Spike pushed the pack of cigarettes across the table toward Lestat, eyes downcast, offering a vice in place of comfort. His fingers resumed their restless dance with the cigarette, though he didn’t light it. “Bloody hell,” he murmured finally, voice rough with old smoke and older regrets. “Went out in fire. That’s… poetic, in a twisted sort of way. Madness wrapped in art.”
He looked down at the cigarette, rolling it between his fingers again. “Can’t say I blame him. Sometimes the only thing louder than the music you hear in your head is the silence that follows it. And if all you’ve got left is the echo…” His voice trailed off. “Maybe an ending in the fire is a kindness. Sometimes letting go ain’t cowardice. It’s tan act of mercy.”
Dream did not move for a long time. Then, softly, almost as if speaking to the silence itself, he said, “Fire is not always destruction. Sometimes, it is the only way a spirit trapped can be released.” He didn’t elaborate. He simply watched Lestat. The shadows beneath his eyes seemed deeper than before. He looked older, as if hearing of Nicolas’s death had stirred something in the endless corridors of his memory.
Then came the soft clink of crystal as Jareth set down his goblet of fairy wine. He was wrapped in velvet and shadow, mismatched
Eyes sharp with moonlight and something older. “You mourn him still,” he said, voice smooth as silk. “And yet you question whether his death in your absence was worse than his life with you in it.”
“Here’s a truth you will not like ” he said softly, “but as I am fae, I can only deal in truth. You gave him eternity, Lestat. But he only ever asked for meaning in his life. And meaning cannot be forced into a soul already destroyed.”
He turned his head, sweeping the room with his gaze, a faint smirk on his lips. “We immortals assume we’re offering salvation, it’s our favorite delusion. But in the end, we’re just offering them a longer fall.”
He pausing only once to murmur, “Still, the image of him dancing into the fire? Tragic. Poetic. It wasn’t redemption. It was defiance. It was the final act of control in a world that has stolen everything else.”
Lestat’s eyes closed slowly. Not in agreement. Not in surrender, just acknowledgment. “Nicolas wasn’t a moment stolen in time. He wasn’t a passing indulgence. He was the beginning of everything. The start of who I became, for better or worse. Before him, I was noise without melody. He gave shape to the chaos, gave it tone, meaning.”
Notes:
Have you got any suggestions for someone who you would like to see drop in at The Bar at the End of the World? Send me a message or write it in a comment. I'm always open to suggestions
Chapter 8: A Symphony For The Damned (pt 2 of 2)
Summary:
In Part II, Lestat recounts the bittersweet saga of his darkest entanglements, Louis, Claudia, and Armand.
He begins with Louis: the melancholic mortal he turned in a moment of desperation, seeking not companionship, but worship. But Louis, filled with guilt and longing for his lost humanity, would never love him the way Lestat craved. Claudia, their “daughter,” came next, a child vampire made not out of love, but as a cruel attempt to bind Louis to him. Claudia’s rage and betrayal culminated in Lestat’s near-destruction, and her eventual death remains the deepest scar he carries.
Lestat details Armand’s toxic elegance, his calculated cruelty, and the centuries-long dance of rejection and desire that followed. Armand’s obsession would resurface again and again.
Across the telling, Lestat shifts from defiant to vulnerable, admitting to the selfishness behind his actions, the loss he brought upon himself, and the ghosts that never leave him. He does not beg forgiveness, but neither does he deny his wounds.
By the end, it’s clear: Louis was never a possession, Claudia was never just a child, and Armand was never truly his. These were not love stories, they were tragedies stitched in blood.
Notes:
🍷 A Declaration from Lestat de Lioncourt 🍷
Ah, a disclaimer. How tiresome. Still, if one must be written, allow me. These curious companions gathered here, they are not mine. They belong to their authors, their actors, their myths. Yet tonight, in this place, they become ours to admire, to mock, to adore.
Crowley---serpent in sunglasses, eternally slouching toward redemption, David Tennant in Good Omens © Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Jareth---peacock of a king, glittering and impossible, David Bowie in Labyrinth © Lucasfilm, Brian Froud, Jim Henson
Spike---leather and swagger wrapped around a surprisingly fragile heart, James Marsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer © Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy
Loki---god of tricks, dressed like temptation itself, Tom Hiddleston in the Marvel Cinematic Universe © Marvel/Disney
Dream---gloom incarnate, forever convinced no one suffers as profoundly as he, Tom Sturridge in The Sandman © Neil Gaiman & DC/Vertigo
And I, Lestat de Lioncourtn immortal, irresistible, unforgettable, the Brat Prince himself, Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Chronicles © Anne Rice
So yes, cher, they are borrowed. But do not mistake borrowed for diminished. In this bar, in this night, we shine brighter than our creators ever dreamed.
Lestat (with a smile sharp as his fangs) 🍷
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Lestat looked down at his glass again, swirling it. The light caught the surface, a garnet whirlpool. He glanced up, lips parting as if to say more, but then stopped, struck silent by some inward pull. And then, barely louder than a breath "Louis.” Lestat whispered.
Spike tilted his head, eyes narrowing with something like recognition. “The flame that will not die?" he echoed, his voice low and edged with a bitter sort of fondness. “Yes, I know the feel of that. The kind of love that burns through lifetimes, always just out of your reach. So close that you singe your fingertips on it as you reach out to catch it. Buffy burned with that same inner flame."
“Yes, Spike, you understand more than most. That flame, it sears, doesn’t it? Burns away what you think you are until all that remains is the wanting, the longing.” Lestat's gaze flicked to the vampire, an unspoken kinship in his eyes. “We don’t survive it. Not really. We endure it.”
Lestat lifted his glass in a kind of toast, voice lower now, more reverent. "To those who burn and those who remain.”
Lestat set his glass down on top of the jukebox, untouched now, his gaze far away. “Louis de Pointe du Lac,” he said softly, as if invoking a ghost. “Not the first tragedy of my afterlife, but perhaps the most enduring. He saw the Dark Gift as a curse. I gave him immortality, and he mourned it with sorrow. I offered him eternity, and he answered me with grief.”
