Home / Fan Fiction / V(cough) C(cough) fic / Stand Alone Stories / With Time: Lestat

DISCLAIMER: The following story is a non-profit, amateur effort not intended to infringe on the rights of Thomas Cruise Malpother IV, William Bradley Pitt, Antonio Banderas, 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."

With Time: Lestat
by The Brat Queen
July, 2000

SPOILERS: No. But the backstory bases itself off of all books up to TotBT and some of the RPG Dagger of the Mind.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: If you haven't read/memorized Dagger don't panic! This is a Dagger AU not unlike Truer Than Fantasy. All you need to know to understand this story is that Brad and Tom met up with our favorite vampires and various adventures ensued, including the fact that Brad and Tom get together (ahem). Everything else that you need to know will be mentioned in the story. This isn't Dagger cannon and there's nothing to be found here that's based off of Dagger other than what I just mentioned.

THANKS TO: AprilMist, without whom I wouldn't have been able to give birth to this particular plot bunny and to Mick, without whom Brad wouldn't be a character worth using.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is what happens when you read Sentinel fanfic while downloading pictures of your brother's wedding. Don't ask, I'm just as frightened as you are. Also, this story is related to "With Time: Louis" but only in concept, they can be read independently of each other.

SUMMARY: An important event draws the vampires together in the distant future and Brad observes what has become of Lestat.

The sound of violins and drums filled the hall. From where he sat Brad could feel the waves of music rising up from the orchestra, noting in his mind where the sounds touched the walls, changed direction, moved to the back, moved to the ceiling, moved to the front. Music, he'd found, was a sound he could touch. Violins especially. It was possible to sit forever and do nothing beyond feel the sound of a violin's music.

Violins, he decided, could be deadly to vampires.

It was still a risk for him, even now. It had been years, decades, more since he had been turned yet he was not old enough to avoid being placed into a trance. It was, still, the little things. The flicker of candlelight, the brilliant red of a stop sign, the sound of rushing water - all these could entrap him, if he wasn't careful.

Tonight, though, it did not give him cause for concern. The violin, risky though it was, was safe here. Safe, because it had been chosen by one who had known better.

Jesse.

It had been her decision to have the music, her decision to be just a little bit daring and include things that could kill them. Could, but wouldn't. For what, after all, was this if not a celebration of what made eternity something worth having? A celebration of what could make them all turn away from death?

"Dearly beloved," the priest began, and this, too, had been Jessica's own amusement. The man was a friend of hers - a mortal one - and one certainly qualified to perform this.

Brad just guessed that he didn't know who or what he was doing this for.

"Are you even Christian?" Brad had asked her, when he'd heard about it. Jessica had simply laughed and shrugged in that easy way of hers.

"Who knows? But it's my choice and I want a Church wedding."

So there you had it.

The news had spread amongst the coven slowly. Brad had heard scraps of it in everyday conversation. Thinking back he could remember, years ago, the notes and letters that had gone out which mentioned that Jesse had found someone, someone she was enjoying spending time with. And that someone had become someone special and someone special had become Jesse's someone right.

It had been, what? Fifty years? Sixty? Brad couldn't remember exactly, but it had been long enough. Nearly half a century of being together. It was certainly longer than Brad had ever had before proposing or accepting a marriage vow. He hoped that, for her, it worked.

She stood at the front of the crowd that had gathered - and it was a goodly sized one at that. Looking around Brad could see Maharet, of course, and Mael, David, Khayman, Eric and… yes, there was Santino. Which effectively wrote off Armand as an attendee but Brad remembered hearing that he'd sent some sort of gift or card. He'd expected Pandora but could not spot her if she was there.

Vampires of all other kinds were in attendance as well. None he'd ever met before, most bearing the odd olive complexion that all Japanese vampires carried. They sat on the right side, of course. Friends of the groom.

And, intermixed among them all, were mortals.

Brad shook his head. It was so crazy it didn't bear thinking about. In life, he'd found, sometimes it was better to just go with it.

Out of deference to Jesse he hadn't dressed up. She wouldn't have wanted that, he knew. Formal was for Maharet and the rest of her family. From him, a friend, she wanted what was normal. So, for her, he'd dressed casually, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, his hair clipped loose and easily, a brown leather jacket the only moderately expensive thing on him. She'd seen it when she'd walked past and winked, her way of saying thank you.

Brad continued to look around him. He couldn't spot anyone else from their coven but couldn't say if this surprised him. Tom, he knew, would not come. They had both received the invitation but Tom had politely declined, RSVPing something to the effect of wanting to show respect to Jesse's family. Brad had added in his own note explaining that Tom was still too chickenshit to be in the same room as Khayman and Maharet.

Something about the Children of the Millennia just bugged Tom. On the whole Brad couldn't blame him. Normally he avoided most of them all at cost. But you had to put things like that aside for occasions like this. Brad, though, was closer to Jesse than Tom was so it made more sense for him to come, even if he did come stag.

