Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's a bad idea. 

Maybe the worst Daniel Molloy has ever had, and maybe not. He's had a lot of bad ideas, taken a lot of batshit risks. Most of them have paid off, one way or another, which is how he had a career that includes two Pulitzers and enough stories for a memoir, even if these days there's not much left except to do shit like MasterClass riding on his own coattails. But those are the risks he took after a night in San Francisco he only half remembers. 

Sometimes he thought he'd dreamed it, that night on Divisadero Street. Dreamed Louis, smooth at the bar and brooding at the apartment, except when he wasn't. 

"Hi," he'd said, baring his fangs. 

Vampire. Yeah, right.

"We made it up, right? High as fucking kites, and all?" Daniel asked his daemon, more than once.

"I don't think we did," Sianna said, every time.

And there's the scar, of course. Alice and Vivian both asked about it, and they aren't the only ones. Daniel's always said he doesn't remember, because what the fuck else is he going to say? So there's the scar, and his daemon's refusal to lie to him, and there's...

Well. Daniel's been all over the fucking place, when he was cruising for sex and drugs and as a journalist. There's shit he's seen over the years, mostly in passing, but... There's a world under the world. He hates that he knows that but he does. He and Sianna got caught up in a piece of it once, when they were too young and too stupid to know what to do with it. To draw out the real story of it. Since then, the little glimpses here and there were never anything worth pursuing. He'd thought about it a couple times, but never came across anything solid enough to go through with it.

This is solid.

This is also probably suicide.

"The question is," Sianna says, when Daniel has played through all the tapes, "what have we got to lose? Really."

Daniel looks over at her. Sianna has always been, among other things, the part of them most likely to be sensible. He knows, from his own efforts to get clean and from some of the stories he's pursued, that the same holds true for a lot of people with various kinds of self-destructive tendencies. And sometimes the opposite is true — seemingly well-adjusted, steady people can turn out to have daemons this close to going outright feral in their recklessness.

Daniel's not a daemonologist, but he's done his research, because while half of the things people say about what particular daemon shapes mean is bullshit, some of it has its uses. Mostly, daemons have body language and tells, and usually they're worse at hiding it than their human halves, so with either him or Sianna keeping an eye out, it's useful on the job. And it's been useful for them, a time or two. Daniel knows Sianna's his anchoring side, so when she's the one saying maybe they shouldn't bother with caution...

So Daniel stares his daemon down now, and she stares back from the climbing frame set up by the couch, one of several he's got in the apartment for her, her big black eyes steady. She's a fisher, like a marten but bigger, and if she doesn't look entirely harmless, she also doesn't look like a dangerous sort of animal. They like that, because it helps people underestimate them. Not so much these days, it worked better when Daniel didn't have a reputation, and when he was young enough to get away with the wide-eyed clueless act.

Fun fact, though. Fishers hunt and kill porcupines, one of the few animals to do so. When Daniel and Sianna read that, right after she settled late, when they were seventeen, they both laughed and laughed.

Just now, he feels like the one being hunted, like being called out. They can do this to themself as much as to anyone else — if they couldn't, how could they manage it at all?

She's not wrong.

"Worst case scenario, biting's faster than wasting away," he agrees, and just like that, they're going to Dubai.

Daniel's expecting to dream of San Francisco that night. He's been listening to the tapes all day, trying to jog his memory. It's always been... hazy, that night on Divisadero Street, and it's not as though Daniel and Sianna haven't got plenty of Swiss cheese memories. Drugs will do that to you. But some of the holes feel different, always have. The first interview's one of them, for whatever reason.

(Also, as they found out when they went to Italy for a story, even though Daniel and Sianna thought they'd never been before, the deja vu when they found themselves in Pompeii was overwhelming and fucking weird. Not the only time that's happened, but for some reason the strongest one.)

"I don't believe I wanna give simple answers," Louis says in the dream.

"He was a handsome Satan," Louis says.

"I know the type," Daniel says, and in the dream he's his younger self thinking of — well, thinking of Louis but also thinking of other dangerous charmers he knew back then, and he's his older self thinking God I was a fucking idiot, but he's also — he's —

Dark curls and ambered red-flame eyes, and what —

"Is that what makes you fascinating?"

"Tell me what you want and I'll get it for you."

"Same old dance," Daniel says. "You know what I want. Tell me why you won't, give me answers at least, you owe me —"

Daniel wakes up choking on something between fury and grief, and he doesn't know why. The clock reads 4:13 am, because of course it fucking does. "What was that?" he asks Sianna, his voice croaking. Most of the time they share dreams, and he knows from the way he can feel her familiar shape trembling where she's draped over his legs that she shared this one.

"That wasn't Louis. It started as Louis, but... But it wasn't just him," Sianna says. "His daemon was a wolf or a coyote, wasn't she? There was a big cat there with me, and the voice was different."

"Yeah, but no one else was there in the apartment that night, and that first bit we were still in the apartment." Daniel rubs a hand over his eyes and lays back down, staring blankly into the dark. "Maybe we just made it up."

Except that voice has been in their dreams before. That voice, and the soft pleased chuffs or angry hisses of a large cat. Never tangled up with San Francisco dreams before, but that's probably Daniel's own fault, because, again, spent the whole rest of the damn day listening to the tapes from the first interview.

It's just a weird dream. That's all. And they have a trip to plan.

Daniel and Sianna wouldn't say they've ever had an amicable divorce.

Vivian and Arion made it a fucking Ice Age, and they haven't heard from those two since the divorce papers were signed, except that one time they got stuck working together nine years ago, but Daniel figures that was the price for marrying someone in the same field of work. He'd hoped that they'd both be more understanding of each other because of it, but as it turned out he didn't like being left hanging any more than Alice had, and Vivian thought she didn't owe him anything.

Actually, she probably didn't, if only because karma's a bitch, but both of them were too stubborn to bend, and then he lost his temper about it all one too many times, fell off the wagon briefly but spectacularly and wham, bam, divorce number two!

And she'd been glad he didn't have custody of Kate and Lenora, only visitation, because she didn't want to play mother. Which she'd been up front about, and he — well. He could barely play father and he was their father, so it was one of those things he didn't have any room to bitch about. She'd been fine playing stepmom on the girls' weekends, and they hadn't disliked each other, so it was fine, right?

Alice, though...

God, Alice. And Caerus, of course.

The thing about Alice and Daniel is they sound like a story. Like a coming of age romcom gone bad. They grew up together. Same street, same school, Alice as obsessed with her art as Daniel was with writing. They understood each other, understood getting lost in their respective passions. They went to prom together and hooked up in the back of his car afterwards, all the teenage sweetheart cliches.

And then they'd gone to different colleges but crossed paths again in New York, and it really felt like one of those things.

Some of that may have been the drugs they both used regularly.

They fell into bed off and on for years, they fell in love and out of it and back in again just as easily, there was a failed proposal and the twins were born, and then a quick town hall wedding when the twins were three. Happy moments with each other and the girls, vicious moments with each other, and the thing is they were both still using during all that time, so when things exploded into divorce after both of them ended up cheating but Daniel was nasty enough to set things up so Alice caught him with someone else in their bed, well...

Well. In the end, they got their divorce, and Alice's sister Maggie got custody of Kate and Lenora.

But the thing is, Vivian hates him. Kate and Lenora... Well. Lenora and Cian hate him and Sianna, and Lenora hates even more that now he's sick, she feels some vague biological obligation to check in on him. Kate and Alkon don't hate him and Sianna, which both of them are vaguely baffled by, actually. Kate once said, "The way I see it, maybe that was all you were capable of. Which sucks, but what's the point of hating you for it?"