"Louis” He paused, eyes distant. “Louis didn’t destroy me. He didn’t have to. He simply left a silence behind him that nothing could fill.” He leaned back, jaw tight with memory.
“I found him longing for death in the gambling dens very near New Orleans. He was the young, wealthy owner of an Indgo plantation. He was deep in mourning for his brother, a man with a religious mania, who had been killed recently from a fall down the plantation's staircase. He drowned himself in grief and whiskey, bleeding from a hundred invisible wounds. He wanted to die but I offered him eternity instead. I thought I was saving him. I thought I was choosing a companion, a mirror of my own reflection.”
Lestat leaned back slightly, eyes half-lidded, as though gazing at a memory only he could see. He looked down at his hands, as if surprised they weren’t shaking. “I thought I could save him. That if I showed him enough beauty, enough wonder, he’d stop mourning what he lost. Louis mourned the loss of his humanity. He even mourned the loss of mine.”
His voice softened, not with distance, but with reverence. “He is beautiful. Not just in the way mortals are attractive, though God knows he's that too. His is the kind of beauty that draws every eye in the room to him."
"His skin is bleached ivory, hair dark as a raven’s wing, curling just at the collar, and eyes, God, those eyes, the green of the deepest forests, sharp with sorrow and of a startling clarity. His eyes look straight into your soul."
"He wore grief like it was etched into his very being. Always questioning, everything. Me. Himself. The nature of what we are. What it meant to take a life, to have eternity in your hand yet finding it hollow." He took a breath he didn’t need. A pause heavy as night. "He tried to find meaning in the blood, in the silence between his victims heartbeats. Mercy clung to him like a shadow, even when he believed it had fled him. He needed to believe there was still something worth saving, even in monsters like us.”
A silence stretched between the words, heavy. "He hated himself for needing me. Hated me for making him into what I am. And still, still, we couldn't let each other go. Again and again, like waves breaking on the same piece of cursed shore. Even when he walked away, even when he chose suffering over me, I waited. I am still waiting for him to fully join me."
He stared into the depths of his glass, fingers trembling slightly. "We moved to New Orleans. I killed, as ever, with style and without apology. Louis refrained. He had spent years feeding only on animals, rats, chickens, and the occasional stray dog. He was wracked with guilt, trying to cling to some scrap of humanity. He called it restraint. I called it denial. But denial, like love, has a breaking point.”
His voice softened, dangerously tender. “One night Louis followed the scent of death until it brought him to her. She was barely five years old, maybe younger, grieving over the plague-ravaged corpse of her dead mother in a tenement that smelled of rot and stunk of death." He paused, voice low.
"When I arrived, he was cradling her in his arms like he was holding a sacred treasure. Or a ruined one. And he was weeping. She was so small. Fragile. He had feed upon her almost to the point of death. Her heart was slowing by the second."
He hesitated, his gaze darkening. "I could’ve let her die. I should have. But I saw something then, Louis shattered, raw, drowning in shame, panicked. I told myself I was saving her. That we could be a family." He looked away, jaw clenched. "But it wasn’t mercy. It was fear. Desperation. I though 'this will bind him to me.' This child. This act. I can make her ours. That this child could bind us together in a way nothing else had.”
Lestat exhaled, his jaw locked tight. " I gave her the Dark Gift. I ensured she would never be seen as a woman. I'd locked her forever into that small, perfect body. Her mind would keep growing. Her fury, her rage would too."
He closed his eyes, swallowed hard. “She deserved a life. I gave her a prison. And for that she grew to hate me. She began to hate Louis as well.”
A silence followed, thick, heavy.
Then Spike’s voice cut through the silence like a blade. “Bloody hell, mate. A child? Are you mad? You made a child into a vampire?”
Lestat stiffened, gaze flicking up, aristocratic poise cracking just slightly. “She was dying. It was....”
“No!" Spike snapped, his fury barely leashed. “Don’t feed me that ‘noble savior’ rot. She was dying, yeah? So let her. You didn’t save her! You trapped her! Locked her in a doll’s body for a century and called it mercy. That’s not love, mate. That’s possession all dressed up in sympathy.”
His eyes burned as he yelled. “You didn’t save her.! You condemned her to hell!"
Lestat flinched, as if Spike's words had physically struck him. “You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t paid for it? You think I haven’t spent centuries wallowing in regret?"
Spike’s voice dropped, low and grim. “Doesn’t matter if you have regrets. She’s the one who paid the price for your selfishness!"
He glared at Lestat, jaw clenched, hands curled into fists. Then, without breaking eye contact, he snatched his half-full pint glass off the table and slammed the rest of it in one long, angry gulp. The glass hit the wood with a crack, just shy of shattering. “Christ,” he muttered, voice hard. “Even Angelus never sunk that low.”
He looked away for a second, as if the comparison left a sour taste in his mouth. “And that bastard? He tortured Drusilla. Hunted her for weeks, killed her whole bloody human family, drove her mad. He waited until the day she took her holy vows, then turned her into a vampire, shattered and weeping on the floor of the convent chapel."
His gaze cut back to Lestat, sharp as a knife." He turned her after he had broken her sanity completely. He made her torment eternal by making her immortal. He delighted in it. Said she was his greatest masterpiece. And still, I'd take that over what you did to that child. At least Drusilla had grown up first."
Loki let out a low, scornful laugh, chilled and cutting as the winter wind. “Ah, the old illusion,” he said, voice dripping in amusement and venom. “Dress control in the language of devotion, and call it love.”
His smile flashed like a blade in the dark. “You didn’t save her. You used her to forge a chain, delicate, yes, even beautiful, but unbreakable.” He raised his Absinthe glass, the movement theatrical, hollow. “Love isn’t possession. It isn’t about binding people to you. Love is surrender. It’s knowing how to let go and not unravel. It's watching them go and choosing not to burn your world into nothing but smoldering ashes in their absence.”
Next came Crowley. No smirk, no witty remark to undercut the tension. Just a long pause and that infamous stillness, the kind that meant something cold was coming. He didn’t look at Lestat right away. “You didn’t make a daughter,” he said finally, voice even, almost gentle in its contempt. “You made a failsafe.”