Marius would be with Armand, Brad knew. And Gabrielle would come only if Pandora did, he thought. Daniel was definitely not going to come and no one in the coven blamed him for it. Even today everyone figured that he still carried a torch with Jesse's name on it.

Which, Brad figured as he ran the list of names through his head once more, really left only one more person unaccounted for. On impulse Brad looked around, scanning the people behind him for the familiar face.

He found it, finally, at the far back.

Seeing Brad's gaze the figure detached itself from the shadows and came forward to join him.

Lestat was dressed in a manner both new and old fashioned. The sharp, square cuts of his jacket had been modified to give it a frock coat appearance. He wore a shirt of creamy white silk that was lined with small buttons of the same black color as his jacket and pants. His hair was back in a ponytail. A large ruby pinky ring was his only jewelry.

Lestat moved forward sedately and took a seat behind Brad, taking advantage of the relatively empty pew. He leaned forward to whisper in Brad's ear.

"I see she decided to wear white."

A smile twitched at Brad's mouth as he bit down a snort of laughter. "Hey," he whispered back, turning his head slightly, "if she wants to say she's a virgin are you gonna argue with her?"

A pair of golden eyebrows raised in mock-fear. "Not I, certainly. I've tangled with her before. I know better."

"Might not want to mention that to her husband," Brad advised. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Lestat smile and fight back laughter in turn.

"He's a good man," Lestat said when enough time had passed for them to speak in respectful whispers again.

"You've met him?"

"Yes. Years ago. I think they had just met. But I had a good feeling about him."

Brad nodded. From what Jesse had told him he felt the same way.

"He's not tied up in any of our politics," Lestat added, his voice even softer than before. "That will be good for her. He won't be afraid of her aunt."

"Know anyone on his side of the family?"

Lestat looked over to the other side of the hall. After a moment he pointed out three dark-haired vampires sitting together. "Them. I do business with their coven. They are cousins, of a sort."

"Do you trust them?"

"Yes."

Brad accepted this. Lestat had more dealings in Japan than any of them. He would know better than most. "Good," he said.

Lestat placed a hand on Brad's arm to gently quiet him. "Hush, this is the good part."

In silence they both leaned forward, watching as the priest stepped back and the newly-married couple met in a kiss. Brad and Lestat joined in the applause.

"Come," Lestat said, standing, "they'll need to move everything around for the reception."

Brad took a moment to gather up his program as a souvenir, then followed in the direction Lestat had gone to get away from the growing crowd of well-wishers. It took him a moment to find the other vampire but he did at last, picking out the clash of Lestat's yellow hair against the dark trunk of an old oak tree.

"I'll say my congratulations in a bit," Lestat said as Brad joined him. "She knows I'm here."

Brad pulled a wrought-iron chair over from a nearby fountain and sat down in it. Lestat remained by the tree, his arms folded. His grey eyes seemed distant as he looked back at the wedding hall.

"I wasn't sure you'd come," Brad said casually. He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankle.

Lestat did not look at him but he did smile. "Of course I would come. For Jesse I would come."

Brad considered this. "Are you going to stay long?"

Now Lestat looked at him. "I'm not sure."

"Staying in the States?"

Lestat shook his head. "Only for tonight. I'll go back to Hong Kong tomorrow."

The sound of laughter came from over Brad's shoulder. He turned to see some of Jesse's mortal friends walking through the gardens arm in arm.

"I'm glad she has this," Lestat said. "She, more than any of us, deserves this. She has a light inside of her which surpasses anything."

Brad considered joking about Jesse's husband overhearing this, but decided it was too crass. "I think it will last," he said.

"She has a romantic soul but she is practical as well. If anyone can make it last it will be her." Lestat paused, then asked "How are you doing?"

Brad knew that the "you" was meant to be plural. He turned back to Lestat to answer. "Good enough I suppose. We still fight once about every eight weeks but at least now we can plan around it."

Lestat smiled, laughing a little. "Sometimes you just have to."

"Was it that way with you?" Brad asked impulsively.

There was the barest moment of tension before Lestat answered. "Sometimes," he said. "Louis and I were both so strong willed. Sometimes we had to have a fight just to have one. We would curse and shout and throw things and then it would be better." Lestat shrugged, almost self-consciously. "It worked, for us. I don't know if I would advise Jesse to try that with her marriage, though."

"She doesn't have the background that you two did," Brad said. He let his arms rest on the back of his chair, tilting himself so that his weight lifted the front two feet of the chair off of the ground. "She would have been happy to see Louis here, though."

"Oh I don't know that he would have come," Lestat said. He smiled, to show there had been no harm from the question. "He was never much of an optimist. Plus a religious ceremony like this…" Lestat trailed off, waving his hand to indicate Louis' distaste for such things.

"Really?" Brad asked, surprised. "I would have thought -"

"That was for me," Lestat said. "He believed in it for my sake. It meant something to me to call him husband. Not," Lestat hastily added, "that he did not love me as his own, just that such words were meaningless to him. He felt as he felt. How the world might label it was not his concern. We were together. That was all that mattered."