Somehow, that was the most devastating thing she could have said.

Kate doesn't have kids. As far as he knows, she doesn't want them. Lenora has two under five, and if Facebook can be believed they're her world. Daniel's met the kids once, because Lenora's wife thought it would be a good idea or something. It had been awkward, mostly.

So obviously he doesn't contact Vivian. He texts the twins, because they both check on him now and then, and he tells his editor he's going to interview the most dangerous man in the world, because Daniel's never claimed to lack a sense of drama. He doesn't text Alice, but she's the one who calls him.

"Danny, are you fucking crazy? There is the slightest chance you can reconcile with our girls before you die, and now you go and do something as ridiculous as run off in a pandemic?"

"Pretty sure that ship's long sailed, Lissy," Daniel says, because if she's going to use his old nickname he can use hers. And that's the thing about Alice. He can't really hate her and she can't really hate him. Not completely. There's no love left there, and she did much better at rebuilding a relationship with the twins once she got clean than he did, she wanted it more than he did. But there is...

There's history. There's Modesto, there's everything they wanted when they were young and stupid, when they were a little older but unfortunately not smarter. There's the way he preferred when she didn't dye her eyebrow and the way she insisted his first pair of glasses suited him. There's the way they tried, when they realized they were gonna be parents, even if they both sucked at it and he never got better even when she did.

"Maybe, but you don't help yourself."

"Do I ever?" Daniel asks, flopping back on the couch with the phone pressed to his ear. "Look, this is... something I've gotta do. A second chance at a story I missed, and I won't get a third, so this is it."

"Wait. Is this about the guy?"

Oh God. The guy.

So what happened in 1985 when Daniel and Alice made a go of it for real is, they ran into each other in Miami, Florida, of all places. Daniel doesn't actually remember what he was doing in Miami, but he ran into Alice at a club, they went back to the room she'd rented out, had sex and got high enough that they both almost died from it. Daniel doesn't remember anything about waking up but Alice insists there was someone there, someone she thinks saved them somehow.

A man, she can't remember anything about him but dark curls and strange eyes.

"Alice, you know I think the guy was a drug-induced hallucination."

"And you know I saw you with him in New York a few years before. Parties, more than one of them. And you looked at him like you looked at me sometimes. I used to wonder why the hell you never wanted to figure out what went wrong."

The guy is one of the things Daniel and Alice used to argue about, because it never happened. His memories are kinda fucked from years of drugs, sure, but he'd remember if he'd ever been in love with some curlytop guy. He doesn't think Alice would have hallucinated anything like that, and they probably did see each other in passing during those years even if he doesn't remember that happening much. So he figures what probably actually happened was there were parties where she saw him, and some where she saw a guy with his boyfriend who happened to look like him from a bit of a distance, and she couldn't see his daemon, so she figured it was him.

It wouldn't matter, except that Alice's absolute certainty that there was someone else in Daniel's life, some lost love, was one of the reasons it took her so long to agree to marry him. She didn't trust that he wouldn't leave her for the guy, and when Daniel insisted there never was a guy, she thought he was lying.

But it's not worth getting into this again.

"It's personal, but not like that. This is a guy I interviewed in San Francisco, but I fucked it up. Now I'm getting another shot at it. Nothing to do with anyone I may or may not have had a fling with."

"Then you're even crazier, because that I'd almost understand."

"Ha," Daniel says sourly. "Aren't you and I proof that I would be an idiot to chase down some old love even if I had one?"

He isn't particularly surprised when she hangs up on him. Doesn't mean he was wrong, now does it?

Louis doesn't look any different, of course, except for the obvious change in clothing styles. Daniel figures that if he still needed it, that would be proof enough that all of this is as real as he'd spent fifty years trying to tell himself it wasn't. He should be disappointed, maybe, or spooked, but all he feels is the thrill of the chase, something he'd mostly figured he'd never have again.

"You've grown old, Daniel," Louis says, and Daniel thinks it might be mocking, but he's actually not sure. So he goes for flippant in response.

"Yeah, well, mortality beats a heavy drum."

"I wasn't sure you'd remembered me," Louis says as he approaches the couch where Daniel's sitting, holding out a copy of Daniel's own memoir. "Your book makes no mention of our prior meeting."

And that comment is — maybe not mocking, but definitely amused. It sets Daniel's teeth on edge. Sianna tenses where she's curled up next to his thigh, and he knows it for a warning to tread carefully this early on, so he keeps the same tone. "Gritty memoir, drugs, humiliation, self-pity kind of thing. Mention vampires in one of those, readers tend to call bullshit."

Louis knows about his Parkinson's, the bastard. He wants to know if he hit a nerve, when he's sitting here in fancy anonymity pulling a one-way hack on Daniel's life. Daniel lets the annoyance show because there's no point in hiding it and he doesn't want to bother. He asks about the sun instead, asks Louis where his coffin is.

"You're standing in it," Louis says.

Something about the crackle of Louis' skin as he holds it in a sunbeam pricks something at the back of Daniel's mind, something that kicks his nerves up even further. He doesn't know what it is or why, so he ignores it and pushes on. "Yeah, well, things didn't end so well the last time, so forgive me if I'm a little nervous," he says, tugging at his collar before playing the end of their last interview.

Louis is across the room in Daniel's face before Daniel could even think about hiding the kneejerk startle that gives him. Louis' daemon, who is sitting not far from the butler or whoever he is over at a desk with iPad in hand, snarls quietly but still doesn't move. Sianna scrambles to her feet with a low hiss, and Daniel grabs for her, her fur under his hand a familiar, grounding thing for both of them.

"You were disrespectful."

"I was high."

"You were not worthy of my story then," Louis says, those uncanny green eyes still blazing even though he's calmer now.

"Maybe your story wasn't worth telling," Daniel says, and makes himself sprawl back on the sofa, Sianna lying over his thighs to match his feigned relaxation. "You've got the tapes. Hire a transcriber. I don't do puff portraiture anymore." Obviously, this is a lie. Well, no, it's not, but it's a misdirection. Daniel wouldn't be here if he didn't want this, but the question is, why does Louis want it?

"And yet, you got on a plane, with an autoimmune disease, in the middle of a pandemic," Louis points out mildly as he settles on the other couch.

Damn. Daniel's going to have to give something to get something, clearly. "All right. That's my voice, but I don't remember it. I ask all the wrong questions. There's contradictions in your story I never follow up on," he explains, Louis quietly agreeing with each point like he saw all this coming. "The few good ones I do manage to get out, you steamroll over them. It's not an interview, it — it's a fever dream told to an idiot."

"Yes," Louis says, voice hushed. He seems satisfied, like Daniel's made his point for him, and he has. This is about pride, after all, and if it's also about the fact that the gaps in memory haunt Daniel, well, that's the part he hadn't wanted to admit to. His professional pride being hurt is a lot less personal.

"And you? Why again? What's changed?"

Louis gets up, moving closer. "The world, circumstances. Me, I've changed. And I too find the tapes lacking."

"So. A do-over," Daniel says, finishing his recording setup.

"Truth and reconciliation."

"I ask the questions, you answer the questions," Daniel says, flat and businesslike now. "Anything that can't be verified, I send to my researcher."

He expects a rejection, but he expects it from Louis. Instead, it comes from the guy at the desk. Rashid, he'd introduced himself as when Daniel arrived, no last name. "No third parties," he says, and Daniel notices the gloves and the British accent with mild interest.

He doesn't respond, though, still talking to Louis as he lays out more terms. "I write it, you get to see it before it goes to print. I get the final edit."