He leaned forward slightly, folding his hands with deliberate care. “She was small. Tragic. Haunted by a life she didn’t choose, in a body she could never grow out of. And you knew Louis. You knew that you could use her to bind him tighter to you than any vow.”
His tone never rose in volume, but the venom behind it was inescapable. “I’ve never seen the like. Even demons don't strike bargains so drenched in selfishness.”
Lestat stared down into his half forgotten drink, jaw tight, shoulders rigid with tension. His voice started off quietly but it quickly became overcome with his evident agony.
“You think I don’t know all these things? Don’t you dare to lector me on love as if I’ve never known it. I loved her. Not simply as a toy or a chain. Maybe I did give her eternity just to bind Louis. But a small part of me gave it to her because I couldn’t bear to see her fade into the void.”
When he finally lifted his gaze, the usual theatrical gleam in his eyes was gone, stripped bare, revealing something far more human. Despair. “Yes,” he said, voice low, almost hoarse, “I made her what she was. A child vampire. In those early years, I truly believed I was giving her, and Louis, something like happiness.”
He gave a short, bitter laugh as a flicker of something akin to pain crossed his features. "She was all golden Botticelli-like curls that framed a face set in alabaster. Her eyes, large and intensely blue, held a wisdom and a darkness that betrayed her age. She was an ethereal beauty untouched by the passage of years. Her small and delicate form with it's deceptive fragility concealed her immortal and fiercely predatory nature."
"I can still see her in my restless dreams. She appeared to be all dolls, ribbons, curls, and lace. Although decades pasted, and the world only saw a child I could feel a wrongness growing inside her. On the outside she appeared to be a beautiful doll but within her mind I sensed her fury. Her rage. Her mind slowly sharpened like a blade. A soul aging without mercy, trapped in porcelain skin.”
His voice dipped lower, tinged with something close to reverence. “She read philosophy at an age when others were still spelling out fairy tales. She dissected theology like a philosopher, stripped away the moral pretense of saints and sinners alike. She was brilliant. Unrelenting. And utterly caged.”
"She was my beloved student. Brilliant, merciless, her mind sharp as shattered glass. I took pride in her quick mind, her cunning. I taught her how to hunt, showed her the thrill of the kill. A little child she was, but also a fierce killer, now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child's demanding."
"She learned quickly, with a voracious bloodlust that equaled my own, sometimes we felled entire families together. It was a thrill to take that spark of innocence and mold it, guide it into my shadowed existence. I lavished my affection on her."
His voice faltered slightly as his memories crashed into the shore of remembrance. "I can't deny that I desperately wanted to force Louis into binding himself to me for eternity. l had no scruples about using anything or anybody to get what I want, including Claudia."
"I knew he was extremely depressed. He was unhappy being with me and I had grown to fear his abandonment. I truly believed that giving Claudia the Dark Gift was a necessity, the decision that was born out of my desperate need to provide Louis with an anchor. He was adrift, consumed by his melancholy and human grief. He threatened to slip away from me entirely, back into the oblivion of self-destruction. I took advantage of his inherent goodness, his capacity for fierce affection."
"I knew he would love her more than the fleeting warmth of the sun he could no longer feel, more than the fading ghosts of his human life, more than his guilt and the self denial. She would be his reason to live, his tether, his redemption. She would mean more to him than his own soul, more than me. I refused to lose him so I gifted him with redemption wrapped in lace and blood, and I declared us a family. I knew he would love her, protect her, and in doing so, remain bound to me, to our shared family. "
A softer quality entered his tone, a fleeting glimpse of a time long past. "And for a time it worked. We were happy. For sixty-five years, we lived as a family, Claudia, Louis, and I. The grand houses we inhabited echoed with her laughter, her childish demands, even Louis's rare, hesitant smiles."
"I gave her everything. Elegant dresses, the finest silks, a first class education. All material riches were lavished upon her. I even taught her how to play the piano myself. She had two loving parents between Louis and myself. We doted upon her, granting her every wish. Even dour Louis began to smile more frequently. He had found a focus, a purpose in caring for her. I didn’t know then that these were our last happy, fleeting moments."
"Claudia wasn’t the child I tried to pretend she was. She continued to grow older in every way except the ones she thought mattered; her mind matured quickly even as her body stayed locked in its porcelain perfection. She read too much, asked too many questions. She would grow sullen and silent. "
"She would spend hours staring at her reflection in the mirror, not for vanity, but out of loathing. I watched as her beauty became her prison. But I knew that one day she would demand answers to her questions, that her mounting fury would one day eclipse her affection for Louis and I. I saw it in the way she looked at us, at Louis, but especially at me, with a mixture of yearning and quiet rage. She saw the lie we lived, the cage I called our family."
"Her rebellion was not loud at first, but it was relentless. A question here, a scoff there. The dolls all vanished. The ribbons remained in their drawers. She stopped calling me "Papa." She began calling Louis by his name."
Lestat’s voice lowered, the shadows gathering in the hollows of his face. “But love, real love, cannot be forged in blood and desperation. She knew that. Before I did. Maybe she always did.”
A bitter smile ghosted across his lips. “She hated me, eventually. Of course she did. And how could she not? I had taken her future away from it and destroyed it. Dressed up her prison cell with ribbons and lace and lies.”
He paused, voice quieter. “She wanted to know where we came from, what we were, if there were others like us. I had no answers. Or rathe, I hoarded the few answers I did have like precious treasure, afraid knowledge might make her bold. And it did."
"Her fury simmered behind her smile. She would say things just to wound me, even to wound Louis, insisting on her adulthood, daring us to see her not as a child but as a woman trapped behind her cherub’s face. She wanted vengeance. She wanted escape. And in the end, she got both. Still, I kept her. I kept them both. I would not let go. And so she planned."
"She began killing not just to feed, but to prove something. To remind me she was no child, no doll I could dress and put on a shelf. Every corpse was an act of rebellion, artistic, feral, theatrical. She was brilliant, terrible, exquisite in her anger."
