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Lestat’s placidity is still odd to Louis, a week after getting him back. The Lestat of Louis’ memory, the one he committed pages and pages to in that book, the one he held onto while he scoured the footage of Akasha for any sign of Lestat, was always so animated. His emotions close to the surface, ready to come out at any time. Now, Lestat is still quick to anger or quick to tears, perhaps quicker than before, but between the outbursts, it’s like Lestat is blank. To Louis, he looks like a statue, watching the world with paler eyes and sharper features.
They’ve been recuperating with the rest of the leftover vampires on Armand’s island. Lestat, who was closer to a feral dog than a person when returned, was a danger to anyone who approached him but Louis. They’ve been secluded in their own cottage now for a week, blood deliveries left on the porch in the middle of the day. Not that Lestat needs that much blood anymore, nor that much sleep. He spends his days sitting and staring at the walls; Louis caught him once when a nightmare pulled him awake in the middle of the day, and Lestat wasn’t next to him in bed. He wandered to the living room to see Lestat staring, blank-faced, at the Gustav Klimt hanging there. Three Ages of Women. Louis wonders why Armand put them here, with that painting.
Louis has been doing a lot of reading, as if any of it will help. Alongside the blood deliveries, there are stacks of books on memory loss, healing from major trauma, recovering autonomy. Lestat reads none of it; his eyes glaze over the titles as if he doesn’t even process them. He doesn’t do much of anything; even the piano and guitar Louis insisted on getting sit untouched, dominating their small living space.
What he does and does not remember is a mystery to Louis. Lestat seems to know the general arc of their relationship, companions to murder to estrangement to finding one another again. He knows that Claudia existed, knows the love he felt for her, but can’t remember her turning or the specific details of their lives together. What he does remember is mixed in with what Akasha planted: false memories to try and poison Lestat from ever leaving. He has no memory of the concert, or the moments leading up to it. After the beheading, it’s blank.
Louis has tried every trick in the books on trauma-related memory loss he can find, but the problem is that Lestat has not repressed these memories, but that they’ve been obfuscated or altered by the strongest mind manipulator in the world. He worries sometimes that they’re gone forever, that this is Lestat now, this broken, scared, terribly strong thing.
But the memories have been coming back, trickling through as Lestat does nothing more than sit around and drink blood in an attempt to wash Akasha’s out of him. Louis has tried to share some memories with Lestat through the blood, but that’s always been a weak way to try to exchange thoughts, and Lestat gets muddled by it sometimes. It would be easier if they could share minds, but Lestat has refused even Armand’s attempts, the walls of his mind now impenetrable.
They spend their nights tangled together in bed, Lestat with his ear pressed into Louis’ chest to hear his heartbeat. Louis wonders if Lestat remembers that, their hearts beating in sync, or if that had been a rediscovery for him. If Louis tries to peel away to do anything - eat, shower, check his phone - Lestat clings so hard that Louis can’t move. Louis could find it annoying, and maybe he will if Lestat is still like this in 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years. But now, Louis understands it so deeply, feels it so similarly, that he, too, doesn’t want to part.
There are many things Louis could feel towards Lestat: annoyance, anger, frustration. And he probably does feel those things, under all the worry. Sometimes, he wants Lestat to start remembering just so Louis can be angry with him again. He was furious when the concert started; so angry he didn’t even watch until he heard the screams and the chaos. And then he couldn’t stop watching.
They were arguing up until the moment Lestat was pulled on stage, out there in the Montreal wilderness with screaming vamps and her hovering in the corner, one eyebrow raised the entire time. Louis still doesn’t know what Gabriella said to Lestat in those moments he gave them alone, at Lestat’s insistence and Louis’ reluctance. Maybe he could ask her; she’s somewhere else on this island, worrying about Lestat. Louis would rather go the rest of his immortal life never seeing her than asking, though.
“You’re seriously gonna go out there?” he asked, watching Lestat get dressed into his elaborate stage outfit like his neck was not still nearly slashed open. The mark was still an angry raised scar, matching Louis’.
“Yes. She is right; I promised this to her as one last gift. Then it’ll be over.” Lestat wouldn’t even look at Louis as he said this, hiding behind a wardrobe rack.
Louis scoffed. “You don’t have to do it, Les. You don’t have to do anything for her or these people or anyone. She doesn’t love you; they don’t love you. I love you.” Lestat paused, his face torn open by emotion, anger and surprise and hope. Louis stepped towards him. “I love you, and I don’t want you to do this. Isn’t that worth something?”