Still nothing from Louis, but the personal assistant's got more to say. "That is not the agreement you signed."

Daniel takes off his glasses. "And one more thing. I do my best work one on one."

Louis proceeds to ignore both of them, telling his guy to set up room and food for Daniel, but then he says, "I think it best we start when our boy's had a rest," and no. Just no.

"I am not your fucking boy," Daniel snaps. "I'm an old man with all the triggers that come with it. And I'm ready. So let's do this."

And so they do. Daniel rattles off time and location, sets up for Louis to give his name, and then... "So, Mr. du Lac. How long have you been dead?"

Louis starts laughing at that, and hell, there are worse ways to open an interview. Louis is actually a good storyteller. Daniel can almost see the New Orleans of 1910 in the way he talks about it, and this is one of the reasons he'd fumbled this so bad at twenty. Daniel's always had an eye for the story but that also means a part of him wants to sink into it, get lost in it when it's good enough. Part of being an investigative reporter has been learning how not to do that while he's getting the story. It's part of putting it all together in the final product but it can't be part of the interviewing process.

And when they get to Lestat, after the first meeting and the card game...

"He was in love with my city and wanted to know everything he could about it."

"So you played docent to the gentleman vampire?" Actually, not a bad way to charm someone, for either of them, Daniel will give them that.

"He had not revealed his vampire nature yet."

Not really Daniel's point, as he'd figured out that much for himself. "I'm assuming you only met at night."

"It's New Orleans. Days are for sleeping off the previous evening's damage."

"Perfect cover for a vampire."

"Racing ahead again, Mr. Molloy," Louis says, but he sounds amused too, like he's having fun with all this. Maybe he is. Nostalgia's a hell of a thing, after all, probably more so for the immortal. "Let the tale seduce you. Just as I was seduced."

Daniel could point out that letting the tale seduce him is exactly what he's not here to do, but he doesn't. He lets Louis keep talking, because that's what he's here for. To get the story, to listen and look for the right places to ask what he needs to so that he gets it all. But he does have to admit, when Louis says, "I was being hunted. And I was completely unaware it was happening," he's there in it with Louis, in that winter with someone too captivating to resist, being drawn in despite knowing it's a bad idea.

Hell of a thing. But then again, that happened last time. Handsome Satans, and all that shit. Daniel wishes he didn't get it but he does, more now than he did then. And there's something... the soft chuff of the big cat in his dreams, the scent of clove cigarettes, and it's nothing to do with Louis as far as he knows but something about this part of the story...

And Louis must suspect something, because after he talks about his and Lestat's first time, he brings up not only his own evolution on his sexuality, but turns it back on Daniel. "We met at a gay bar, didn't we, Daniel?"

"It was a good place to score. I did what I had to."

And that's never really been true, Daniel hasn't even really bothered to lie to himself about it for a long time, and he didn't lie in his book either. But this isn't about him and he doesn't want to go down this road with Louis.

"You been married?"

"Twice. But we're not here for me, are we?"

Louis considers him with narrowed eyes for a moment, but lets it go, redirecting with a question about Daniel's best high to explain the feeling of what he calls "the little drink." There's something about that which tugs at Daniel too, something about the idea of something so intimate, but he doesn't know why and he lets it go for now. Anyway, that's when the story takes a turn into something even he can't be too vicious about.

Daniel's an only child. He's never had a brother, but he has family. The idea of someone you love dying in front of you — killing themselves in front of you — he watches Louis walk out onto the balcony, then closes the computer and follows him out. Rashid's back, lingering at the edges of the room, but he doesn't come outside.

They stand at the balcony, silence reigning for just a moment. Louis' daemon is pacing behind them, while Sianna clambers up Daniel's pant leg and cardigan till she settles in her favorite perch along his shoulder and back.

"I have seen death over and over and over and over," Louis says. "It's boring."

"That'll make a great blurb," Daniel says, because what else can he say to that?

"The diagnosis you received, Daniel, it winds your clock. This virus has turned the world sideways."

"I get it. I'm gonna die. They're gonna die. But not the vampire."

"The vampire is bored!" Louis says. "The human was destroyed. Utterly destroyed."

The vampire is bored, huh? Well, that's as good a reason for doing this as any, and probably the best Daniel's going to get for now.

The thing is that Lestat is... Well, boring's not exactly the word Daniel would use.

"For the first time in my life, I was seen," is how Louis describes his reaction to what Daniel can only call Lestat's marriage proposal, even if in this case marriage also meant a species change. And yeah, OK, that's a hell of a thing, that's the kind of temptation most people would want, at least once in their lives. So, no, it's not boring, this part of the story.

Louis' past with this guy is a fucked up Gothic romance with all kinds of uncomfortable intersections. Daniel calls some of it out because it's obvious — white master, black student, but supposedly "equals in the quiet dark"? Daniel's sure he's not saying anything Louis doesn't already know, from how he talks about his past it's very clear he was extremely practiced and aware of how to navigate the racist bullshit of his world. (Not that things are good now, just less official.) But bringing it up, over and over, is a tactic. It's supposed to poke at Louis when he tries to brush things off, irritate him enough to say more.

And Louis picks up on it, sure, but then again, he's doing it too. Eating live animals in front of Daniel, comparing animals to humans, talking up how vampires are apex predators. Daniel knows this for what it is, a game of chicken of daring each other to break or hide.

Louis doesn't kill anymore, apparently. Useful information, sure, but Daniel can't help but feel like he's bringing it up to avoid admitting if he ate his nephew. Still, it opens up another important line of questioning, especially since Louis wants people to believe this story is real, and actually so does Daniel. Louis doesn't kill, fine, but what about other vampires, who are apparently the opposite.

Giddy to increase their numbers. That doesn't sound good. What sounds even worse is the fact that apparently, vampires have a goddamn psychic network that they can use to communicate.

"I try to have a human dish once a week, to maintain the thread," Louis says, but to pick a dessert from Daniel's memoir? That's another level in the game of chicken they're playing. Because, of course, Alice said no when Daniel proposed. But Daniel's not sure that's all of it, because there's something here. Something in maintaining the thread , in the way Louis talks about Lestat, this first grand love affair he sees it as, in spite of all the fucked-up angles and all the bitterness he'd shown last time.

Common ground, that seems to be what he's going for here. So Daniel lets himself fall into it, for a moment. "Half of her eyebrow was blond, like a mutt. She always dyed it back to brown." He looks down and off to the side, surprising himself when he says, "I liked it when she left it alone." He hasn't told anyone that since the last time he told Alice that.

Alice and Lestat. Him and Louis. There's no real common ground there but it tells Daniel something. Louis is calling Lestat his first love now, and clearly it means something to him to do it, even if it's a complete shift from San Francisco. Which it is, so much that Daniel has to call him out on it the next day. "The version we speak of now is the more nuanced portrait," Louis says. "I do not consider myself abused," he says.

Why the change, Daniel wants to know, and Louis responds by throwing Daniel's own words in his memoir back at him. "'This is the odyssey of recollection.' The tapes are an admitted performance. This is the premise of our interview. Half a century later, allow me my odyssey."

So Daniel drops the tapes in the trash can by the couch.

"Now who's performing?" Louis asks, and when Daniel ignores that —

He sets the tapes on fire, with his mind, presumably, pleased mischief gleaming in his eyes. This is a game, that's what it is, and they both know it. So Daniel restarts the recording, and he still doesn't comment.