"And Louis, Louis, my beautiful, mournful Louis, he watched it all unfold with those accusing eyes, loving her the way I had once hoped he would love me. He never said a word in my defense. Not really. Not when it mattered."
"Claudia knew I would never let her go. Not her. Not him. She was mine, and he was mine, and I would sooner burn than set them free. So she plotted. Of course she did. Sweet, clever Claudia. That brilliant, bitter little girl in a woman’s mind. She smiled as she kissed my cheek and handed me death in a wine glass."
"She brought me two twin boys one night, beautiful, broken little offerings, a gift wrapped in lies. She said they were drunk, just enough to make the blood sweet. But the truth was far more bitter. Absinthe. Laudanum. Poison hidden in her act of kindness. I drank. I fell. And as the room spun, she came at me with a blade. My sweet Claudia, smiling as she slid the knife across my throat. My blood poured out, hot but not endless, until there was none left to give. Claudia and Louis, they thought me dead."
"They dragged my body to the swamp, like I was nothing more than a mistake to be buried in the muck. But I lived. Oh, I lived. And when they came home to pack their luggage and to live out her dreams I was waiting. Broken, yes. Starved. But alive. And angry.”
"Louis tried to stop me with fire. He set the house ablaze, my home, our home ,Rue Royale burning like a funeral pyre. I remember the taste of ashes and betrayal as they fled into the night. They left me behind. My beautiful monsters. But I was not finished with them."
Crowley leaned back, glass half-full, eyes glinting gold behind his glasses. “She wasn’t just trying to kill you, you know? She was trying to kill what you represented. The cage. The forever-childhood. The hand that fed her lies and called them love. Can’t say I blame her. But it was never going to end cleanly.You can’t rip out roots without cracking the foundation.”
Loki fingered the rim of his Absinthe glass, a smirk almost forming on his luscious lips. “You made a child with a mind far too quick for the cage you gave her, and then acted surprised when she turned on her creator. That’s not tragedy, Lestat. That’s hubris, just dressed up in silk.”
He pauses, sapphire blue eyes narrowing with the thought of something darker. “Though I admit, there’s something exquisite in the image. A bloodied blade. A maker undone by the one thing he thought he owned. I do so enjoy the irony.”
Lestat, his voice low, touched with bitterness and bravado. "Ah, irony. Yes, you would savor that Loki, wouldn’t you? But don’t mistake my performance for blindness. I knew what I’d made. I knew what she was becoming. Claudia was not some innocent flower pressed beneath my heel, she was both thorns and honey from the very start.”
Lestat stood, the amber light catching in the gold in his hair, his icy blue eyes burning now with something defiant “She tried to end me, and Louis, my beloved Louis, lit the match. But monsters, as you all well know, are hard to kill. They left me in the swamp, and still I crawled back. And when they fled to Europe, thinking me dead, thinking themselves free, I watched them go and I tracked their movements.”
He looks around the room, chin lifted, but the usual arrogance was edged with something that might be grief. "They began to search for others like us. I knew they would. Louis craved absolution, and Claudia? Claudia craved knowledge.”
“They wandered through the Old World like ghosts. From Venice to Vienna, crypt to cathedral, they searched. Louis, ever the romantic, hoped to find ancient truth, some noble history to give this curse meaning. Claudia, sharp little dagger that she was, wanted only to belong to something. To someone. To not be alone in her monstrousness.”
Lestat paced now, slow and deliberate, the way a predator circles a wounded animal, drawn by the scent of old betrayal still bleeding beneath the skin. "And then. Armand.”
“He approached Louis offering absolution, cloaked in all his eternal stillness. I wasn’t there at the time, of course, Paris was nothing but bitter ashes to me, but Armand was very forthcoming to me later. He never needed to touch Louis. Just whispered his words into his ear. He offered Louis something he knew he couldn't resist, meaning and philosophy. The promise of a different kind of eternity, one that offered purpose.”
He scoffed. “And of course, Louis grasped at that purpose like a drowning man clutches at air. Claudia, ever perceptive, saw the danger. She knew Armand wasn’t a savior. He was a trap, elegant maybe but inevitable.”
Lestat tilted his head. “Before they had ever entered Paris I had already told Armand what they’d done, their desperate attempt to murder me long before Louis ever stepped foot in the Théâtre des Vampires. I made sure Armand and his coven knew everything. That Louis had stood there and let my blood spill into the floorboards like wine. That they dragged me into the swamp and left me for dead. I told them Louis and Claudia were not to be trusted.”
Lestat laughed once, short, sharp, unkind. “But I underestimated Armand. He didn’t care about justice. He wanted them. Or at least… he wanted Louis.”
A dark shadow passed behind his eyes. “After it was all over Louis told me everything when he finally ventured back to New Orleans. He told me how Claudia had begged him to leave Paris. How she had pleaded with him to give a mortal woman, Madeleine, the Dark Gift. She was a mother mourning the loss of her mortal daughter. Claudia had convinced Louis to make her a guardian to keep her from being left behind with no guardian to look out for her. She knew Louis too well. She knew that as great as his love for her was, he loved the idea of absolution better. Even with Claudia wrapped around his soul like the roots of an old tree, even with the new little fledgling clinging to her skirts, he still chose Armand.”
Lestat’s voice cracked, but he kept going. "Claudia and Louis said goodbye like lovers parting before a war. Claudia told him she hoped they’d reconcile one day. She forgave him for wanting to leave her for Armand. His choice broke her heart. And they lay together one last time, like father and daughter, twin tragedies, and they waited for a dawn that they would never see.”
Lestat stood still now, the amber light painting his face in gold and ruin. His voice cracked at the edge, then sharpened like broken glass. “Armand could have stopped it. But he didn’t. Because if Claudia was gone, Louis would have nowhere else to go but into Armand’s arms.”
