Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Facing Demons: Part Two

Roux

"Have you ever gone back to any of the places where something bad happened to you?" Roux asked, as they left the demolition site.

"No," Ludovic said.

Roux supposed that made sense, in a way. Ludovic had suffered so much over his life, and there were so many places with terrible memories for him. And yet she still had to ask, "Not even to visit the graves of people you lost? Besides Lucille, I mean."

She knew that he'd kept watch over Lucille throughout her mortal life, even thought Lucille had never known, and that he'd visited her grave once before leaving Orleans for good.

Ludovic abruptly stopped. His profile could have been carved from marble; the only movement was his blond hair fluttering slightly in the breeze.

"Why would I do that?" he said.

"Because that's what people do?"

"I couldn't even if I wanted to. I don't know where most of the people I loved are buried."

"You know where Marie is buried," said Roux gently.

Ludovic stiffened.

"Haven't you ever thought about going back?" Roux said.

Ludovic looked at her and his eyes were dark with grief, churning with the shadows of everything he'd lost over the centuries, and that one loss that cut deeper than the others.

"No," he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

Roux took his hand. "Maybe you should think about it."

She understood that there were some places Ludovic could never go back to – like the fields where he and Edmond had fought in the trenches. The shell-shock that he had suffered there was something he'd mostly overcome now, but during the months they'd been together, Roux knew that Ludovic sometimes still woke up with the smell of blood and mud and chlorine gas in his nose. Revisiting the site of the trenches would probably be more of a trigger than a help.

Marie was more complicated.

She'd died hundreds of years ago, and while many vampires had come to terms with losses from so long ago, Roux was sure the situation with DeSanti, and what he'd done to the kids he'd abducted had stirred up a lot of feelings for Ludovic. She would never forget the way he'd carried Chloe Hegerty out of the cellar where DeSanti had imprisoned her, the way he'd cradled her as if she was the most precious thing in the world, even though he'd never met her before.

Once, he would have held his own daughter like that.

Roux firmly believed that visiting the graves of loved ones could be a comforting experience. It could help people feel close to those they'd lost, or provide some measure of closure if they were struggling to come to terms with it. Most vampires didn't get to have that kind of closure.

But Ludovic still hadn't said anything, and Roux sensed that she'd pushed enough.

"Come on, let's go home," she said.

Neither of them brought up the subject for the next few days, but twice Roux rolled over in the night and found Ludovic awake, staring at the ceiling. During the day, he was quieter, more pensive than normal, and Roux began to worry that she'd pushed too hard, too soon.

Then, five days after visiting the demolition site, Roux was jerked awake by someone gently but insistently shaking her.

"What?" she mumbled, blinking.