The odyssey of recollection, and Louis' memory has some weird holes in it. Daniel makes a note of them, because he doesn't think Louis is lying, exactly, about things like whether it was raining or not when he hooked up with a former teenage fling, but the way he doesn't remember suggests... some kind of repression going on. It's not just that, but that's the obvious one.

The one thing that's kind of interesting is that from what Louis has said, Daniel gets the impression that as things got more intense, Louis caught between his human life and his vampire instincts, Lestat was outright oblivious to what was going on. Either the vampire thing or the white Frenchman thing, or both, had him just fucking clueless as to what hornet's nests he was kicking over. Objectively, that could be worth following but it's the kind of dynamic Daniel could only properly explore if Lestat was present for the interview, so he doesn't really pursue it.

And that's the thing about Lestat in general, really. So much of what Daniel would follow up on only really works in a situation where he can follow up. Which at some point he may have to find out if that's a possibility, but for now he puts a pin in most of it. Not enough information when he's talking to Louis alone, so he focuses in on that. And there's a lot there, anger that Daniel... He's an asshole enough to offer running commentary on what being a black vampire, all that power to hand, would have meant in the 1910s South, but honestly? He can't blame Louis for losing his cool one bit.

More than that, it's obvious why he and Lestat were splintering. Talking past each other in too many ways, Daniel's been there. In much less loaded, complicated circumstances, sure, but people are people. Even when they're vampires, apparently.

When Claudia enters the story, Daniel's got a source besides Louis. He's got Claudia's diaries, handed over to him while Louis has a day to rest. Daniel spots almost immediately that there's pages missing from a couple of the volumes, though he'll wait to bring that up until they get to that point in time in the interview, but it's still Claudia's words. It's still a different perspective aside from Louis', something he can look at and consider in a way he can't do with whatever perspective Lestat could hypothetically bring.

There's a lot to be said about Claudia and her Siete, and Daniel says it. He does it to provoke Louis and because it's true, and because on some level Daniel can't help but like her, and he's trying to remind himself not to like her too much, dead or not. Because it also reminds him not to relax too much with Louis, for all that he doesn't let himself shrink back from pushing.

But damn if he doesn't like her in spite of himself. She's as much of a goddamn terror as either of her dads, especially once he gets to her record of last words, and yet still... There's an energy to her, something sharp and defiant and blazingly determined to force the world to cooperate with her one way or another. So, yeah, Daniel likes her.

"Anne Frank meets Stephen King," is how Daniel describes her when Louis first asks, though, because it’s not like he’s going to just admit it without caveats.

"Claudia was everything. I loved her unconditionally," Louis says.

And the thing is, Daniel's not sure if he's lying or not. The diaries so far at least prove the bond was closer between Claudia and Louis, even before Lestat decided driving home a hard lesson had to include making Claudia watch the body of the boy she accidentally killed melt, which is just...

Fucking brutal, actually.

"You had a daughter."

"I had a daughter.”

"I've got two. The love is kind of..." Daniel trails off at that one, because he does love his girls, but due to his own mistakes, it’s not as though he really knows them, is it?

"And if you were to come across their diaries and learn, in detail, how and when you failed them, would you share those failures with a brash young reporter you met at Polynesian Mary's?"

Daniel has to laugh, partly because Louis does have a point there, though he doesn't want to admit it. But also because of his dreams. Louis doesn't take the bait this time, so they go back to the story.

To Claudia, when everything exploded between Louis and Lestat again, only this time there's a damn kid involved.

It's a horror show, and Daniel refuses to deny that's what it is, in the face of Louis' guilt and his denial and, OK, Daniel will grant him this, the love he clearly feels and the grief that goes with it. But also, even more than with Louis earlier on, Daniel has to admit, in her shoes? He'd probably go wild with rage too, and all that anger, with eternal teenage hormones and predatory instincts?

It's a nightmare for her victims and it was probably a nightmare for her too.

But he'll save that for the book itself. Right now, he's here to keep pushing.

The thing is, he isn't really pushing, when he starts in on all the ways Claudia will be exploited. "Once you put it out there, they decide what it is. It can get away from you," he says, and all he's doing is demonstrating. As for the pages cut out about Bruce... The thing is, Daniel's still being honest here too, because it’s not like he’s planning to transcribe something like that, he’ll show some basic decency in the book, but he wants the whole truth or he can't trust any of this.

It's not part of the game, not for either of them, because that's also when Louis triggers his damned Parkinson's.

So, yeah, Daniel slaps him. And Rashid's there to pull on a metaphorical leash. Louis’ daemon growls but doesn’t react otherwise, while Rashid’s butterfly stays unnervingly still in the globe necklace he keeps the daemon in. Sianna, curled by Daniel’s chair, simply stays where she is the whole time.

And this is still a game, but it's more than a game.

There's something else, though, that only comes up in Claudia's diaries. Something he doesn't remember from listening to the tapes, and that Louis did not mention when discussing his turning this second time around.

"So, what's with the daemon thing?" he asks, and Sianna's head is on his knee. His hand, shaking just a little today, rests on her head, and it helps the tremors stay slight. Probably psychosomatic, but he'll take what he can get. Louis is watching them with that faint smirk of his, his own coywolf daemon pacing behind the couch. Ysabeau, she said on the old tapes, though Louis has only ever called her Izzy here in Dubai.

"What daemon thing?" Louis asks, bland.

"It was in Claudia's journals. Her Siete hadn't settled, until she woke up a vampire and her daemon was a jackal. Lestat told her turning set the form for her daemon, that adults' daemons change form when they're turned. You haven't mentioned that at all before," Daniel says. "Not in 1973, not now. Why'd you leave it out, Louis?"

Louis sighs, holding out a hand, and his Izzy comes to him, so that he can rest his hand lightly on her back. "I didn't mention it because it was hardly relevant to my own experience. When I was human, Izzy was a coyote. Lestat's daemon was a wolf. They were close enough already that when she became a coywolf... She was bigger, her fur a little different, but otherwise she was unchanged. I admit, it was something of an oversight, because that part of our turning and adjustment was far easier than it is for most, but that made it not worth discussing."

"Everything is worth discussing," Daniel says. "We've been over this."

"What do you mean, it was easier for you than most?" Sianna asks, and Ysabeau's ears twitch.

There's silence for a long moment, and then she speaks. The first time Daniel's heard her in person here in Dubai, actually. "Lestat's Iseult was some kind of bird, before they were turned. She never would tell me what kind. But the way she would talk about her wings, about losing her wings... We are not bound to the same limited distance from our other halves as mortal daemons. I think she always hated that she never got to truly test her wings."

Daniel considers circling back to that after Louis' horrifying story — this one corroborated by Claudia's diaries, and she's arguably much blunter about it — from when Claudia came back and tried to get Louis to leave Lestat, who responded by flying Louis up into the sky and dropping him, after a drag-out fight where Louis very much came off the worse. Because clearly Iseult learned to fly again, one way or another. Maybe she still missed having wings? Not the point, because Lestat's not the one being interviewed here. So he doesn't say that.

"You know, back when I was being a high little asshole in '73, you probably could have put me off the whole vampire thing just telling me that my daemon would change," is what Daniel does say during a pause in Louis' story of the six years he and Claudia lived in the Rue Royale without Lestat, part provocation and part honest truth.

Louis raises his eyebrows. "As I've said, Izzy did not change very much."

"Didn't people notice?" Sianna demands. "I would notice, if a daemon I knew well looked different, even if it was subtle."

"You shouldn't assume your observational skills are typical," Ysabeau says. Daniel makes a note that while Louis sticks to a generic American accent, his daemon's voice is still full of a soft New Orleans drawl. "But as to that, much like our other halves can control their bodies enough to appear human, we regain a certain amount of shifting ability."