“And Louis, later, he told me what Armand never did. That the trial at the Theatre des Vampires was pure theater, a farce of vampire justice. The coven judged Louis and Claudia for her crime against me, her murder attempt, ironic, considering she believed I was dead. They condemned her, and Armand watched her and Madeleine burn in the sunlight. He had orchestrated the whole damn thing to have Louis to himself. He offered Louis his freedom, but only if he left Claudia behind. Seduction, dressed up as salvation. The man that I loved, cornered by a creature colder than even I could ever be.”
He stopped pacing and looked around the room now, chin lifted, but there was no arrogance in it, only the bitter glint of a man who has tasted his own downfall and memorized the flavor. “Louis set fire to the Théâtre in retaliation. Reduced Armand’s precious coven to embers and screams. And Armand, well Armand let him. He watched as it burned, watched as they died, just for the chance to have him, to touch my Louis. That was the price. There is always a price. Louis stayed with him. After the fire. After the ash.
Lestat's voice dropped to something quieter now, quieter, but no less sharp. “After Claudia, when she was gone…” His voice trailed off, the raw emotion palpable. “Don’t presume to know the emptiness that followed. The gnawing absence of that sharp, clever little mind. Perhaps mine was a selfish love, born out of my own needs, but it was love nonetheless. A flawed, broken thing, but undeniably, mine.”
He moved forward as though the memory itself had weight, heavy and cold as old Paris fog. “Louis and Armand traveled together for years. Armand finally had what he wanted. Louis, broken and guilt-drenched, was tethered to him only by his grief and their shared silence. But Louis never really came back after Claudia was gone. Not to Armand. Not to himself.”
Lestat paused. “The boy I made, the poet with too much heart and too little hunger, was unraveling. And Armand, for all his ageless calm, couldn’t put him back together.”
Lestat turned, eyes catching the room again, pinning them all with a truth he’d long buried. “And eventually, Louis left him. Left Armand and the hollow ghost of the salvation he’d been promised. He told me later, it was all ashes. Claudia was the sun that had kept him warm, even in the darkest of nights. And once she was gone…”
A breath. A break. “He said Armand tried to explain things to him. How he was told her fate was sealed the moment his coven knew of her existence. He explained that vampires made so young, trapped in a child's body, were abominations. They were against the natural order. A crime against eternity.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “And yet, Armand had let her live. Or at least he let her live long enough to get close to Louis. Long enough to know of the hurt that would result in her loss.”
Jareth’s voice was smooth, silken despite the disdain. “Children should never be made immortal. It's not mercy, it’s vanity, not love. The child becomes a mirror, forever reflecting the one who made them.” He toyed with the crystal ball cradled in his hand, his eyes grew distant. “Armand didn’t spare her. He staged her death like a scene in a Shakespearean play he knew would end in tragedy. It was always about control. In the end, it’s always about whose hand holds the string.”
Crowley as he continued to swirl the remainder of his drink around his whisky glass, his voice soft and sardonic. “Funny, isn’t it? How eternity always comes with fine print. ‘Live forever, terms and conditions apply.’” He leans back, head tilted. "Armand didn’t love Louis. He coveted him. Gave him grief as a leash and called it understanding. Some devils don’t need to tempt. They just wait for you to be too desperate to resist.”
Dream, speaking after a long silence, his gaze fixed on something only he sees. “There is something profoundly cruel in offering eternity to those still learning what it means to live. Time is not mercy. It is weight. And some souls, fragile, brilliant, are not meant to carry it.”
“She was never meant to last. A child given the weight of centuries, even in dreams, such things decay.” His voice is nearly a whisper. “Armand sought possession. Louis sought meaning. And Claudia, she sought only to be seen as more than the monster they made her. In the end, none of them were free.”
Crowley spoke again, quietly. “Oh, I don’t know. Might be some justice in the way things turned out. Armand played his little game, pulled his strings, and in the end? Got left behind, just like the rest of us.” He paused glancing at Lestat with something like respect.
Loki, his voice dry, almost amused, but his eyes tell another story.. "Armand’s sin wasn’t cruelty. It was patience. The kind of patience only the old and starving perfect. He didn’t steal Louis, he waited for Louis to lose everything else. “He downs his glass and sets it down with a soft clink. “You’d think a man like that would at least enjoy the prize. But that’s the trick, isn’t it? Win the game, and you’re left holding the emptiest thing in the room.”
“It’s all so very familiar, isn’t it? The gods call it ‘creation.’ But what it really is, is ownership. And when the creation rebels, the master bleeds.” He tilts his head at Lestat. “She tried to kill you. Failed, clearly. But in turning on you, she bound your name to hers forever. That’s the crueler victory.. She ensured you’d never be rid of her. That’s a different kind of immortality. She made sure your story would never be told without hers bleeding through it.”
Spike, his voice gruff, but with a flicker of something softer. "Should’ve let the girl live. That’s what it comes down to.”
He stared into his pint glass, his jaw tight. With a slow exhale, he pulls a cigarette from a half empty pack lying on the bar. He lights it up with a practiced flick, and draws in the smoke deep into his lungs. “Yeah, she was dangerous. Yeah, she was made wrong. But so were the whole damn lot of you, so are all of us. Louis loved her. And Armand let her die. That’s not love, that’s strategy.”
He takes another long drag, the ember flaring bright in the low light. Smoke curls around his face as he speaks again, voice low, almost reluctant. “Made her ‘cause you were lonely.”
A pause. A breath through his nose, thick with memory. “Yeah. That sounds familiar." He doesn’t look at Lestat when he says it. Just stares at his cigarette like it might offer some answer. "Dru was the same, y’know. Not a child, not exactly, but… broken. Already cracked wide open by Angelus before I ever touched her. He wanted to see what would happen to take pure innocence and warp it. What he could make of her once he’d hollowed her soul out of her.”
His lip curls. “I spent a century patchin’ her back together with blood and lullabies. And every time she looked at me, it was like she saw him.”
Spike swallows hard, eyes suddenly a thousand years old. He exhales slowly, smoke trailing from his nostrils. “Claudia didn’t stand a chance. Neither did Dru. Doesn’t matter if it was love. Doesn’t matter if you meant well. You gave her forever without askin’ if she wanted it.”
A bitter silence falls. One last drag. “She burned for it. Dru just went mad. Same bloody story.”
