revivalproject | Venez à Moi

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Venez à Moi

Who: Lestat de Lioncourt, Open
What: Arrival
Where: Temba
When: End of month (during calibrations, so limited to those who are outside atm)
Warnings: Blood, vomiting, violence, Please reply to Opt IN/OUT" post

Even Lestat's hyper acute senses couldn't quite catch where the change had happened. One moment he was facing down the ultimate betrayal, and the next he was outside in some utterly unfamiliar and strange looking place, Loius, Claudia and Antoinette no where to be found. He couldn't smell a trace of them on the air- air that was thankfully dark, he realized- looking up at the strange stars with a snarl. His insides churned, and vomited up more blood, looking quite the bloody mess. Despite this and all the more pressing issues, his eyes landed on a strange...orb, and he staggered towards the thing with purpose. He could feel the hold it had over him, but couldn't fight the urge, hissing at the orb or whatever force was inside his mind, before surrendering to the compulsion to touch the thing. It spoke all sorts of things to him, and when he finally pulled back with wide eyes he was panting, feeling weak and vulnerable in a way he hadn't experienced in a very long time.

The poison in his veins distracted him from any further thoughts into the 'how and why' of things, doubling over to empty up more blood from his stomach, crawling along the ground and trying to scent out a source of blood- any blood- that wasn't his own.

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The close, soft darkness was a familiar enough home that Claudia hardly wondered about it as she stirred, eyes fluttering reluctantly open as she took a slow, deep breath of wood and polish. It was only then, with her eyes open, that a nagging disquiet took hold, but it would have to wait; first, she had to get up, she had to push the lid of the coffin open, crawl up on her knees, and reach for the glowing orb that had never been above her head before.

She was screaming before she could hear it. There was all of this noise in her head, so much information she simply did not understand, and when she opened her eyes again her arm outstretch before her was crumbling in ash. The sun bore down on her skin like an open flame. She snatched her hand away from the hypnotic, glowing ball with a panicked hiss, then another shriek as she flung herself back down to slam the coffin closed above her, shutting out the violent light. It shuddered as she flailed inside, stamping out the flames that had caught in her hair and danced all the way up to her scalp, then went still as she clutched at her neck where so much of her skin at crumbled away, breathing her own ash in rapid, panicking gulps.

She hadn't been in a coffin in years. She certainly hadn't fallen asleep outside. And she had never seen a building so tall in her little, old life.

The bones left of her hands had crawled up onto her face, clutching at her cheeks as she began to cry in desperate shrieks, so she could feel each sob all the way down to her kicking feet, until she could figure out what to do. First, the sun had to go down.

The danger of the sun was replaced by an arguably far more dangerous force in Lestat as he happened upon that familiar coffin. His dear sister, daughter, infant death. That fate should bring her here after what she did.

He perched on the lid of that pretty little coffin, sharp nail tracing over the lid with a hum, and he rapped his knuckles on the wood with the first notes of 'Shave & and Haircut', an eager look on his face.

It took absolutely forever, a new, awful immortality, an endless day for the sun to sink. And by the time Claudia's sobs had quieted to whimpers that mostly lingered because she didn't entirely know what else to do, her muscles still ached and skin itched awfully, and the only thing she really could do to escape it was try to sleep. Tense and in pain, it had seemed fitful to her, but it still came that a sudden knocking above her head startled her very awake, and the close air in the coffin was cooler than she remembered.

She listened, eyes wide and hands pressing into either side of the box, trying to sense what was out there and how quickly she would have to move to kill, but her coffin was outside. How was she supposed to figure out where anything was? She gave an abrupt, determined shove at the lid, intent to spring out and at least have some advantage of surprise, only to be met with resistance. After a beat of surprise, she gave another hard shove, making the lid clatter, which she immediately regretted as she tried to pivot to a sweet, high, tremulous voice, "Hello? It's awfully scary in here..."

The futile shove made Lestat roll his eyes, hardly jostled at all, and his lips curled as she tried again.

"My poor dear," Lestat purred, putting on a little dramatic pout that couldn't be seen but was more than evident in his voice. "You should think you'd be used to it by now..."

That pathetic voice was gone, dropping a note and flattening defensively as Claudia answered, "Uncle Les?" This felt like an unnecessarily elaborate gambit just to...what? Bring her home? All of that stuff she had seen before, the glowing ball and the big buildings and those scared people, that had seemed very real and not an illusion at all. It was much more sincere when Claudia whimpered, "Uncle Les, what is going on? I had a room, a locked up basement no one had been in in years, I was miles away..."