At that, her fur... ripples, not like water but more like CGI in real life, which is fucking weird. When it stops, she's smaller, her fur almost the same but redder at her muzzle and on her legs. She holds the shape for a moment, then ripples again, and she's back to the form Daniel and Sianna know.

"We were lucky," Louis says. "Those I worked with didn't seem to notice or care about the changes in either me or Izzy. As you just saw, aside from the red patches on her going lighter, her coloring stayed much the same, and if she was bigger, I found that most people assumed they had misremembered. With my family she did go back to her old shape, just in case."

"It's difficult, even with my form so similar," Ysabeau explains. "The more different the old form, the harder it is to hold. Vampiric daemons who don't need to shift, like Iseult and Siete, don't usually bother. It's tied to the maker — the vampire who turned Lestat had some kind of canine daemon. Iseult wasn't sure what kind, though she thought something wild. Most vampires have predator daemons, and wild animals are likelier than domesticated ones. So she became a wolf. Sometimes I think she and Lestat looked at me and expected Louis and I to be more like them just because of how similar we were. That the way my change was so easy meant vampirism in general shouldn’t be a struggle for Louis and I."

"Izzy," Louis says quietly, and she stops talking.

"That's mostly myth," Sianna says. "Daemons that have similar forms do have some things in common, but it's not necessarily that useful. Alice's daemon is a ferret, and they're related to fishers like me, and it didn't do us any good in the end."

"Sianna," Daniel says, sharper than Louis talking to his daemon.

"I think our daemons are trying to make us feel better, Danny," Louis says, a wry smile on his face.

"Could be worse, I guess," Daniel agrees, and out of the corner of his eye he notices Rashid watching them, an intensity on his face that makes the back of Daniel's neck creep. Like there's something he should be recognizing right now, and he doesn't know what or why.

He just knows that it keeps happening here in the vampire's lair, and he doesn't like it.

Rashid is fucking weird, there's no way around that.

Daniel would have said it's just the whole... rent boy/mobile snack thing, except, well. There's obviously other staff in the penthouse, and other human snacks too. Damek hadn't exactly seemed normal, maybe, but he hadn't been creepy either. Rashid, though, something about him makes the back of Daniel's neck prickle. Like he should be able to tell what's off and he can't.

Also, the wild curls are weirdly reminiscent of the way Vivian was wearing her hair when Daniel met her, which he tries not to think about because Rashid is maybe in his late twenties, tops, and unfairly attractive as it is. Daniel's not blind, but he is old, and he tries not to be creepy about it, and that comparison seems like a good way to start being creepy. Doesn't help that her messy dark curls were the first thing Daniel noticed about Vivian, the reason he'd wandered over to chat with her at a boring work party in the first place.

Right. Not thinking about it. He doesn't even miss Vivian, not like how sometimes he still misses Alice, and Rashid's practically a boy, this is all strange as fuck and he's not sure why it's on his mind at all, really.

Point is, something's up with Rashid.

And speaking of Damek, why is it that Louis feeding off him left him staggering like a drunk, and Rashid, practically a twig next to him, walks it off fine? Maybe he's more used to it, maybe he started staggering once he was out of sight, but somehow Daniel doubts that.

Some of it's easy enough to brush aside. The art history thing, for example, or the groan, that's all stuff anyone might learn for their job, especially when their job is working for a vampire. Except according to Rashid, it's not a job for him. "I serve a god. It is my honor to serve," he'd said, and then Daniel walks in on him praying to Allah.

He's not from Dubai, he has a butterfly daemon in a bubble necklace, he's probably offering more than blood to Louis.

There's the weird phrasing of things like "electronic mailbox" and the way he makes martinis like he used to work at Dukes. He's privy to everything, as far as Daniel can tell, something between a personal assistant and a butler. Emotional support human, maybe? Weird idea but it'd go with Louis' spiel about how vampires are supposed to become detached, and his own insistence that he's trying not to do that.

He smiled when Daniel said he liked Claudia in spite of being a killing machine. He laughed at her kill list.

Odds are he's holding out for a retirement package that includes fangs in his neck for longer than usual and his own long drink of blood.

And then there's:

"You are chronicling a suicide."

"I care for him more than he cares for himself."

There's the way that Rashid stepped in to calm Louis down, when things got heated over Claudia. His hand on Louis' shoulder like a grounding technique, like a warning of some kind.

This is personal for Rashid. It doesn't feel like religious devotion. Maybe he's in love with Louis. Daniel doesn't exactly get how with the weird mix of disdain and amused fondness Louis shows him, but Rashid wouldn't be the first person to fall for someone really fucking bad for him. Louis and Lestat for one prime example. Daniel was probably the bad one for both Alice and Vivian, and he's been on the other side of that equation too.

That daemon of his barely moves. Rashid himself is unsettlingly quiet when he moves.

"The sun doesn't hurt him, so he can't be a vampire, but does that make him human?" Sianna asks. "If vampires are real..."

"Then who's to say other supernaturals aren't? Yeah," Daniel agrees. "Check this out."

It's old blogs, ones he's found by chance trying to dig up information on telepathy and pyrokinesis. Most of what he's found is pseudoscience or clearly fiction, but in the depths of LiveJournal of all places there's some blogs that look like they're written by people who claim to be able to do magic, and they talk about telepathy and manipulating elements, fire included, not to mention things like telekinesis, as active powers that go along with casting spells and brewing up potions.

"It's probably bullshit," Daniel says heavily. "But then again, maybe not. Can't rule it out. If he is something other than human, that would explain why he handles being a snack better. Maybe magical blood has more of a kick so that Louis needs less of it, or maybe he heals faster. Problem is, we can't verify any of this, Sianna, and I don't want to bring it up with Louis just yet."

"I get the feeling he'd be more amused than anything else. He seems to get a kick out of our curiosity about Rashid."

"That's one reason I don't want to ask him. Something's weird about what they've got going on too, and I've got the feeling I'm being yanked into it for a reason, and I don't like it."

It's about control, they both think that. Louis and Ysabeau took Lestat and Iseult back, despite huge reasons not to, Louis citing the vampire bond. Wherever Lestat is now, it's not here, and instead Louis has Rashid, of ambiguous connection, and he's playing mental chess doing this interview with Daniel. It all ties together, and Daniel has this feeling that if he could figure out Rashid, maybe he could figure out what it is he's missing, what it is he can't remember.

What he thinks maybe his subconscious is trying to tell him with the dreams.

It doesn't make sense, it's completely illogical, but there it is. It's how he feels, and he doesn't actually need to ask Sianna to know she feels it too. To know they both want answers, more than almost anything else. Something's missing, for them, and there are answers here if they know where to look.

Rashid is too damn young to be involved but every instinct Daniel has is screaming that he is. That figuring out Rashid is the key to some part of the larger picture. Maybe all of it.

And then comes the night when he falls asleep, the levodopa kicking his ass even with the constant low-level adrenaline of being in a predator's lair. He drifts away to the sound of Louis' voice and dreams of Polynesian Mary's again.

The taste of mint and creme overlaying the alcohol burn, the way Louis started the conversation with him. The hint of his New Orleans accent.

"I could interview you."

"I'm no one of importance."

"Well, that's my speciality. You see, I look for people in the cracks, you feel me?"

"I do feel you."

"You know, it's about the people who make the city."

And the thing about these dreams, every time, is Daniel's in it. He's really back in the moment, Sianna's front paws resting on his thigh so she can get a better look at the coywolf sitting at Louis' side, each thought and word coming from him just like it did then.