Lestat stood motionless for a breath too long, long enough for the silence to sharpen. Then, slowly, he laughed. Not mockery. Not dismissal. A laugh like shattered crystal: beautiful, brittle, and bitter to the marrow.
"Do you think I don’t know?" he said at last, voice stretched thin with something like weariness. "Do you think I haven't paced those same rooms in my mind, counted the blood that was shed in every step?"
He crossed to the bar, picking up the dark bottle that Decim had left, pouring himself a glass of deep red wine...or maybe something older. He didn’t drink it. "I didn’t make her for her sake. I made her for him. For Louis. I was bleeding out and desperate. I thought, I hoped, if I gave him something to protect, something to bind him, he wouldn’t leave me."
His fingers flexed on the glass, knuckles pale. "It wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t love. It was desperation."
He turned as the light glanced off the sharp angles of his cheekbones. "But don’t think I didn’t come to love her. Don’t think I didn’t try. Claudia was fierce and clever and utterly unwilling to belong to anyone. She hated me for what I’d done, and by God, she was right to. I hated myself for doing it."
His eyes, briefly, found Spike’s. Not as adversary. As kin. "You tried to fix her, didn’t you? Dru. You tried to love the damage away." A bitter smile. "We all do. And we all fail. Because it was never about fixing them. It was about not being alone in the wreckage."
Spike didn’t flinch under Lestat’s gaze. He took a drag, the tip of his cigarette burning steady, then exhaled through his nose like he was tired of the whole conversation. “Yeah,” he said finally. Voice low, rough. “I tried.”
He dragged in smoke like it was the only thing grounding him. “Fed her, sang to her, carved the bloody world into something soft just so she could sleep without screaming. I tried to make it quiet in her head. Tried to give her something that didn’t hurt.”
He looked up, not at Lestat, but past him. “Didn’t matter. She still saw him. Always saw him.” Another long drag. The ember pulsed like a heartbeat. “Don’t tell me love’s not enough. I know it ain’t. I’ve lived it.”
Lestat regarded Spike with something that wasn’t quite admiration, but wasn’t scorn either. Something more intimate. Recognition, maybe. The glance of one ruined creature to another. “You did try to fix her,” he said, voice low. “We always try to pick up the pieces but sometimes they just don't fit back together anymore. We don’t do it for them, we do it for us. Because if we can piece them back together, maybe we’re not as shattered as we seem.”
A pause, the faintest tilt of his lips. “But you stayed. That’s the difference. You didn’t make her to bind someone else. You weren’t crafting a leash, you were her lifeline. And that’s…” He exhaled. “That’s rarer than we like to admit.”
He lifted his glass but didn’t drink. “She was broken, Spike. So was Claudia. So was I, if I’m being honest. But you? You carried the damage like it was sacred. Like if you held it close enough, it wouldn’t cut so deep.”
Lestat looked down into the glass, then back up, gaze flint and fire. “We don’t get points for trying. But it means something all the same. Even if it ends in ash.” He nodded once. Not quite approval. Not quite apology. Just truth.
Spike didn’t look up right away. Just flicked the ash from his cigarette and watched it fall, like ashes falling from a nuclear burnt-out heaven. “Truth is…” he muttered, voice rough and dry, " You love someone that far gone, all you do is go down with ‘em.”
He looked at Lestat then, really looked. No posturing. No swagger. Just tired, clear-eyed understanding. "But I stayed, yeah. And I’d do it again. Not ‘cause it was noble. Just ‘cause I loved her.”
He snorted softly, shaking his head. “And that’s the bloody curse, isn’t it? We don’t burn for the things we do. We burn for the things we feel.”
Lestat looked to Crowley, to Dream, then finally, Loki. That last gaze held a note of reluctant understanding. "She didn’t just try to kill me. She tried to erase my entire existence. And still, I see her in every mirror. Still, I hear her laugh in places I know she never stood. She haunts me."
A pause. Glass raised, not to drink, but like a toast made to ghosts. "She was never mine. Not really. But I’ll carry her until the end of time, all the same."
"You're all right, of course. She bound me to her like a curse. My name is stitched to hers in blood and fire, and no amount of time will unmake it."
Lestat’s voice lowered. "But don’t mistake me for a martyr. I have burned others and called it devotion. I have loved selfishly. I have built shrines on bones and dared call them cathedrals."
"But I remember her laughter. I remember her rage. I remember how she stood against me like a flame refusing to be extinguished. She wasn’t a mistake. She wasn’t a tragedy."
Another pause. Glass raised, finally touched to his lips. "She was Claudia. And that, that is immortal."
Spike took one last drag, the ember flaring red, then crushed the cigarette into the nearest ashtray. Done. "Now,” he said, voice steadier, “go on, Brat Prince. Finish your tale.”
Lestat swirled the last of his wine, gaze drifting past the rim of the glass like it was some pool of memory.
“After Louis left, after the fire and the ash and the long silence that followed, I stayed in New Orleans. In that crumbling old house. I fed on rats,” Lestat said quietly, almost to himself. “Like Louis once did, before Claudia. Before I bound him to me. Funny, isn’t it? I mocked him then, called it weakness, cowardice. And yet there I was, years later, hunched in the shadows, gnawing on vermin like some penitent creature in a forgotten fable. The so-called Brat Prince brought low, not by war or fire, but by the weight of my own sins.”
A wry smile touched his lips, brittle but intact. "And then, of course, he came back. Armand.” The name hung heavy in the air like smoke. “He found me where I’d buried myself away from life. Came gliding in like some vision from a better life. Told me Louis had left him. That he was alone now, too. That we could… rebuild.”
Lestat scoffed, shaking his head. “He wove illusions, my body restored, my home as it once was, candlelight and velvet, music drifting through the halls like ghosts that never left. Armand always did have a flair for pageantry.”
He gave a thin, mirthless smile. “Said we didn’t have to be shadows anymore. That we could build something beautiful atop the ruins. Then he offered me his blood, as if intimacy could be bartered like coin. As if that would gild the ashes.”
