INBOX;

[interviewee]

This is Louis de Pointe du Lac. Leave a message.

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voice; call

[interviewee]

[Louis has no idea what this is about, so Louis calls back without a moment's hesitation.]

What?

voice; call

[unwillingdevil]

[Lestat is still spiraling a bit even when he answers, but he can focus enough to clarify a little bit.]

Claudia! Claudia was five years old! FIVE?!

[interviewee]

No she wasn't. [Louis is shaking his head on his end.] She was fourteen.

[Which is honestly on them, on Louis's desperation, but he's not saying that out loud right now.]

[unwillingdevil]

No, not -- not your Claudia.

[Your Claudia, our Claudia. That clarification sobers him up a little bit, even while his thoughts are still whirling.]

The Claudia here. The one in this city.

[interviewee]

[Louis tries to follow the train of thought but can't quite figure out what's being said.]

What about the Claudia here?

[And then he realizes,] She was five?

[unwillingdevil]

She was! She was five years old!

[He's sincerely trying to make sense, but this has truly frazzled him in a way that most things can't. It's all the guilt and regret and wistfulness of his knowledge of Claudia with a sledgehammer hit thrown in.]

On her Finder, she said it. There's an image of her there.

[interviewee]

Fuck, I don't want to see that.

[This can't be real, this can't be happening. This is all just something too weird for him to embrace.]

Five?

[unwillingdevil]

Five! She seemed surprised that I didn't know.

[And he has no reason to think she'd lie, no motive she'd have to deceive. There were already plenty of subtle differences between her life and the one his Claudia had known, but this one was something he truly hadn't anticipated.]

Don't look at it, then. She was not happy that it was there.

[interviewee]

I can't-- it was me and you that-- five?

[Louis just sputters into the phone.]

[unwillingdevil]

Exactly!

[See he's so glad Louis is on the same page because he is whirling with absolute bafflement and distress. Louis is the only other creature who could grasp it.]

How? I don't -- mon Dieu, she was already so small!

[interviewee]

Five? [Louis just might be sick. How could he have brought a five year old into their twisted family as a remedy for marital discord. A five year old.]

[unwillingdevil]

Five!

[Honestly if this conversation is just them stating the number over and over, that's fine with him, he needs to share in this horror.]

What were we doing?

[interviewee]

I remember what we were doing, but even that was--

[Louis simply cannot believe that a version of him could be so reckless.]

Five.

[unwillingdevil]

Five.

[Lestat is in a similar headspace. He'd known the consequences better than Louis when he'd turned their Claudia, had done it with a growing sense of all the ways it could go wrong but oh my god at least she had been a teenager.]

I do not understand it. I don't.

[interviewee]

She's been trapped in a five year old's body for forty plus years?

[Which is even more horrifying.]

We kept a coffin that small in--

[Infant death is still a very real thing in Louis's time. Cemeteries were full of graves of the smallest lives. To have a child-sized coffin in their home? What lunacy.]

[unwillingdevil]

I -- I suppose so, yes.

[Which is just so, so much. At least their Claudia could walk about on her own without causing alarm. At least she was of a height that didn't make looking after herself impossible. Not for forty years.

He hadn't thought much about the coffin, but in his mind, it makes sense. A child-sized casket would be no difficult thing so long ago.]

I'm not sure. I imagine so. I did not think to ask.

[interviewee]

Fuck.

[Louis isn't sure how much more of this he can take.]

Five years old. I took a five year old into the battlefields of the European Theatre? What is wrong with me?

[unwillingdevil]

I don't know. I -- the dress, it did not look like our era.

[Lestat's seen the outfit in the image, and it did not look like a dress of the 1940s. It looked like something of the 19th century, the frills and puffed skirts of the Second Empire or of Reconstruction times.]

I think she might be of an older time. Or perhaps all of us are.

[So hey maybe you didn't make that mistake at least.]

[interviewee]

[That doesn't exactly make Louis any happier.]

Older time, newer time, five years old.

[unwillingdevil]

Five years old.

[Louis isn't wrong, it's no real comfort. Just a small example of one way it could have been worse, he supposes. It doesn't change that she was too young, too small.

And it doesn't change how it all ended, though he refuses to picture a child so small standing there in the sun, the light searing her skin...no. No. He can't let himself picture that.

With a bleary, wry tone to his voice, he adds:]

Claudia said that must mean the two of us had much more sense.

[Not that he actually believes that.]

[interviewee]

[Louis can't even imagine carrying a five-year old girl with him through the European Theatre, doesn't want to. It was hard enough bringing a fourteen-year old through the harshest conditions a vampire can survive.

Only to not be able to reach her at the end.

No amount of sense will change that.]

Are you out with her now?

[unwillingdevil]

No -- no, I am not.

[He's coming down a bit from his frenzy, his head spinning less. It's easier to settle himself with Louis sharing in his horror, with someone to talk to who can fully grasp the situation and all its insanities.]

I saw her ad on the Finder and replied to her there and we spoke. That was only a few moments ago. And then I called you.

[interviewee]

Come home.

[The request is simple, quiet, and full of a yearning need.]

[unwillingdevil]

All right. Give me but a moment.

[It strikes him that it isn't a question or a request, just a simple, plain statement of need. He obeys it without question, setting out for the house, his head still light and whirling as he strides through the city.

It'll be for the best if they're in the same room. If they can each be around the only person that could fully grasp the odd guilt and confusion and grief of it all. Fifteen or so minutes later, the front door opens, and Lestat enters.]

[interviewee]

[Louis is sitting in the living room, pinching the bridge of his nose when he hears the front door open. He looks up at Lestat before rising and making his way slowly to him. He curls his arms around Lestat and draws him in.

All in silence.]