"How long?" Brad asked. He had never been sure of the details.

"Thirty years," Lestat said. He became quiet, suddenly, and looked away. His manner, however, did not indicate that Brad should stop, or that he needed him to.

"Thirty years," Brad repeated, rolling the number over in his mind. "Must have been nice."

"It was," Lestat agreed. His grey eyes met Brad's blue. Brad could see the faintest red glitter along Lestat's lashes. "It was worth it."

Thirty years of being together after two hundred years of being apart. For Louis and Lestat, Brad could understand this.

Tom had talked to Brad about it after the funeral - an event which had been Brad's turn to politely decline going to out of respect for the family. It had been all of the old coven, of course. Even Gabrielle had shown, revealing herself out of the woods and cleaning herself up for her son's sake.

Lestat, Tom had said, had been strangely quiet. Accepting. Tom said he'd recited a poem which talked about bright, brief flames. No one in the coven had known what to make of it, they'd expected Lestat to rant or rave or lose his mind. The sight of him talking calmly and clearly had shocked them all.

Tom, however, was as keyed into Lestat's brain as he always was.

"Louis wouldn't have wanted that of him," Tom said. "Louis needed him to be strong, to survive. Even if he couldn't be there to do it with him. Louis needed to know that Lestat would go on no matter what. I don't think Louis could handle the concept of eternity without that."

It was, Brad thought, a form of insanity. But it was one he could surprisingly understand.

"Going to visit his tomb?" Brad asked. After the accident, Louis' remains had, naturally, been buried with his family in St Louis Number One.

Lestat shook his head, mouthing the word "No" before clearing his throat and saying it properly. "No. I used to but I realized I couldn't do that anymore. I couldn't live with the idea that that was him. It was too concrete, too tempting to never leave. Too stupid," Lestat added, with a smile that was characteristically his. "Even Louis didn't spend his life in a cemetery."

"If I recall," Brad drawled, watching Lestat with half-lidded eyes, "that was always your domain."

That earned a laugh. "Only occasionally." The grey eyes were brighter now. "If it would piss somebody off."

Brad gave out a bark of laughter and felt the front of his chair thump down on the ground as he did so.

"No," Lestat continued. "I could never live like that, and Louis knew it. I have to go out, to see people, to be with others."

Brad nodded, refusing to point out Lestat's lack of desire to live or visit anywhere that he and Louis had been. It was only events like this which brought Lestat back to the States and from Armand Brad knew that Lestat was seen in Europe only rarely.

As though reading his mind Lestat said "I want to do everything he cannot. Could not. I want to see and experience it all so that - " there was a pause. Brad looked up.

"So you can tell him?" Brad said, guessing.

"Something like that," Lestat replied. Lestat's pale skin made the blush along his cheeks stand out even more. "Which is another reason why I came," he said, gesturing towards some of the other wedding guests that had come outside. "For him, as well as for me."

It was a fairy tale to think of Lestat and Louis meeting up in whatever passed for a vampiric afterlife, but Brad couldn't think of anyone in the coven who would doubt or dispute its possibility, himself included.

"What's it like?" Brad asked quietly. He thought of himself and Tom, tried to imagine what they would be like in a hundred or two hundred years.

"Better," Lestat said. He smiled, ruefully. "Daytime was always the worst of it. He wasn't there" Lestat held out his arms to indicate holding someone. "I became so used to his weight. He slept in a bed with me, finally, when I showed him how safe it could be. Every night he was there, just like the first time. When he wasn't… it took me a while to feel comfortable again." Lestat attempted another smile but it seemed more as though he were shaking something off. "Or perhaps I just grew used to it."

"Do you think about joining him?"

"No," Lestat said at once. Blood tears rimmed his eyes but he spoke steadily. "He would hate me for it."

Brad nodded. That jived with what Tom had said. Someone else - maybe it had been Armand - had also said Louis had made Lestat promise to go on, but if that was true no one in the coven could confirm it.

"I am content," Lestat said softly, tilting his head to meet Brad's eyes. "I live a life which makes me happy. I do what I wish to. I simply do it alone."

In other words, Brad thought, you can still live after falling in love. If you were a vampire, sometimes you had to.

"Come," Lestat said. He held out a hand to help Brad get out of the chair. "I think things have calmed down enough. Let's go pretend to eat whatever the mortals are serving."

Brad took Lestat's hand and held on to it for a second more. "Would you do it again?" he asked.

Lestat turned. He took his hand out of Brad's and moved it, touching first Brad's wedding ring and then Brad's cheek. Brad felt as though a shock of something passed through him.

"Perhaps," Lestat replied. He tilted his head in the slightest bow in Brad's direction. Something not unlike his famous smile touched his lips and the center of his eyes. "Perhaps," he said again. His eyebrows twitched, as though daring Brad to make of that what he would, before he turned again and walked back to join the rest of the wedding party.

Brad stayed where he was, watching him silently, before finally moving to join him.

-fin-