Chapter Text
Never let it be said that Lestat kept any sort of affection for the villagers of Auvergne. He often thought of them to be dull and simple-minded, but even the dull and simple-minded had the capacity for cruelty, he was finding out. It’s only his luck that finds out as he stares down eight wolves. Or maybe, he considers, they were exactly what he thought originally, but to the point that they thought there was a type of man that could go against eight wolves and come back whole, and it was his type. Maybe these unfortunate quests were simply what Lestat should have expected, being the kind of man he is.
Unfortunately for Lestat, he tanned in the summer. His skin turned a wonderful deep gold, almost brown. It was the kind of thing that was meant to bring an aesthetically-driven man like him a great measure of pleasure, and it would have if it wasn’t for the fact that he barely actually tanned at all for a man who spent most of his time outside. He looked basically the same through the brutal winter where sunlight was as rare as coin was for the Lioncourts, which was tragic for a family meant to be nobility. But in the end, it was as alright as it could be because though they had very little actual money to go around, they had land and everything that was on it, and Lestat's father was both too blind to have noticed the slightly off color of his son’s skin and too proud to have told anyone that even 19 years prior that he was beginning to lose his sight and could barely take notice of anything else but the general shape and loud screeching of the baby that was meant to be his youngest son.
It was mostly just unfortunate because the servants had taken his father’s silence on the matter as some sort of acceptance of his nature and followed his orders, but did so with incredulous humor in their eyes, as if to say ‘you are giving us orders’. It made him want to knock the mirth out of their eyes via his fist, made him want to wring out of them whatever familiarity or commonness they thought to share with him that made irony acceptable. It was unfortunate in the way the villagers tracked his figure constantly through town, either to let him know that they knew and wouldn’t let the wool be pulled over their eyes or to make him aware of this stupid fucking matter or that. When he still cared enough to keep up the pretense and went to church, the priest would go as far as to deliver every sermon staring straight at Lestat. The only time this unfortunateness had been even a smidgen less unfortunate was when the daughter of a well-to-do merchant in their village had seen her father’s face darken when Lestat had passed by to collect the rent and dues they owed by virtue of living on his fucking land, and in turn a glint had appeared in her eyes. It felt then like maybe there was some satisfaction he could extract from being the way he was, encased in wet heat with fingernails making a viscous path of red down his shoulders.
It feels now like he was an idiot. He stood knee deep in snow with his mare dead and his two dogs dead as well. Blood streaked over the snow like a viscous slash of paint over canvas, the paint his life, his love, his last shreds of joy, and the canvas Auvergne. There were two wolves circling him and one bullet in his musket. His mace in his left arm, his musket in the other, he considered that perhaps his skull was a better landing spot for the last bullet than anything else around him. Before he could give the idea the rumination it surely deserved, one of the wolves darted in. His left arm swung backwards in an arc and connected; his body swayed with the impact, and he tripped and fell on his back. The other wolf darted in and got close enough that he could see saliva dripping from its teeth before his right arm jerked up and fired right into his skull, sending a spray of blood into the air, some of which fell back onto his face. Quickly, he flipped over onto his knees, not even bothering to get up fully, and smacked the butt of the gun into the remaining wolf’s head with all his strength. His mace was meant for close range, but not this close, so he leaped backward in the snow, still on his knees. His feet brushed the dead body of the other wolf. He dropped the gun and grasped his mace with both hands and started raining blows on the wolf’s body. For a brief moment, it reminded him of the tantrums his elder brothers would throw when they were much younger; their fists would pound against a surface, and they would say, ‘Now, now, now.’ He never threw tantrums like those; only children who were loved had the courage to behave that way. It seemed like now that he was a grown man, he got to finally throw his own. Heaving and sobbing with snot all over his face, just like they did. The only difference, of course, was that instead of the wood of a table, or the concrete of a floor, his arms rose and fell repeatedly against the body of a living, breathing creature of God.
The wolf died with a terrible noise that Lestat would like to say he hadn’t heard before, but he had killed seven others before this and did the hunting for his family before this in a life that seemed so distant now in the blood and gut-strewn snow. The wolf died with its mouth open, but it was hard to tell because Lestat had made such a mess of its head. His mouth opened, and he threw up all over its exposed brains. When he was done, he wiped his mouth, sat back on his heels, and surveyed the scene around him. He had no metaphors left; it looked like a bunch of dead animals in the snow. His hands were tacky with snow and he was bleeding and tired. Whatever he wanted so bad that he mauled an animal to death hadn’t come to fruition; if it had, he would’ve at least known what it was. He stood up, grabbed his musket, slung a dead wolf over his shoulders, and started his long trek home.