"I know you're struggling, Danny."

"It's Daniel."

And then it's the bargain for drugs, it's where it ends, every time, except —

Someone comes up next to Louis. If Louis is striking, compelling, if his eyes are an unreal green that Daniel wouldn't mind getting lost in, this guy... This guy's just fucking beautiful, dark eyes and smoothed back black curls. Daniel can't see his daemon clearly, can only see a large shape in the shadows, but he bets she's beautiful too even as Sianna cranes to try and see better.

"Would you like to join us?" Louis asks the newcomer.

"No. You go ahead. Have your fun."

Daniel watches him leave, can't look away and he doesn't know why, and —

He wakes up gasping.

"He was there," Sianna says. "But, how?"

"Yeah. That's a good fucking question."

He doesn't know where the fury comes from, not really.

It's not like Daniel hasn't known for ages that Louis isn't being fully honest, but the thing is — up till now, a lot of it seemed less like lying on purpose and more like he's spent so long telling himself shit he doesn't always know the difference. Daniel's dealt with that before. He knows how to cut through it, most of the time. And he's definitely had people approach him thinking they could get him to tell just what they want on record. Daniel and Sianna don't know why people still think they can pull that off, but there's always someone.

He doesn't take it personally. Hell, even the fact that Louis almost killed him once — he was the first would-be interviewee to do that, but he wasn't the last, and frankly, while that is nervewracking, enough to piss Daniel off maybe, it's not enough for this rage.

Some of it's Rashid. he knows that. The question of Rashid, the sudden shift when he tries to declare the session over, an edge of new authority in his voice. A match to the way he'd spoken in Daniel's dream, but just a little different from the way he's talked up till now here in Dubai. So, yeah, that's part of it, but it's not all of it.

Maybe it's the funhouse mirror of Louis failing Claudia, the way Daniel knows he hasn’t got any kind of high ground on being a shitty dad, but he doesn’t lie to himself about it anymore. And Louis insists he killed Lestat and enjoyed it, but he didn’t, not really. They both know it, and so Louis putting the way he couldn’t seal the deal and burn Lestat on Claudia, when Daniel has fucking read her words and he knows damn well that she was not sorry to have killed Lestat at all...

He could buy it, if Louis had just said she was in shock about having actually done it. Whatever else there was, it's clear there was a tangled mess of feelings among that little vampy household, so yeah. He'd buy that. He doesn't buy this.

"The girl did not have a fucking problem tossing him on the grill, OK?"

Louis tries to walk away and Daniel, all self-preservation buried under the sheer frustration, the knowledge that he's this close, and the inexplicable anger of it all, chases after him.

"Was it raining, Louis?"

"She couldn't burn him," Louis insists, and the pain in his voice is real if nothing else is.

"You cursed her into the darkness. You chose Lestat over her, time and time again. You don't need a memoir, Louis, you need a hundred sessions of EMDR," Daniel says, watching Louis sink his feet into those stones of his like it'll actually do him some good. Daniel keeps going, keeps pushing, ignoring Rashid insisting he's only heard half the story, ignoring Louis saying "Stop," whether he meant it for Daniel, Rashid, or both of them. The look on his face, probably both of them. Daniel bets what Louis really wants, just now, is to be left alone in the quiet, but that's not happening.

"144 years of life, and you're still Louis the Pimp, paying a whore to sit in a room and talk with you." Because they've both changed and neither of them have changed, they're who they were at Mary's and Louis is who he was in New Orleans, and this game is getting old. "Cause why? You got some story you wanna tell the whole world about yourself?”

And that's when everything turns on a fucking dime.

Daniel's only warning is the only real one he's ever had. From the risks he brought to himself with the drugs to the dangers he walked into for the job, he's only ever had one anchor, only ever had one safeguard and warning and handhold when everything else could be taken away — Sianna's voice, cutting through his own ranting about his whore number and his daughters, through Louis' protests and Rashid's soft-voiced interjections. "Daniel!" Sianna yells, and for a wild moment he's half-expecting to see Louis' coywolf about to pounce on her. Except, no, Ysabeau is still at Louis' side, her head in his lap his fingers curled in her ruff like she's his anchor.

Daniel whirls to face Sianna, too fast, stumbling just a little before he catches himself, and that's when he sees the fucking — that's a tiger. That's a goddamn tiger, except, no, that's a tiger daemon. Except it can't be, because there are only three people in this room and the fucking tiger makes four daemons, except —

The easiest way to fake a daemon is an insect, or so Daniel and Sianna were told by a retired spy and his chameleon daemon. It's because anyone can tell, with one good look, whether they're looking at an animal or a daemon. It's something hardwired in the brain, or some shit like that. But it's hard to get a good look at an insect, because most of them are small, and people with insect daemons usually keep them in some kind of protective case.

Like Rashid's fucking ball necklace with its fluttering butterfly.

The orange and black butterfly, like a joke or a hint staring him right in the face the whole goddamn time.

Daniel already knows, deep down, what it must mean. What he's actually walked into. Only human in the room, and probably way more fucked than he expected to be. He knows he should stop, But fuck it. It's too late to stop. "This is the same shit that happened in San Francisco," Daniel insists.

Louis doesn't even look at him. "Not exactly," he says, voice hoarse but with a new edge to it now.

"How is it any different, Louis?" Daniel asks, almost calm now, fed up and sick of secrets.

"This time, I won't save your life," says Rashid in cold, echoing tones, and Daniel thought he was ready but he can't hide the sudden spike of fear when he turns to see Rashid hovering behind him, eyes blazing red. Louis said only some vampires have the Cloud Gift, most of them old. Fuck. Fucking hell. "Louis can sometimes act out," Rashid continues. "I protect him from himself, always have. Stopped him that night in San Francisco."

"You were there," Daniel says, watching Rashid float around the room, his tiger pacing behind him. The butterfly necklace is discarded with the gloves on the floor, and either the butterfly's dead or it was a complete fake, not even a real insect. Daniel can't tell and it doesn't matter anyway.

"You don't remember, do you?" Louis asks, and when Daniel admits he doesn't, Louis continues, sounding bitterly satisfied like he's somehow winning something here, "What was that you said about memory? A monster, was it?"

Daniel ignores him for the moment because he's not interested in the one-upmanship, he's interested in answers, his eyes on Rashid. "But I saw you standing in the sun.

"As we age, the sun loses its power over us," Rashid says lazily. "What's a mediocre star to a 514-year-old vampire?" He tosses a a scrapbook at Daniel's feet, full of clippings for something called Theatre des Vampire.

Which is when Louis gets up and performs introductions.

"Daniel Molloy, I'd like you to meet the vampire Armand, the love of my life."

And for a moment, Daniel — he tells himself it's the shocks of the last few minutes, as Sianna wraps herself around his ankle and the two of them just try and focus through the fucking insanity of this. But he feels like... Like something's clanging in his head with Rashid's real name, that tiger pacing around them in circles.

But that's nonsense. Isn't it?

Right. OK.

Daniel brings himself back into focus by noting that he could call bullshit on any number of levels. For one thing, far as he can tell, Louis actually supposedly left the love of his life stuffed in a chest in a landfill. For another, that smug look on his face isn't 'happily moved on' smug, it's... Daniel's not sure what, but it's not that. Armand, for his part, just stares at Daniel with those banked inferno eyes, expression blank and still somehow not as creepy as Rashid's fake-pleasant smiles.

Hell of a trick, actually, come to think of it.

Point is, that's a gotcha and a threat, not a reveal of some new grand romance on top of the first Gothic high-drama one.

