Archive of Our Own ^beta

He didn’t hate Madeleine.

He had never hated Madeleine.

He doesn’t hate her.

He never felt a single negative emotion about her. What he feels for her is… (envy, bitterness, emasculation and…) Nothing. He feels nothing. His bones are hollow. Her blood is hollow. A whole life behind his eyes. Oh Louis and his tragic romance with France. He rejected her, as always. Or maybe she rejects him.

Her blood is hollow.

A whole life. A tragic life. She’s nice, he thinks, absentmindedly.

He’s happy for Claudia.

He’s happy.

He’s…

He drinks and it feels like he’s being raped. Hollow bones, hollow blood. He drinks and he feels so full. His ribcage is expanding and expanding and expanding and he feels so hollow and he feels so full he might throw up.

She’s nice. He should be happy for Claudia.

He doesn’t want this. Nothing bad is happening. It’s the most peaceful and consensual turning he’d ever witnessed. It’s his first… He doesn’t want this. Yet he shouldn’t—

He can’t let anything go wrong. He can’t do this to Claudia. He can’t be yet another bastard who hurts Claudia.

He doesn’t—

Madeline is nice. Madeleine is really fond of Claudia. She will be a good companion for her, he knows it. When Claudia leaves and they start living separate lives and when she leaves and she leaves and she leaves and—

Madeleine is dead. Her whole life inside of his brain isn’t. His whole existence craves to push it away from his body. France and tragic life. Every hollow place in him, thumping and throbbing and squirming inside and he wants to push it away, he doesn’t want that bond, he doesn’t want her, he doesn’t want to—

He doesn’t want to give her his blood. He’s now weirdly protective of their blood. Runs in the family. This rotten, seething blood, thick with grief and decay. Runs in the family. He has to give her his blood that is now intertwined with her blood and maybe it would help to soothe this overwhelming sence of violation, return this to her. Maybe if he tries hard enough he can separate those two oh so miserable lives and return only the one that doesn’t belong to him.

It doesn’t help. nothing helps and she survives and Claudia is happy and he wants to scratch every wet and pulsing thing out of his body until only bones and dust remain. He stays put. They pack their stuff. He stays put. They share their last goodbye (their last goodbye. they won’t have a chance to do this when—). He stays put. They close the door. He stays put. He stays put. He—

He rips pieces of flesh off of him, he bleeds (runs in the family), he throws up, he bleeds, he tears his veins, he bleeds (runs in the family). It doesn’t help. It’s the curse, the writhing rot of France within him (runs—

The writhing rot of Her inside him. He doesn’t want this. He wants Claudia to be happy. He doesn’t want Claudia to leave. He wants Claudia to forever fill up his ribcage instead of this unworthy—

Now she left. She should be in his ribcage, swallowed and assimilated until they’re one and she left.

He doesn’t hate Madeleine. He doesn’t understand. It’s not her, it’s not France, it’s not the blood.

It’s the family.