It wasn’t, apparently, because Lestat still got up there and performed. And then he was taken, gone for weeks while havoc was wreaked on the world. And now here he is, finally returned from the Queen after Louis spent those weeks in a haze of desperate grief, and he can’t remember what is real and what is not.
A cruel irony, perhaps, that the one time Louis was able to tell Lestat that he loves him, Lestat would forget it. Or not forget, but that it was taken from him by Akasha, as were many of his memories, replaced with false ones to keep him docile.
Louis is hoping the blood helps, which Lestat is drinking from him slowly, nice even pulls from the vein in Louis’ wrist. It’s one of the more tenuous theories, that cycling out Akasha’s blood will help Lestat. Louis isn’t sure how much of that he believes; Lestat was years removed from Akasha in New Orleans, and her blood still made him hot and angry. But still, every night they try. Cut open Lestat’s wrists to make him bleed, recutting as they heal almost impossibly fast now. Then, Lestat drinks from Louis. Always his wrist, though Louis has offered his neck. Their intimacy is slow to respark, but it’s far from Louis’ mind these days.
Maybe Lestat can feel it in the blood, their shared love. Louis is grateful that Lestat trusts him, even if he can’t remember much about him. Lestat’s body knows even if his mind has forgotten.
Lestat pulls away from Louis’ wrist, blood smeared over his lips, fangs still poking out. His blank, pale eyes make him look even more monstrous.
“You asked for the gift,” he states, looking directly at Louis. “Real or not real?”
Louis can feel tears pushing against the backs of his eyes. Just two days ago, Lestat had asked Louis if he forced the gift on him. Kidnapped Louis from his home to hold him prisoner and turn him against his will. Louis had just choked out a vehement “not real”, unable to tell Lestat that he was getting his memories mixed up. Lestat had looked visibly relieved, which hasn’t made Louis any more eager to tell Lestat the truth.
Louis nods slowly, stroking the back of Lestat’s hand with his thumb. “Real,” he says quietly. “You offered it to me, and I asked for it. So we could be companions.”
Lestat stares at a point beyond Louis’ shoulder. “I remember the church. The priests. Your brother. I remember kissing you on the altar and being the happiest I had ever been.
“I also remember standing on the roof with you two and pushing him off as you watched, horrified. His brain splattered across your mother’s flagstones. Real or not real?”
He turns his head smoothly to look Louis in the eye, stone-faced except for the small crinkle between his eyebrows. Louis’ breath is caught in his throat, from Lestat’s words and the display of small emotion that he’s spent this week trying to wring out of Lestat. This game they have been playing since Lestat came back, the confirmation of mixed-up, fucked up memories, is almost too much sometimes. Louis had never thought their roles would be reversed like this, Lestat searching desperately for the truth in what he remembers, and Louis there to provide it.
In their in-between years, not quite reunited, not quite separated, when they existed to one another over screens, Louis would ask Lestat frequently to corroborate his own memories. It was hard for him to tell what Armand had taken from him, and what he himself had buried with grief and denial. To Louis, Lestat had always lived his life moving forward, with none of the desire to relive his past. That made his memories truer, in a way. Fresher, less picked over and turned around. When Louis had learned his entire life with Armand was built around a lie, a false memory, his entire world was upended. Lestat is experiencing that emotion every day now.
“Not real,” Louis says thickly even though he’s not sure it’s the full truth. He told Lestat many times that he believes that he never did anything to Paul. Louis cannot let himself be dragged back down this path of resentment for what may very well be a false memory of Lestat’s. “He jumped, all on his own. After the funeral, you knew I would’ve done the same, so you offered yourself to me. You saved my life, twice.”
Louis is talking about the church and the trial, though Lestat’s memories of the trial are still muddied at best. Lestat processes that, blinking slowly as he does. The blood is drying on his face, crusty and dark. Louis licks his thumb and rubs at the blood, trying to clean it. Lestat leans slightly into the touch, eyelashes fluttering.
“The trial?” Lestat asks. He shifts his head so he can nuzzle his cheek in Louis’ palm. “That was the other time?”
Louis nods, but says nothing further. The trial is too much for him right now, this night, the same night that, earlier, Lestat had to ask if he had ever raped Claudia, used those exact words, and Louis had to insist over and over again that that was a false memory, implanted by Akasha. “Why would she do that?” Lestat had asked while crying. “It feels so real. Why would she do that? I don’t want to feel this.”