His gaze drifted, unfocused for a moment, before narrowing with purpose. “But I’d learned what kind of beauty he deals in. Beauty that blinds before it burns. And I knew then, whatever he wanted, it wasn’t me. It was possession. Echoes. Maybe even penance. But never love.”
A beat. “I declined his offer.”
A slow exhale followed, quieter now. “A few months later, I went to ground. 1929. Let the world carry on its grand performance without me. I was tired of playing the villain, the savior, the liar. I’d had enough curtain calls.”
A faint smirk tugged at his mouth. There was a long pause. Not awkward, earned. The kind of silence that blooms only after truth is laid bare, thread by thread, until there’s nothing left but breath and memory.
A slow nod from Dream. Crowley exhaled through his nose, muttering something about "bloody romantics."
Loki said nothing, but his gaze sharpened, thoughtful, almost wary. Spike just dragged from a fresh cigarette, eyes low, and muttered, “Reckon we all get our ghosts in the end.”
Lestat sighed deeply. “You asked about love,” he said, voice soft but steady. “And I told you. Not all of it. Not the thousand hands I held for warmth, or the thousand names I whispered to forget his. But the truth, as close as I know how to shape it.”
The room felt heavier, quieter. But not sad.
Just… real.
Then Crowley lifted his glass lazily. “To surviving love. Or at least drinking through it.”
Then Crowley lifted his glass lazily.
“To surviving love. Or at least drinking through it.”
They toasted. Not to victory. Not even to peace. To endurance.
Lestat was back in his preferred spot, leaning against the jukebox. He let his fingers toy with the rim of his glass. “Time passed. How much, I couldn’t tell you. Decades, maybe. I slept. Dreamed of fire. Of laughter. Of Louis.”
He smirked, something fond and incredulous beneath it. “I’d been asleep for decades, buried by my own hand, thinking I was done with the world. But the world, apparently, wasn’t done with me."
A pause. “Then I heard music.”
He smirked, something fond and incredulous beneath it. “A band. Playing in a house near where I lay buried. Loud, brazen little humans. Their music bled through the soil like a heartbeat. It was loud, it was messy, it was alive. And something in me stirred.”
“I clawed my way back to the surface, filthy, half-mad, starving. And what did I find? A drum kit. A guitar. Boys with eyeliner and noise in their blood. They called themselves Satan’s Night Out. Naturally, I introduced myself. Told them exactly what I was.”
His smirk widened. “They didn’t even flinch. Said they already knew me, from a book.”
The words hit the air like stone through glass. Lestat let the silence stretch, then added, “And they didn’t run. They said they’d heard of me. Through a book. Interview with the Vampire. Imagine my surprise.”
He shook his head, that amused bitterness still lingering. “Merde. Mon Dieu. Ce petit martyr aux yeux tristes—he made me a monster with flair!”
He ran a hand through his hair, pacing slightly. “I was furious. Enraged. But more than that, I was hurt. Not because he lied… but because he believed it.”
“Louis's had told a human journalist, David, his version of things. Melancholy, of course. Beautiful. But incomplete. I read it, and something in me flared up again. I would not be defined by another man’s grief. So I rose. Took my story back. Claimed the stage. And I didn’t just walk into the light, I danced in it.”
He glanced toward the others, something quieter softening his edges. “The books, mine, his, ours, made me infamous. Among humans, among vampires. And with notoriety came expectation.”
He glanced toward the others, something quieter softening his edges. “The books, mine, his, ours, made me infamous. Among humans, among vampires. And with notoriety came expectation." A ghost of a grin tugged at his lips. “And I, of course… I delivered.”
He sank into the memory like it was silk. “That band, Satan’s Night Out, I didn’t just join them. I elevated them. Took them from smoky house parties to stadiums drenched in light and sound. We made a stage of the world. And me? I was glorious.”
A flicker of fire behind his eyes. “It reminded me of Paris, you see. That crumbling little theater, the hunger for attention. The applause like blood in the veins. I was a sensation once. A mortal boy in borrowed velvet. And now, now I had eternity’s spotlight.”
He exhaled, almost wistfully. “I reveled in it. Not just the music, but the spectacle. The worship. The illusion that I could be something more than what Louis saw. Something beautiful.”
He exhaled, almost wistfully. “I reveled in it. Not just the music, but the spectacle. The worship. The illusion that I could be something more than what Louis saw. Something beautiful.”
He let the silence linger, then shrugged, almost sheepishly. “Of course, I didn’t stay on stage forever. I retired the fangs-and-leather look, left the screaming crowds behind.” A smirk curled his lips. “And in the years that followed, well… I lived. More than I ever had. I loved, far too many to name. I broke hearts. I got mine broken. And if I told you every sordid, glittering detail, we’d be here until sunrise.”
A beat. The smirk faded.
Lestat leaned back, fingers curled loosely around the stem of his glass. His voice, when it came, was quieter now. Reflective. Tired in a way only the old can be. “There were others, of course.” A soft scoff, more amused than bitter. "Kings and queens. Prophets and poets. Angels in disguise, devils in finer ones. Lovers who tried to remake me, and others I tried to remake in turn. Some I chased through centuries, others I buried before a season’s end. There was devotion. Obsession. A few flares of real connection, and far too many imitations of love.”
He swirled the wine, watching it catch the firelight like blood. “I walked through heaven once, or what passed for it. I possessed bodies not my own, danced with gods, defied them too. I built sanctuaries and tore them down with the same hands. I searched for answers, always. In scripture. In music. In other people's eyes. None of them stayed. Not really.”
His gaze flicked to the window, as if he could see the Rue Royale through it.
“But the world was changing. Vampires were changing. We weren’t myths anymore. We were stories. And stories need figures to lead them. When the world crumbled around us, when the old ways fell, and the old tyrants died, someone had to take up the burden.”
A pause. Then, quieter: “And they turned to me.”
He gave a dry laugh. “Of course they did. I had the bloodline, Akasha's, the progenitor of the vampire race, blood burned in my veins. I had the power, the history, the spectacle. They remembered the Brat Prince, the one who exposed us to the world with guitars and eyeliner, who danced in the flames and dared mortals to believe.”
