Chapter Text
The night was snowy and cold, the kind of cold that clung to the lungs when Daniel breathed too sharply. The city had draped itself in frost, streetlamps casting halos over drifting snowflakes. He sat hunched on a lonely park bench, scarf drawn tight, though no amount of fabric could keep the chill from gnawing at his ribs.
He was restless. His thoughts clawed outward, spilling into the minds of strangers as they passed. Couples with flushed cheeks, businessmen with hollow eyes, a boy tugging at his mother’s hand. Every flicker of thought was the same. Ordinary, empty, human.
Daniel closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the ache settle into him. He had searched like this countless times, an obsessive routine, a ritual of longing. Where was he?
Silence.
A gust of wind carried snow against his face, and for an instant he imagined it was a hand, cold and possessive. His heart lurched. He opened his eyes, scanning the dark stretch of the park. Empty. Only shadows, only the city’s indifferent breath.
Snow started to pile on his unmoving form.
Reluctantly, he rose from the bench and turned toward home.
He remembered waking once, years ago, in terror. A vampire alone drowning in instincts that weren’t his own, with memories that weren’t entirely his either. They came in shards, in colors too sharp, in feelings too large for his fragile skin. Memories of a whole other life flashing before his eyes. Memories that carried terror, rage, happiness, and even love. He was left alone in them wondering if they were real.
Hunger had nearly undone him. If not for Louis’ stash of blood. Daniel would have torn Dubai apart in a frenzy, he needed blood, was ravenous when he awoke.
He had spent countless nights waking up in a random part of the house almost getting sick on how much he gorged himself. He spent weeks stepping out of the house only to turn right back around, the smell of warm humans too tempting. Slowly he ventured until he was able to bare the pulses of those around him without turning into a frenzied bloodthirsty creature.
When he finally felt like he could smell a human without tearing one apart he went home. But every night he wished and hoped Armand would appear to help him through the confusing transformation.
His maker.
The king of lies. The architect of secrets. The one who abandoned him...
He was bitter to put it lightly. Some nights he buried his face in his hands, pressing until his temples throbbed, as if he could squeeze Armand out of his skull, out of his veins. He was angry. He was scared. He was immortal.
Sleep came shallow, dreamless, more like collapse than rest.
Bitterness turned to anger and anger to rage.
As the weeks bled into months, his fury dulled. The sharp edge of betrayal softened into something far more dangerous, loneliness. It crept in with the same patience as winter frost, spreading slow, unnoticed, until it covered everything.
Loneliness was an ever present ache.
He couldn't help but think of those memories. He tried as hard as he could but he found them popping into his head uninvited. He remembered a voice that had promised love and saftey, of hands that had once steadied his trembling body. Toward the one person who had damned him and yet made him feel, for a time, cherished beyond measure.
so he searched, because he was a fool and he didn't know what he was expecting. Maybe just to get answers. Maybe he just wanted to see him one more time.
He felt other vampires sometimes moving through the city. Their presence cut across his awareness like sparks against the dark, sharp and acidic. They came and went quickly, never sparing him a glance, never brushing against his mind with more than passing static. He ignored them.
He only was interested in two scents.
Louis, familiar as old parchment and candle smoke, a softness. Daniel spoke with him often, half-seeking comfort, half-wallowing in the memory of what Louis represented: survival, patience, a gentler kind of eternity. They shared Tales and progress of the book. As reluctant as he was at first to admit, they had become friends. Louis was surprisingly understanding. He was a voice that made him feel a bit less insane when his mind wouldn't shut up.
And then there was Armand.
Armand’s scent lingered at the edge of himself, maddeningly close, almost indistinguishable from his own. Armand's scent held hidden power. He had awoken, face in his pillow, more than a dozen times without knowing how he had really gotten there. He sure didn't tell louis that bit.
Daniel fed without joy, without the ecstasy he’d once been promised. The blood filled him, warmed him, but his mind was elsewhere dragged into the strange haze of memories that weren’t his. Muted scraps of a life long extinguished, laughter that felt both tender and cruel, the warmth of hands he did not recognize, the flicker of a smile across a face blurred with time. They came like half-burned photographs, useless, senseless, and yet clinging to him with a weight he couldn’t shake.
A sweetness that was ripped from him because his maker was a FUCKING COWARD. Yes he did scream that into nearby minds.
He closed his eyes, pressing the fragments down until they threatened to split him apart. And then he reached outward, reckless, pushing the name into the streams of thought that brushed his mind.
Armand, come.
The whisper unfurled in a dozen heads at once, a subtle echo in the veins of the city. A plea, a demand, a wound seeking its source.
Armand...
But the minds he touched only shuddered with confusion, with irritation, with the dull noise of human distraction. No voice answered. No tether pulled back.
Only silence.
The word scattered through the city like a pebble breaking the surface of still water. Most minds twitched and shook it off, brushing against the strange intrusion like gnats on skin. Daniel sagged back against the alley wall, frustration rising, ready to withdraw, and then something stirred.
Not an answer. Not a voice. Just…a ripple.
A thread of awareness brushed him, faint but undeniable, so close to his own essence it felt like breathing in his reflection. Cold swept down his spine. For one shuddering heartbeat, the city’s noise thinned, and all he could smell was something familiar. Just the faintest taste of it.
Then it was gone.
Like a hand withdrawn, like lips that had hovered too close only to retreat.
Daniel’s throat tightened. He turned on his heels half running into the direction of the ripple.
“Come on, you coward! You can’t hide forever!” His voice cracked the night, echoing through the empty park like a jagged blade. Snow swallowed the sound quickly, muting it into the vast dark, leaving only his ragged breath behind.
He stood there, stubborn, as if his defiance might conjure the figure. Snow drifted heavier, piling in his hair, clinging to his lashes until the world blurred in white. Still, no answer. No footsteps. No hand on his shoulder.
Just silence.
At last, his body betrayed him, stiff with cold, the pull of the sun soon rising. He dragged in a breath and turned away.
Each step felt like surrender, though he told himself it wasn’t. His heart pounded with the certainty that Armand had been near, that he had been listening.
What a prick. The thought tore through him, hot and jagged, stoking the rage already boiling in his chest. His fists clenched until his nails bit into his palms. He wanted to scream.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow he would hunt him. He would drag his maker out from whatever shadows he skulked in. He would tear through the city if he had to, burn every false trail, rip every whisper from the air until there was nothing left but Armand. No more games, no more silence.
He collapsed in his bed reluctantly.