Louis didn’t know the answer to that. He knows fewer and fewer answers these days; the only questions Lestat asks that he can answer are his real or not real ones. He wishes things were as easy as they once seemed, just the two of them in the desert, learning to care for one another again. Instead, Lestat was taken and then brainwashed, and now is returned, different but still the same. Akasha is gone, and with her the answers to these questions Lestat has been asking. Lestat, who remembers every moment of his time with Akasha, has been extremely tight-lipped about it. From what Louis can piece together, Akasha wanted Lestat alone, loveless, and self-hated so he would never leave her. The memory alteration serves that end, exaggerating Lestat’s monstrosity and removing his softness and love.
Lestat, now done with the evening ritual of bloodletting and blood drinking, stands and walks towards the piano. Louis’ heart catches as he watches Lestat sit there on the bench, staring at the closed lid of the instrument. Louis thinks music would help, any music, but Lestat won’t let him play even Bach over his tiny, tinny speakers. He stopped suggesting Lestat try to play something when Lestat snapped at him on the third day, yelling that he didn’t want to and didn’t know how while tearing at the couch cushions with his claws.
That is one thing about this new Lestat. For all his rage and his sadness, he keeps it in a small box around him. There is no throwing things or even touching Louis. And yet, Louis misses it. Misses how Lestat’s emotions always fanned out around him like a wave. He finds himself missing such odd things, things he was sure he would be glad to be rid of.
“Are you,” Louis starts, then stops when Lestat jumps. “Are you gonna play?” he finishes haltingly.
Lestat shrugs. “Sometimes I can hear something, like a melody wanting to be played. I remember making music, and I remember enjoying it. Claudia here next to me as I played, my band and I composing together. But I’m afraid if I try, I will embarrass myself by not knowing how. Silly, maybe. But I know how badly you want to hear me play, and I don’t wish for you to be disappointed when it’s not what you remember.”
Louis shakes his head, going to sit down next to Lestat on the bench. He rests his hand over where Lestat’s is on the lid.
“I don’t care about the playing,” he insists. “I’ve been asking because I think it might help. Even if you don’t remember how, or if it’s bad, I think it would be good for you. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
He should eventually, like he should eventually leave this small house and do something other than stare at walls. But it’s still week one, and Louis is happy enough with the staring, as long as he can watch.
Lestat moves their entwined hands from the lid to rest on his thigh. He makes no movement to open the lid, but also doesn’t stand or move away.
“What if I’m never the same again?” Lestat asks, voice distant. “What if this is who I am, forever? And I can never remember who I used to be?”
Louis swallows, wet blood tears streaming down his face. “I wouldn’t care. We would figure it out.”
“I’m sorry,” Lestat says, blinking once, twice. “That she took your Lestat and returned me. You must miss him terribly.”
Louis shakes his head, grabbing Lestat’s hand in his as tightly as he can. The skin has much less give than it used to, closer to marble than human. “You’re my Lestat. Any version, every version, it’s mine; I love you then and now.”
Lestat’s head snaps, quick enough that it blurs. “You love me?”
“Real,” Louis says even though Lestat didn’t ask. “It was one of the last things I said to you, before all of this. Wasn’t enough to make you stop your idiotic plan, but I probably wouldn’t love you if it was.”
Lestat smiles, small but there. One of his first smiles since returning. “I don’t remember that. I don’t know if I will ever be able to remember the time right before the concert. But the only thing I did remember when I woke up was you. That I love you.”
Louis squeezes his eyes shut, pushing more tears out and down his cheeks. It’s kind of wonderful, in a way, that Akasha could take so much from Lestat but couldn’t take this. Couldn’t take the love.
“Your memories are already coming back,” Louis says, in what he hopes is an encouraging manner and not a desperate one. “And maybe you’ll get them all or maybe you won’t, but you’re still you. You’re still strong and stubborn and loving. And I’ll be there to help you figure out whatever you need.”
“I don’t know if I deserve that,” Lestat says. There are tears on his cheeks now, bright red. “I’ve been remembering some things so terrible that I don’t want to ask you, things you may not even know because you weren’t there for them. The Queen did not have to try as hard as she did; it seems the real me was awful enough.”
Louis doesn’t want to hear this, so he places a kiss on Lestat’s cheek and leaves his lips there, tasting the copper tang of blood. “I don’t care,” Louis says into Lestat’s face, the words muffled. “I know about your most terrible self, and it’s never made me stop loving you.”
They sit there in silence for a few moments, exchanging breaths back and forth as their hearts beat together. Lestat is crying, but so is Louis, so he barely notices it. Eventually, Lestat’s breathing slows down and he breaks away just enough to look Louis in eye.
“You prefer sleeping in a bed over a coffin. Real or not real?”
The silliness of it makes Louis grin. He cups Lestat’s face, stroking a thumb through the tear streaks. “Real.”