A glance passed among the others. “They saw in me strength. A link to the old ones. To Marius. To Akasha. To the very heart of our kind. And with so many lost, so many burned out or turned feral, I was… familiar. Enduring. They thought that meant stable.”
He gave a slow shrug. “I didn’t want it. I wasn’t made to rule. I was made to rage. To question. To tear down what others built just to see what it looked like in ruin. But when the tribe started collapsing, when the world turned to chaos and silence, I couldn’t just turn away.”
“They begged for a king. I gave them a prince. A joke, really. A title lifted from mockery. They wanted a leader. A king. A savior. I refused. I refused a dozen times, in a dozen ways. I wasn’t born to serve thrones, I was made to break them. And here, a ghost of a smile. “Prince Lestat. Crowned not just with a crown of gold, but with defiance. Not chosen by fate, but by need. And for the first time, didn’t run.”
He looked away, toward some shadow only he could see. “That’s why they followed. Not just because I could lead, but because I couldn't be ignored." He smiled, faint and wicked. “They call me Prince Lestat. A joke at my expense, and a crown I wear only when I must.”
A silence, full of everything unsaid. A breath. “And then, Louis came back.” The name carried a weight no crown could rival. "He met me in New Orleans. Walked into my rooms like a ghost. We spoke as we hadn’t in a hundred years. No rage. No guilt. Just truth."
"I asked if he would come with me, he didn’t speak. I just reached out my hand. He took it. He said he would come with me. To the Court. To France. Not as a subject. Not as a servant. But as something more.”
A smile, touched with awe. “He refused a crown, of course. Said he’d had enough of heavy things. But he came all the same. Took a suite of rooms beside mine. We filled it with familiar furniture, Rue Royale reborn, suites made to echo our old home, dark wood, candlelight, books and silence. The others call me Prince Lestat, and I let them. But I rule for their sake, not mine. I no longer need the crown.”
He looked around the room, his gaze lingering on each of them, Crowley, Dream, Loki, Spike. “I have what I need. A quiet court. And Louis beside me, no longer lost, no longer mine to control. He is my consort. He is not my possession. He is Louis. And at last, after centuries of hunger and fire and loss, I am not alone. He's just there. Always.”
There was a long pause. Not awkward, earned. The kind of silence that blooms only after truth is laid bare, thread by thread, until there’s nothing left but breath and memory.
A slow nod from Dream. Crowley exhaled through his nose, muttering something about "bloody romantics." Loki said nothing, but his gaze sharpened, thoughtful, almost wary. Spike just dragged from a fresh cigarette, eyes low, and muttered, “Reckon we all get our ghosts in the end.”
Lestat leaned back in his chair, the curve of his mouth bittersweet. “You asked about love,” he said, voice soft but steady. “And I told you. Not all of it. Not the thousand hands I held for warmth, or the thousand names I whispered to forget his. But the truth, as close as I know how to shape it.”
The room felt heavier, quieter. But not sad.
Dream sat in stillness for a moment longer, as if tasting the silence. “Immortality,” he said softly, “is not a gift. Nor is it a punishment. It is merely time—stretched thin enough to expose every flaw, and bright enough to etch the memory of love into eternity."
Crowley snorted faintly, swirling his drink. “Well, that was a bloody opera, wasn’t it? Passion, betrayal, rats, lot of rats, actually.” He tipped his glass toward Lestat with a smirk. “At least you got a happy ending. Or... well, the vampire version.”
Spike leaned back in his chair, cigarette glowing anew. “It ain’t about happy, mate. It's about who’s still standin’ beside you when the fire dies down.” He looked at Lestat, something like respect flickering behind his eyes. " You got someone still walkin' beside you."
Loki offered the faintest of smiles, more shadow than expression. “We are all, in our own way, architects of our own ruin and redemption. You just built yours out of slaughter and scripture.” He raised his glass in toast. “To the Brat Prince. Long may he reign... with dignity, or in delightful defiance.”
Lestat gave a soft, almost weary laugh as he too raised his glass. “Defiance, always.”
Then Crowley lifted his glass lazily. “To surviving love. Or at least drinking through it.”
Dream, with a gaze that seemed to hold all the quiet corners of existence, would lift his glass slowly, his voice a low, resonant murmur. "To the unyielding dance of memory and desire. May we always find meaning in the shadows, and beauty in the ruin."
Spike would give his beer bottle a casual, almost dismissive flick, a wry smirk playing on his lips. "To the bloody survivors. May we keep our fangs sharp, and our enemies on the run. Cheers, mates."
Jareth, with a theatrical flourish and a glint of mischief in his eyes, would raise his goblet high, his voice a smooth, captivating purr:
"To the glorious chaos of existence. May your chains be silken, and your labyrinths delightful. And may the Bowie always play on."
They toasted. Not to victory. Not even to peace.
The moment lingered, l and then silence fell, like the hush after a final chord in a symphony, the kind that echoes through a theater long after the audience has gone home. They sat together, not as monsters or myths, but as men who had lived too long and loved too fiercely.
Outside, the night deepened. But within those walls, there was light. And company.
Notes:
Have you got any suggestions for someone who you would like to see drop in at The Bar at the End of the World? Send me a message or write it in a comment. I'm always open to suggestions
zanthinegirl on Chapter 1 Mon 12 May 2025 12:09AM UTC
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RoseWineGoddess on Chapter 1 Fri 06 Jun 2025 04:28AM UTC
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crowleyscardigan on Chapter 1 Sun 12 Oct 2025 03:06PM UTC
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RoseWineGoddess on Chapter 1 Sun 12 Oct 2025 04:44PM UTC
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Amberrose (Guest) on Chapter 1 Mon 13 Oct 2025 11:05PM UTC
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RoseWineGoddess on Chapter 1 Tue 14 Oct 2025 09:58PM UTC
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Hiding_In_the_shadows on Chapter 8 Tue 14 Oct 2025 07:29PM UTC
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RoseWineGoddess on Chapter 8 Tue 14 Oct 2025 09:59PM UTC
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