And anyway, if Armand is the love of Louis' life, then why did Armand —

Why did —

Fuck. Daniel doesn't know what that question even is, much less the answer. Or why the fuck it's in his head to begin with. But he's always known, hasn't he, that Divisadero Street is one of the fucked-up memories, and that it wasn't just the drugs. The question now is, what else was it, is it the same reason some of his other memory gaps feel different, and why, exactly, does he feel pretty sure Louis wasn't part of it, but that Armand was?

("Is this about the guy?" Alice asked him before he left, and there is no guy, there isn't, there can't be, but... but...)

The session's over after that, of course. How could it not be? Daniel doesn't even argue, doesn't bother and doesn't want to, because he'd rather be alone with his daemon just now.

"Well, we're already here," Sianna says when they've got a closed door between them and the supposed lovebirds and their daemons.

"Yeah, we are," Daniel agrees.

They can't read each other's minds. Probably for the best, because the vampires could hear it. They can't speak too bluntly, because the vampires can also hear that.

In other words: they can't say out loud that they don't have their answers yet.  They can't say what they both know they're agreed on: that they will, before this is over.

They can't say it, but they're sixty-nine years old. They don't need to say it out loud anymore.

They'll get their answers. Whatever it takes. Whatever the consequences.

That's why they're really here, after all.

And so, now there are two liars playing games.

Daniel can't decide if Louis and Armand actually think they're convincing when they walk in hand and hand before starting to finish each other's sentences like the most cliche lovebirds in town, or if they're laying it on way too thick as the groundwork for something else. He's gotta give it to them, the performance is entertaining at times. But that's what it is. It's a goddamn performance just as much as that blood drinking stunt at the dining room table was.

It's a pretty good double act. They've had seventy-seven years to practice, apparently. And it does tell him something, to watch how they play it. It's practiced, if not outright rehearsed, and there might even be some truth in it, actually. Daniel's not sure about Armand when he's not outright in actor mode as Rashid, but Louis' style doesn't much run to all-out lies. He's more about avoiding things, misdirections, and he lies to himself as much as he lies to Daniel on purpose. More, probably.

So, yeah, parts of it are probably even true. In spite of himself, Daniel can almost imagine the first meeting in the park, which is one reason he makes sure to mock it.

But the thing is, Armand and Louis? They're all cuddly on the couch, tucked up together in a way Daniel might envy if he was a younger man. He's pretty sure they know that. But the thing he wouldn't envy at all? Ysabeau is right where she's been through all of this, stationed at Louis' side. Her head's resting on the couch near Louis' hip just now, in easy reach for him to pet her if he likes. And Armand's nameless tiger? Well, she's over by the wall of windows, pacing back and forth and watching the city.

The vampire couple can cuddle all they like. But their daemons haven't even gotten in touching distance once. Not even during the "love of my life" dramatic reveal. Which means, however much some of this might be legit, it's a fucking ploy. Same as Armand's gloves and contacts, same as every other act Daniel's ever seen.

Groundwork for something else starts to feel like a possibility when they pull the fishing rod trick, but Daniel has the defense of Claudia's diary. She really was miserable, and yeah, sure, he's predisposed to talk shit about anything relating to Paris, but this isn't about him. They both know that, so they're trying to rattle him. That's fine, they can keep trying that.

The theater...

"The plays were weird," says Louis.

"The plays were timeless," says Armand.

"They were weird!" says Louis.

They were fucked up, Daniel types in his notes. Louis was creeped out, Claudia was entranced, and Armand and his coven of performers were showing off, and poking for information. "Quick question," Daniel cuts in when Louis begins describing how Santiago started fishing for details about Louis and Claudia's maker.

"Yes, Daniel?" Louis asks.

"You two knew Lestat was French, that he was from Paris. You didn't already have a cover story in mind? Just in case?"

"An interesting question," Armand says in that lazy drawl he's been using today. "Do you often find yourself in need of such things, Mr. Molloy?"

"Not like you do," Daniel says, which earns him one of those smirks Armand is so fond of.

"It hadn't occurred to us that it would come up so fast," Louis admits before Armand can reply. "But luckily Claudia could think on her feet, because that was when things... escalated. Claudia was the one who spotted it first, and she asked about it, drawing my attention to the painting on the wall which I had not yet noticed. A painting of Lestat, who, Armand told us, was the co-founder of the Theatre itself."

Well, shit.

"Should have seen that one coming," Daniel says. "Did not see that one coming. Big red flag, huh?"

"The biggest," Louis agrees.

"You must understand," Armand begins, but Daniel's barely listening because, oh, he's got an idea. They wanna rattle him, huh? Well, he'll just push on the irritating button and see what he can shake out of them that way. He keys up soap opera music with a huff of a laugh, Sianna's tail wagging just a little.

"And Juan looked up at the painting and saw that Theresa's dead husband was Roberto," Daniel cuts into their explanations, singsong with a bad Spanish accent. "He had eloped with his enemy's widow. It's a telenovela! I mean, come on, Lestat's painting on the wall? Are you kidding me? Really?"

Interestingly, Armand looks annoyed. Over by the windows, his tiger turns her head, teeth bared in a silent hiss. Louis, though, he mostly keeps a straight face but something about the way he's holding himself, and how Ysabeau's ears twitch, makes Daniel think they want to laugh. But he's not done, and they're not talking, so... "Oh, and that means... you knew Lestat before he did!"

"Yes, Armand knew Lestat," Louis says, long-suffering, while Armand sits there with his head turned up and fidgeting with his free hand. And before Daniel can even get to asking, Louis adds, "And yes, he was briefly with Lestat."

This is, officially, the most fun Daniel has had since he got here. This is fucking hilarious, these two are utter disasters, and what he really wants to know is why the hell Louis and Claudia didn't go home and pack their bags, because he sure fucking would have, under the circumstances. And he has never been known for being great at self-preservation. The answer to that turns out to be that Claudia thought they bought her lie and she was in love with the idea of the coven... and Louis wanted to fuck Armand.

Well. Daniel still thinks they were stupid, but he's not really in a position to judge, is he.

(The bit about "blood-fat cocks" Claudia put in her journal is pretty funny, he'll give her that.)

Then there's the bullshit with the lawyer, and Lestat's letter, and it's all just... "Lestat, Lestat, Lestat," Daniel says, and ignores a vague sense of deja vu like he's quoting someone. "So is it love of my life or is it more rebound of my life with you two?"

"It's a haunting memory Louis just shared with you," Armand says coolly. "What a comfort, your ability to continue pulling humor from his pain. Cathartic."

Oh for fuck's sake. I'm not here to be comforting, Daniel could say. "It's a joke. It's a joke, you serve it up," is what he does say, and then —

It shakes him this time when Louis turns the fishing rod on him, he admits that. And his fucking hand's got a tremor again, and he can't be sure if that's just the Parkinson's doing what it does or if Louis is triggering him again. Or, hell, maybe it's Armand. He doesn't know, so he just tries to give as good as he gets.

"You worked so hard to get that table right in the corner, so you could pull out the ring," Louis says, intent and vicious, and Daniel has to laugh, bitter as it is.

"The ring." What, this is supposed to hit him? It's past, she divorced him anyway, what does Louis think he's saying here that Daniel doesn't already know about himself?

But then —

A flash in his mind. Armand staring at him, in a memory he doesn't recognize. Armand still watching him now.

"In middle school, you stole your dad's Playboy magazines. Sold them at recess."

His ears are ringing.

Alice said no because... because...

