Chapter Text
The sound of the rain began to be heard—thin and constant, as if the sky couldn't decide whether to cry or remain silent. The falling drops felt like a prayer without a god. At least, that's how I remember it.
The sound of those drops against the windows was the only thing breaking the silence in that somber room.
They fell with the softness of a secret. The kind of rain that seems to come not from the sky, but from within the chest.
In the house we had shared for thirty-five years, the air was thick with echoes, as if the walls kept repeating names no one said anymore.
Silence had become as familiar as my own shadow. I wandered the halls like a widowed lover—but Louis, my beloved Louis, was not dead. He had only... gone.
Louis de Pointe du Lac had been my everything since that distant night in New Orleans, when I first saw him beneath the sickly light of a gas lamp. That man with cinnamon-colored skin, sorrowful eyes, and measured gestures walked as if the night itself were his ally, and I... I knew my eternity had begun in that moment.
Thirty-five years...
Thirty-five years of watching him read in a hushed voice, hunt with an elegance no one could match, write thoughts in notebooks he never let me read. I knew him like one knows a poem—by heart, and still mysterious. But something had changed in him. It wasn't just his silence, but the lack of weight in it. He walked as if on another plane, as if he existed in this world only by inertia. He was fading before my eyes. And I, foolish immortal, let him.
I sighed, though I didn't need to.
I remained standing by the window, staring without seeing, trapped in the repetition of moments that felt increasingly distant. Gone were the nights where Louis's laughter lit up the halls, where the stillness of the world was a shared refuge, not a prison.
But now, Louis no longer laughed. Not with me.
— Where are you, Louis?— I murmured—not to the place where he might be, but to the soul I felt I had lost.
I heard him enter the room. Louis walked with mechanical grace, without the fire that used to burn even in his silences. His presence, once warm and magnetic, was now merely an elegant shadow with blurred edges.
— You've been out again...— I said, turning to look at him.
— I had things to do,— Louis replied, not even bothering with an excuse. He hung his soaked coat with a slowness that wounded more than any words.
— What things?— I asked, taking a step closer.
Louis finally looked at me. His eyes were the same, but something in them had changed... a distance, a door closed from the inside.
— I don't know why you keep asking,— he answered in a low voice. — It doesn't matter anymore."
— It doesn't matter anymore.— As if what they had was something that could simply be filed away, gather dust, be forgotten.
I remembered nights when Louis would talk for hours—about art, books, dreams. Now his words were counted, precise. Cold.
Louis once told me, "I don't recognize myself without you."
Now, it was me who couldn't recognize him even when I was there.
...
The days passed like leaves torn loose by the wind. I tried to find traces, fragments of the Louis I had loved so deeply. I tried to be patient...
Until I couldn't anymore.
And so, I did what I did best: I tried everything.
...
First, I tried to remind him who we were. I dressed as I had in our early years—open shirts, that woody cologne he used to rip off with his teeth, and the tilted smile he once said he hated because it always conquered him. I spoke in low tones, seductive, with the same voice I used when I first offered him blood. I approached with that old hunger, lips brushing his neck without biting. I offered private hunts, elaborate scenes under moonlight just for him. I searched for fire in his eyes, the memory of the passion that had bound us beyond time and torment.
I set tables for dinners he wouldn't eat, played piano melodies that once made him close his eyes and sigh. I hunted with more drama than usual, staining only my lips, hoping to catch his gaze, his laugh, his sharp comment. Nothing.
So I provoked him. I showed him I could still be desired, that I could still enchant. I brought a young vampire home—beautiful and vulgar—and made sure Louis saw him leave my room shirtless, marked with something red that wasn't blood. I laughed loudly, left doors open on purpose, spoke in suggestive tones meant to be overheard. Louis looked at me like a child throwing a tantrum. He said nothing. That night he wrote for hours. And I... I almost wished he would hate me, even just that.
But it was all in vain. Louis didn't respond. He barely smiled. Then lowered his gaze, as if love were no longer enough.
...
One night, without ceremony, he said:
— I'm going for a walk.
Nothing more.
I watched him from the doorway of the parlor. Something in the air felt... off. Quiet in a different way.
— At this hour?— I asked, trying not to sound like I was begging.
Louis simply nodded.
He took nothing with him. No books, no papers, not even his vial of old soil. Just his coat and that way of vanishing even while standing in front of you. I nodded, not meeting his eyes. Something in the air knew the truth before I did. And when I went to his room—our room—everything was still in place. As if he hadn't finished packing. As if he might come back.
But he didn't.
The following days dragged with the weight of the unspeakable. I called to him in my mind, searched for him in cities, in shadows, in reflections that were never him. My Louis—the man who endured the scorn of the world, the burden of immortality, and the weight of my relentless love—had given up. Not on life, but on me.
...
That night, weeks later, I walked through the house as if each corner were a mausoleum. I ran my hands along the books, the frames, the remnants of a life that no longer belonged to me. I opened a bottle of wine and poured myself a glass without toasting.
After much hesitation, I sat at the piano...
The piano, coated in a fine layer of dust, had been silent for weeks. No one had dared touch it since the last time Louis sat there and joined me in that Satie piece that always made his eyes glisten—though not the last time I played it for him.
I took a moment to appreciate it, cleaning it gently.
No plan. No audience. Just me, and the emptiness where Louis used to be. The keys were cold, like my hands. I closed my eyes and began to play. The first chord trembled, but soon I found the melody.
And then, without thinking, I began to sing. A foreign melody, but one that felt written for us.
"I don't know who you are anymore..."
My voice, broken. The rain outside, relentless. And in every note, an apology I could no longer give. A plea that arrived too late. A goodbye I didn't know how to say.
"You say you've changed, you're acting so strange..."
I sang until my chest ached.
"Do I ever cross your mind? 'Cause you left yours all over mine..."
I remembered how Louis, in his silences, would stare at the sky as if waiting for someone to come get him. How he liked to touch the fabric of my shirt after dawn, as if to remind himself I was still there. How he clung to my wrist when he thought I was asleep.
"I try to find you in the dark but I don't know where you are..."
And I searched for him now. In every corner of the house, in memories, in the music we shared. In his underlined books, in the letters we never sent. He had been in everything. He had been everything.
His soft breath echoed in a moment I could never forget—Louis standing in the doorway, half-lit by candlelight, whispering that he would stay forever... and meaning it. When "forever" was still a promise.
"Can you hear me now?"
My voice rose like a ghost from my own longing. I used to believe he always heard me, even in silence. Even across cities. Across centuries.
And when the final note faded, I understood. Louis hadn't left with nothing.
He had taken everything.
My love. My reflection. My companion in the night.
And sometimes, goodbye is not a word.
It is a door that never opens again.