Forgiveness Begets Love

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There comes a time in the life of every vampire when we are forced to surrender to the will of another and only the power of another can make you see the truth. For me, that was the moment I understood that the pain of another vampire would help me get through my own pain. Pandora de Romanus had let down her guard, as I had, and let the laughter of children into her unbeating heart. Saralyn and Brelynn had been the absolute joy of her otherwise boring, repetitious life.  Those girls had meant the world to her as Claudia had to me.  When Saralyn was murdered, the entire event took me to a deep dark part of my own story that I had buried behind a curtain of hatred, bitterness, and ignorance.

The loss of my beloved daughter, Claudia had taken such a toll in my existence that at times I could not bear it.  Pandora saw that. When I came to her and asked to be bonded to her, she instantly knew why.  Her once flawless, sharp face now stained with the red of her blood tears.  I remember those tears; I had also shed those tears.  I had seen them on the face of my little dark angel when she realized that she would never ever grow up.

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Saralyn had been such a free spirit, but she at least would grow up and become a woman…my Claudia was bound to her age apparent for all eternity and many times it was too much for her to bear. That same look of despair now stared back at me when I asked her to bind me to her. Through the last year, Pandora has helped me shed the bitterness and the pain of that loss.  Enough to realize that I had not been the only one to mourn her, that Lestat too mourned her.  That he had loved her,  just as I did. Through her I realized that Lestat had not created Claudia to keep me to him, at least not entirely. But he created her because he had wanted a family… a family that he had never known.  We all know Gabrielle wasn’t much of a mother to him.  Hell, we do not even know where she is. You would think she’d at least wonder about her son, much the way Jade continues to watch over her family.  I admire that of Jade, of Maharet.  Both of them have turned their afflictions into something special and beautiful.  But not Gabrielle… my sire’s mother could care less.  And he cared so much for her, so much that he couldn’t bare her dying and turned her. All for her to shun him and leave him…  what a heartbreak.

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I was beginning to understand his loneliness, his heartbreaks, his pain.  A pain that for him is so easy to turn into sarcasm.  But the topic of Claudia always silences him; he’s quick to change the topic.  And in his refusal to deal with it, he convinced me that he didn’t care. For centuries I saw him as a monster, for who could not mourn the loss of our daughter? It was unfathomable to me.  But Pandora made me see a whole new side to the story.  She told me of the betrayal of her brother, oh so many thousands of years ago in Imperial Rome. She said her brother had no remorse for aiding in the brutal murder of their father.  She helped me see that Lestat clung to a whole lot of remorse. And that remorse is a secondary emotion to loss and loss to love. Lestat loved Claudia.  I had never seen things so clearly before.

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Of course, my emotions rushed back to me.  The unadulterated love and passion that I had felt for Lestat was suddenly awaken.  And they had been dormant all this time, not gone, just asleep.  Through the many women and men I had shared a time or two with, it was always Lestat that had had my heart. I don’t know why, I guess its because he opened up to me on some level.  And the more he opens up, the more I love him.  And its only right…  I started this journey with him, thus I feel I should finish it with him. So I asked him… yes I did… if he’d marry me and if he could keep himself only to me and I to him… if he would make a family with me. And he didn’t even hesitate…  his eyes lit up and his very Lestat way, he accepted which of course included a bit of sarcasm. The sarcasm that I once loathed, was now so endearing to me. So at last we get to become whole together, at last we can be happy, at last I can have the family I so desperately have longed for, at last I get to proudly be a part of the Romanus family, and at long last I get my Prince.

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