"Oh, it's Uncle Les again, is it?" he drawls with a scowl, still undecided how exactly he'll deal with his ungrateful little fledgling. But then she continued, and it gave him pause, frowning softly in consideration.

"...You haven't come back to us," he concluded. He didn't understand how such a thing was possible, but he did find himself believing those words. He slid off of the coffin, wrenching it open abruptly and looking down at her with judgmental distain.

The slide was distinctive enough that Claudia strained to hear what he meant to do next, eyes narrow in the dark, and was taken by surprise again as the coffin suddenly opened and she gasped a gulp of cool night air, blinking rapidly in the sudden flare of light from the bright stars above, cut through by the looming shape of Lestat. She might have shrunk away from that snarl, but now that the sun was down, those stars were wonderful, and she quickly sat up, ducking around his arm impatiently to get a better look at the strange pattern they made, dazzling points reflected in her wide eyes. She didn't see the constellations, the bear, the cross, they were gone, like someone had mixed them all up and started all over again. "Where have I gone?" she wondered.

Seeing her there in the flesh, Lestat hesitated, that rage having had a brief time to settle since his arrival, but still fresh. He should strike her down. End her now, regardless of whatever time she comes from, it will end the same. She'll try to end him first.

And yet- he doesn't strike, jaw tense as he watches her look up at the strange stars with that annoyingly curious nature of hers, eyes flicking up to gaze at them himself.

"Did you not listen to their strange little ball of light?" he admonished with a drawl, as though it should be obvious.

That strange little ball had said a lot of strange little things that Claudia couldn't say she properly understood, not when she had been so quickly consumed with panic. Now, though, she turned slowly away from the sky, only to jump up on her feet in a swirl of ash to go the other way, hand out to push Lestat back a step so she could reach for the ball again. With both hands on it and a pout, then just one, slowly peeling her fingers away like she might have happened into the correct configuration to unlock it the first time, only to be left poking it with the other hand balled up against her chest anxiously.

"It's not working," she announced, sounding dangerously like she was about to blame Lestat for this development, and some new wonder was going to have to replace it fast.

"It only works the once, don't fuss with it," Lestat lectured, as if he hadn't done the very same.

"Do you remember what it said?" he prompted again, "You are on a whole new world. As far from home as it's possible to be. Way up in the stars," he said, with a pointed gesture to those wrong constellations up there. It's fascinating. And terrifying.

Edited (words are hard) 2023-07-09 18:07 (UTC)

Stubbornly, Claudia jabbed a finger at the ball again, chin up and eyes glassy like she hadn't heard anything Lestat had said at all about fussing, and maybe ever in his life. It was a challenge to be so detached from this new world, though, and she looked up again at the reminder of the new sky, starting to smile before spinning on Lestat to demand, "Where is Louis?" They couldn't have been so far apart; that was the hardest to imagine. Expectantly, she held out both arms for Lestat to help her from the coffin and take her to their Louis, so he could answer all of her questions.

Those icy eyes narrowed as though it was Claudia's fault they were both stranded here, without Louis. And yet- he helped her from the coffin, giving her a warning squeeze as he did. "Louis is very far from the both of us, and not here to stay my temper, so mind yourself."

However far Claudia had ventured from home, and however inhospitable the new place she found, she did always know where to find Louis and for a moment stood watching Lestat, hands still on his arms, unblinking and waiting for a better explanation. The shift of her focus was barely perceptible, first inward as she opened her mind to let him in, then over Lestat's shoulder as she heard only a terrible loneliness. Not just a great nothingness where Louis' voice should have answered her calling, but where there should have been, there always had been, life all around her for Claudia to warm her veins.

Slowly, she finally stepped back, not from Lestat's toothless threat but from this grand isolation, searching with her every sense for something. She smelled it first, sniffing at the air and keeping her gaze locked forward so Lestat couldn't know which way she was going to suddenly dart when she went sprinting across the stones toward the musk.

It was an earthy, oily scent of lanolin and straw over the warmth of the blood. Like a stable.

He could see her reaching out for Louis, and felt a spiteful bit of glee that she would feel that same emptiness that he'd been subjected to for all these long years. It wasn't fair to be jealous of their bond, one which he could never share in. But he was. And it felt right that Claudia should be haunted by it now.

Her sudden darting off reminded him of her youth, when things had been simple and there had been laughter in the house. How long had it been since any of them had laughed?

She had her head start, and soon Lestat darted after in search of her, leaving the coffin where it lay for now.

