On the Cusp (Interview With The Vampire Fanfic)

II

We didn't speak right away, Louis and I. Lestat didn't say anything either. When we got to Louis' plantation and seated ourselves in his parlour, we all sat in silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, but an uncertain one. 

Who was going to speak first? Was returning to Pointe du Lac Plantation what was really wanted and needed?

Louis was examining me in his silence. I could hear the slight murmur of his mind and could feel his eyes on me. I closed my eyes and leant back into the chair I was sitting in, waiting for one of them to start speaking. 

I listened to everything but the two minds that were in the same room as me. I made the effort of staying out of their heads. Louis wouldn't have been able to feel me prying, but Lestat would notice it at once.

I listened to the familiar noises of a larger house. Some things were familiar to me, and others were entirely different from my childhood. The number of slaves on Pointe du Lac that bustled through the house and in the kitchen astonished me. My family hadn't owned slaves when I was mortal, but rather we had servants who paid their taxes to my father by their service in and around our home. We held no ownership over their bodies, just ownership of their possessions.

And our father, I could hear him in the house. I could hear his weak heart, his wheezing as he breathed. His lungs were struggling to give him the air he needed, and his heart was struggling just as much as his lungs were. He was in pain but never said anything of it. He was dying. It wouldn't be long before that old and fragile heart of his would finally give out.

Should I see him, I pondered. Did I want to see him? Did I want to see the man who had brought my brother so much heartache and anger? Did I want to see the man who thought of nothing but himself and his heir? I wasn't sure. I felt no need for him, no sadness that he was dying and would very soon be dead.

I felt no obligation to ease his worried mind of where I was. He worried for me, his only living daughter. He worried for his twins who had somehow gotten out of the Revolution unscathed. His twins who had left their family behind and ran away to Paris in the middle of the night. His twins who were alive and well and his only children left.

"He cries for you sometimes," Lestat murmured, breaking the silence that had surrounded the three of us. Was I loud with my thoughts? Was I so caught up in my thoughts of our father that I couldn't feel him invading my mind and privacy?

I merely hummed in acknowledgement. I wasn't surprised. He was lonely and basically had no one. Why not weep for the ones who are there but refused to see him?

His cruelties never left my mind. Our father wasn't exceptionally cruel and nor was he intentionally cruel. He was just simply a selfish man who hadn't cared for anything but the image our family put out. His treatment of Lestat was something I could never forgive. And our elder brother, the ungrateful cur, I felt nothing when I read about his murder in a letter. Beheaded, like the rest of our family except for our mother who hung over our shoulders to read the letter. 

The Revolution had taken our family, but our father had barely escaped.

Louis finally came out of his silence, "From where did you come?"

He had a thoughtful look on his face as he continued to eye me, memorising my face. Memorising the contours of it in the candlelight, the way the shadows fell across my features. In this instant, Louis' mind was completely and wholly open to me, I didn't have to make the minimal effort to hear and see what he thought.

He was thinking of my features, of how much I looked like Lestat but still managing to look entirely my own. How soft my face was, my soft jaw and narrow chin. Full lips and a small pixie nose making me look younger than I probably was when I was turned. A natural arch to my blonde eyebrows and midnight blue eyes that had been nothing but calm and patient, a stark contrast from my brother's grey and impatient eyes. Our smile was nearly the same, mine only differed because of the dimple on my left cheek that showed when I smiled.