Home / Fan Fiction / V(cough) C(cough) fic / The Chosen of God Part 3

DISCLAIMER: The following stories are all non-profit, amateur efforts not intended to infringe on the rights of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, David Geffen, Warner Brothers, Geffen Pictures, Knopf, Randomhouse, the city of New Orleans, the U.S. Constitution, any copyright holders that I might not have thought of or even a certain author who shall remain nameless but who has a set of initials which are, coincidentally enough, just one letter off from spelling "B.S."

Part Three
by: The Brat Queen

Winner: Best Lestat '98-'99!

Characters: Lestat, Armand
Spoilers: Up to TotBT
Description: In response to Jester of God, Lestat tells his life story.

Warning: CoG contains triggering elements. If you know what "triggering" means you may wish to not read this. If you don't then just be warned that it and Jester of God are very similar.

Chess.

I am playing chess with my father.

And already as I write this I can feel Louis' reaction.

This is why I write for you and to you, fratello.

Chess.

I am perhaps three or four. This is perhaps my first chess lesson ever or one of thousands.

Imagine me at three, if you will. A small child. Blonde hair, those unusual grey eyes, a look that must be painfully earnest at the same time it is far too adult compared to what a three year old should look like.

But that is perhaps a modern judgement. Children were not children in my time. Nor were they in yours, fratello. We should know.

So perhaps he is normal. Perhaps that is the look he and every other child has.

Or perhaps even it is a look from hunger. We were always very poor.

But chess. I am playing chess.

I sit in my father's lap.

To play chess there is a special room in the castle. It is small. Long since destroyed by time and wars I am not, today, aware of the proportions. The size of this room - my father's study - was never fully known to me. It was always too small and too big at once.

Even now, in this memory, in my child's eyes the room warps. Too big for small hands, too cramped for two people.

There is furniture in the room. The colors are brown and slate and red.

No, not that kind of red.

The room is woods, mostly. We are royals in the 18^th century but our castle is of centuries prior. We hold more in common with my ancestors from two hundred years prior than we do with the lords who live in the neighboring towns.

Woods. Lots of rough woods. The chairs and shelves and mantles and tables are all smoothed with age yet rough from years of moisture.

I am very familiar with the feel of the arms of the chair that faces my father. Years later, when I played, I would sit there. My hands, sometimes sweaty other times bone dry, would rest on the end of the armrest. Past where the cushioning cloth had worn away to the nub of the rest itself. Just the right size for my hands to fit on. Sometimes I would rub my hands against that wood very lightly again and again as I waited for my father to move. My hands would be under the table, always, so he would not see.

I think that he did anyway.

I'm also fairly certain I wore the finish away on those armrests. Although perhaps they were always worn down that way. I truly don't know.

But those are things to come.

It began with an education.

To the best of my knowledge I am the only child my father ever taught how to play chess. I know that my older brothers - the ones everyone is familiar with - never learned. Never cared. Perhaps they sat in front of a board and sneered at it as they feigned experience but I know for a fact that they did not care. It was a game. Unworthy of their time.

My father's passion, though. And for all I know he was the most gifted chess player who ever lived.

I only know that he played me.

The time the lessons started is unknown to me. The age my mind volunteers is the one I've already given - 3 or 4. I am small, young, and always I sit on my father's lap.

From behind and above me I can hear my father's voice. So close to his barrel-like chest the sound is booming to my ears although he speaks calmly, peacefully. His hand reaches out beyond me to touch the pieces, caressing them with his aging fingertips as he talks to me.

The beginning lessons were of introduction. What are the pieces, where do they go, how they are allowed to move.

I do not touch the pieces. Or speak much. I simply watch.

The chess set was beautiful. It was, of course, handmade and I believe it was an heirloom from my father's side of the family. Thus making it one of the few things of value that had managed to remain inside of the castle and within our possession as the years went on and our money went elsewhere.

Red chess pieces. Red and white.

The pieces themselves were huge. Particularly to my small hands. I could wrap my fingers around a bishop and still see wood peeking out. A knight was completely beyond my grasp, though I did show a talent in its use later on.

Pawns, too, were bigger than I could properly hold, although easier. I remember looking at them in their straight, neat rows and being reminded of myself. They were, after all, the children, the ones that ran about the board only to have the adults come stalking after them.

The first lesson of playing that was brought home to me from the moment of my very first game was that pieces are to be sacrificed. I was older, sitting in my own chair, facing my father for the first time. Sentiment was not a factor. Death acceptable.

I became without emotion then. One by one I led my men to the slaughter. For the greater glory of their king, which was me.

I won many a game this way. It is a laughably simple thing to learn how to rise by scattering death in your path.

I do not remember many of the later games. They come to me in flashes. One memory that particularly sickens me is that of my father later, much later, reaching out with blind hands to move his pieces with an accuracy that never, ever failed. His eyesight had been taken from him years before but still he could take and move whatever he wanted. He could see the board in his mind and his memory never left him.

I was always my father's chess partner, which was something that helped the house to run though I bitterly resented it. My father's passion for chess was the only thing anyone knew of to truly distract him and keep him happy, both of which were goals that gained in their importance as my brothers grew older. Augustin, in particular, enjoyed getting our father out of the way so that he wouldn't interfere in Agustin's work. Telling me to go and play chess with our father was Agustin's answer for everything from "Good morning" to my desire to leave our home to enter the priesthood.

Sometimes I wonder if he truly understood what he asked of me.

That study, that small room centered around the chess board, was the one place where my father and I could be truly alone when the rest of the castle was awake. It was a quiet room, with a door that could lock and keep everyone out of our way. Closing that door for a game of chess was a sign of peace for the household.

I become violently nauseous whenever I think of it.

[Previous] [Next]