It wasn't like any stable Claudia had seen before. The paddock wasn't so strange, just incredibly grand, bigger even than the sweeping, empty halls of the colleges that Claudia had visited. It was inside that had arrested her, first at the door, then when she darted forward to step up onto the fence for a better vantage over the strange group. They glowed. A mass huddled mostly together and dozing in the straw, giving off a faint light like a dying ember. It wasn't even the electric sparking of a firefly, it was a steady emanation that looked like the clear green water of Lestat's fountain in the courtyard, lapping out into the darkness of night around them, spreading from these warm beasts.

They were creatures unlike anything Lestat had ever seen either, and he paused as he found her, looking out into the paddock and unable to completely mask his disguise. Much as he prided himself on appearing to know everything there was know, and more importantly- on chiding his charge for not knowing...this was new territory. They were in essence equals in this journey for the first time in their many years together, and he worried about just how long he could keep her from realizing this fact.

"...Not taken after Louis' habits since you've left, have you?" he drawled in a bored tone, as if he weren't likewise intrigued by these creatures.

It would be no fun at all to eat these poor things, Claudia could already tell--despite their glow, the texture and scent of them was like sheep, easily led, bowing to any raised hand. She wrinkled her nose at the suggestion, cutting a narrow look Lestat's way with her lips pursed, and dropped heavily off of the fence to daintily dust her fingers together. "I thought there would be a boy..." she explained, though she couldn't smell anything richer than the glowing sheep, and didn't hear either a snoring or errant thoughts anywhere nearby as she searched for where a stablehand might be napping in the straw.

"Ah, yes. How could I forget your infatuation for stable boys?" Lestat purred in that soft cruel voice.

"Apparently they've all gone away. Most of all them. Being toyed with somewhere by the ones that brought us here."

If Claudia's look before was sharp, this one was razorblade, her slightly raised lip betraying the sharpening of her fang before she had herself convinced not to give him the satisfaction. She wasn't the one who kept taking.

Why they were so incredibly alone made a little more sense at that suggestion, smoothing Claudia's fangs as she tipped her head, eyes up again like she could see up to the stars and their mysterious captors. Less mysterious than she thought, if they plucked people from their homes to 'toy with' them. "When will they give them to us?" she asked, still looking as though she was listening for another voice to answer, distant and thoughtful. They were clearly different, then, not one of the toys, but a playmate.

They were alike in that at least. Lestat had a similar opinion of those they were trapped here with, and would have enjoyed a turn at playing with the toys himself if not for the looming threat of that man creature.

"...I do not know," he admitted, trying to sound bored as though it was of little consequence. "...There are a few that were left behind for us." He looked Claudia over, considering whether or not to offer her a warning after dangling that bait oh so innocently.

It was easy to put aside Lestat's pervasive cruelty; it would come and go, like the moon, constant and reliable and part of the natural order of Claudia's life, not one she missed in her years since leaving its poison but one she knew. It would be back, even after she smiled and held out her hands again for Lestat to take as she said, "Show me what you've done with them." He had evidently made himself comfortable here, and that meant someone else had been suffering.

"..." Lestat's jaw tensed, a sure sign that there was something he was hiding, and he took her hand to tuck into the crook of his arm as he strolled.

"Have you been missing out on meals, *ma poupette?" he asked with mock concern.

(*my doll)

Lestat's reticence couldn't really annoy Claudia anymore, not with the clarity of a few years of separation and every conversation noted in her diary ending with the distinct impression that Lestat never knew what he was talking about. He could withhold all he wanted, and she had no reason to shriek about it anymore. As long as she grit her teeth.

Lifting her chin loftily, refusing to take the question as a slight, she said, "Only when there was no one interesting enough around." She may have had to go hungry a few nights when too many bodies turned up in study carrels and library security started looking too closely at anyone that didn't match the colour of the paper. "I thought educated boys would be so much more engaging. They all say the exact same thing when they die, though." It had gotten tedious quickly, though that didn't take the joy out of getting to mock, "'You bitch, how dare you, you can't do this.'"

He chuckled, admittedly enjoying that sense of humor of hers when it wasn't turned on him.

"Mm, is it not everything you hoped for?" Lestat put on a pout, "The educated ones are dull, aren't they? All that reading and they know nothing of the world."

It wasn't their education that had made them dull, Claudia didn't think, not when she was better read than any of them, and lived about her whole little life at one address. No, it was a certain class of person that tended to populate the college campuses, a class that didn't include Louis, who Claudia had unwittingly led Lestat to take this obvious swipe at. Any delight she had at the mockery was quickly drained for Claudia to frown, going quiet again for the click of their heels on the street to pick up the conversation until she could observe with neutral detachment, "Maybe there is someone in this strange place who can finally teach me something."

Venez à Moi

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