Over the course of the journey home, multiple things started to become clear to Lestat, the first being how annoying it was going to be that he survived killing the wolves. Looking as he did, some villagers thought of him as part animal or savage. It's why he supposes that they sent him to the mountains to kill the wolves in the first place. It was a frustrating thing to try to disprove, especially since he was taller than most and stronger because he was the only hunter in the village. It was something he tried to disprove, nevertheless, never showing his face in town unless he was wearing the finest of his clothes, which, considering he was dirt broke, didn’t really mean much, and by trying to engage in as much philosophical discussion as he could. He couldn’t read, something that made him feel barbaric and truly stupid, but he liked to think he had enough logic to be able to hear a point and make solid arguments against or for it, but it didn’t matter because no matter who it was he tried to talk to, they all quickly found some matter to attend to. Nevertheless, defeating eight wolves singlehandedly would have been a thing of pride for any other man, all it would do for Lestat is assert the ignorant beliefs of the villagers which would result in more ridiculous requests.
The second thing that became clear to Lestat, and the one he tried to think less about, was that with each step he took away from the mountains where he slaughtered the wolves, he was leaving something behind. Halfway through the journey, a strong urge to return to the dead wolves arose suddenly in him. There was a keen sense of loss, and a keener sense that if he went back and rummaged in the brains of the wolf he had bludgeoned to death, he would find some monumental part of his soul and could return home more or less the same way he had left instead of the way he was now. He even paused to turn around and look at the path he had taken to get where he was.
The last thing that became clear to him was that he was cold as shit and absolutely could not return to the wolves. He wanted to go home, more specifically to his room and lie on the furs in front of his fireplace and never ever get up again.
It was the thought of that warm spot that got him home in the end. But as he stepped over the threshold into the castle he called home, he questioned if he was really that cold, and if he wouldn’t have been better off retrieving the bit of humanity he left behind with the wolves. If not for the sake of his own mortal soul, but so he could at least get through meeting his brothers who had been waiting for him without strangling them to death.
His eldest brother, Augustine, was the first to greet him, although snidely, as Lestat passed the dead body of the wolf to the servants and ordered a bath to be prepared in his room. He didn’t say anything else after Lestat responded with his own greeting and then greeted his other brother, Laurent. Neither of them did anything but stare at him, so he took it upon himself to inform them.
“The wolves are taken care of”, he said. Then he added pointedly, “all eight of them”. Immediately, Augustine gave a bark of laughter.
“Eight”, Laurent repeated like Lestat was slow and didn’t know what he had said with his own mouth. “Have some shame, Lestat”.
“You did not kill eight wolves,” Augustine said. But Lestat sent him a look so vicious, he visibly reconsidered.
“I don’t care what you think, when the villagers go to collect the bodies, you’ll see I’m right”, he grumbled and pushed his way between them. Unlike his father, who hated him simply for the virtue of being himself, his brothers had working eyes and could tell that he was different from them. They could tell what their mother had done and thought of him less for it. They hated when he dared to excel, because they felt that there was no way one with the natural disadvantage of being born as he was could surpass them. They thought he was arrogant and believed himself to be better than they were when he had the audacity to want something more than scraping purses for coins to buy wine at the local bar and playing chess with their nearly blind father. However, he cared less and less about their opinion of him as he grew older. He was no longer that boy just retrieved from the monastery or the foolish teen left behind by the theatre troupe he tried to run away with. He was bigger now, and no one could throw him in a dark room and beat him endlessly for days. His brothers were just pesky flies to him now, and he regarded them as such.
When he got to his room, he quickly stripped down to take a bath. He hissed as the warmth penetrated his chilled bones and the soap stung the minor injuries he had sustained during his fight with the wolves. He took great effort to scrub all the blood and grime, determined to leave no more reminders of the day on his person than was strictly necessary. He scrubbed his skin until it was red, and then scrubbed more. When he was done, he put on nothing more substantial than his undergarments and laid on the rugs by the fire just as he had dreamt of earlier. He spent the rest of the day dozing, occasionally interrupted by servants who came knocking at his door to alert him of lunch or dinner, whom he barely listened to before he sent them away with a warning not to bother him over the next couple of days for anything, even if the castle caught on fire. It was only when the sun fell that he realized that the floor was a poor place to commit oneself to for the rest of eternity, as he had planned to and compromised with himself over a better option, his bed.