"And what if that guy comes back? Baby or no, you'll walk in a second, and I don't mind co-parenting with two guys, whatever, but I won't be made a fool of that way, Danny."

"There's no guy , Alice, why don't you trust me?"

"No."

In the end, they'd both made fools of each other that way, both of them screwing other people, and Daniel, remembering this moment in Paris, had been the one to bring a woman back to their home, to their bed, her dark curls spilled out on the pillow where Alice's soft brown waves were supposed to be and he'd known she was on her way home, known she'd walk in on it...

Because he was tired of the fighting, of both of them smelling other people on each other, seeing the marks, and he just wanted to blow it the fuck up the most effective way he could. And, maybe, he'd wanted a little payback for the way she'd thrown it back at him, because he meant it in Paris, it was both their faults he didn't mean it anymore. Right?

"Danny? I'll ask for a third time," Louis' voice trickles back in as the ringing in Daniel's ears stops. "What did Alice say when you finally asked her to marry you?"

Sianna rests her head on Daniel's knee. They don't usually touch during an interview but they both need it right now. Something's fucking wrong here, and it's not just Louis turning the tables, whatever the fuck he's getting out of it. Something is wrong, but also part of Daniel is back in that cafe in Paris, choking on the hurt and the confusion and —

"Louis, perhaps we should..." Armand begins, and oh screw that, pity is worse than whatever this is.

"She said no," he forces out, voice tired. Louis laughs a bit, and Daniel can't even bring himself to care.

"She wanted to say yes, but she didn't trust you," Armand says. "You hadn't given her a reason to."

Wait. The not trusting part, sure, they could have got that out of Daniel's memory, but how exactly would Armand know that Alice wanted to say yes? He's got to be making that up, right? Why would he know that?

"Would you like to know what she thinks of you now?" Louis says. " If she thinks of you now? We can do that."

Like he doesn't know. But, no, he does not want them giving him a play by play. Can they really tap her mind from here? Is that how Armand got what he did? This doesn't make sense.

"Or we could simply return to the interview. If you're willing to ask your questions and then listen, which is your job," Armand says.

Oh. OK. So that's the game, that's what all the cutesy honeymoon shit was setting him up for. Good cop, bad cop, psychopathic cop, break him down till he... what? Turns back into the idiot he was at twenty, too high and fascinated by Louis' story to notice the holes? Well, that's not going to happen, but they got him for now because Daniel can't — he can't —

He gives in. He can't dredge up more fire right now. He's thinking of Alice, and that strange flashback, and God, he'd wanted, he'd wanted... He...

"And then what happened?" he says like that idiot wannabe he'd been in San Francisco. He gives them what he thinks they're aiming for, because a retreat is the only way he'll have a chance to catch his breath. But he decides then and there that he's not going to do this again. Now that he knows how far they'll push, where they'll push, he can brace himself for it and he can try to avoid it.

And ideally, he'll get a chance to fuck them up before this is over.

Being hit up by a secret agent with a snake daemon hiding up his sleeve wasn't on Daniel's list of things to expect during this interview, but when he actually does give it some thought on the way back to the Al Sharif Towers, it makes sense. Of course there'd be some group keeping an eye on the supernaturals of the world, and Daniel's pretty sure vampires aren't all of it. He and Sianna never saw much, and they're skeptical by nature, but even if they hadn't seen anything, once you concede that one kind of supernatural being is real, then...

Well, at that point, the odds tip significantly in favor of their not being the only ones. He's tempted to ask, but Louis didn't even have much interest in other vampires, that was Claudia's deal, and Armand? Even if he knows, odds are he won't say as much.

"So, thoughts?" he asks Sianna, keeping it vague because he doesn't trust the driver not to be reporting on him.

"We'll take a look. I'm more concerned about the four other people thing," she says.

Yeah. Yeah, so is he. Four other people trying what Daniel's trying — getting a vampire's story, he assumes — and they're all either dead or vamped themselves now. Daniel would rather not be dead just yet, and as for the other option... Well. He hadn't lied to Louis when he'd said he didn't want it anymore, the idea of being stuck in this body isn't his ideal, but it's still probably better than dying, so he's really more ambivalent than opposed to the idea if the choice were sincerely offered.

He's pretty sure Louis didn't mean it.

"I'd change too," Sianna says, and Daniel sighs, scritching between her ears.

"Biggest point against, actually," he admits. "You'd make a nice wolf or wild dog or whatever though."

"I would," Sianna agrees with a yip of amusement. "But I think you're right that he didn't mean it. There's probably other factors in each case, which we may or may not have any way to find out about."

"At least we got a chance to brace ourselves," Daniel says with a sigh, thinking of the list he'd scribbled about other possible ways Louis and Armand might try and fuck him up. Although, now that he thinks about it, Louis has had multiple chances to turn Daniel's snark about Claudia back on him, bring up his own failures as a parent. But he hasn't, really. He's mentioned it, sure, but more as a play for understanding than as an attack.

And it's always Alice Louis focuses on. The references from Daniel's book, the memories, all of it Alice.

"It's always been Alice he brings up. Think that says something about him? Or what he thinks about me?" Daniel says, and Sianna lifts her head, ears pricking forward like she caught the sound of some animal she was tracking.

"First love?" she guesses. "Alice and Caerus for us, Lestat and Iseult for them? Or the fact that Alice is the one we had kids with, or maybe it's the drama of it."

"Does that make Armand his Vivian, if I'm —?" Daniel starts to joke, but he stops abruptly, a sharp pain lancing through his head, leaving dizziness in its wake and the sense memory of dark curls under his fingers, and it's gotta be Vivian, he used to like playing with her hair, but it feels different in the memory, somehow, the texture's different. Familiar, but not Vivian, only it has to be because who else would it be?

"Daniel?" Sianna says, nipping lightly at his hand.

"I'm OK," Daniel says hoarsely. Dizziness is a possible side effect of at least one of his medications, though gun to his head he wouldn't be able to remember which one right now. He's starting to wonder if maybe hallucinations are too, or if... Well. Dementia can result from Parkinson's. It's the thing that's been looming at the back of his mind since he got the diagnosis. He can't remember right now if hallucinations are on the list of signs for that, but...

Well. If he makes it through this, and this is the first sign of dementia, he's got all kinds of options, and if he doesn't, like he decided back home, at least being a meal is over quickly. He'd rather finish the damn interview and ideally the book first, though.

"You're not," Sianna says quietly. "The only question is, are you not OK because we're sick, or is there something else going on here?"

Right. For all he knows, the next phase of the plan to manipulate the interview is to make him think he's going crazy. Or maybe...

He's always thought his hazy memories of that night on Divisadero Street were from the drugs and the blood loss. And some of it probably is. But maybe not all of it. Because this has happened to Daniel before, from time to time. Sense memories, flashes of deja vu, those weird dreams he's had off and on for decades, one really nasty trigger during an interview with a KGB agent. He's always written it off, but maybe he shouldn't have.

Stepping outside the car, for one blessed moment alone, Daniel looks down at his daemon and says, "Telepathy, mind control... what else is that Mind Gift capable of?"

"That's the question, isn't it, Danny?"

It is absolutely the question. But there isn't much they can do about it right now, so they go back inside.

Daniel doesn't usually take fakeouts personally. There's no point to it, because most of the people he interviews have something to hide. It's expected. It's usually why he's interviewing them, and when it's not what brought him there in the first place, cracking the facade still leads more often than not to a better story than the one he went in planning. Usually, when he does get angry, it's primarily a tactic — it rattles people, gets them to let things slip or give into what he wants them to do.

There's a reason he understood what Louis and Armand were doing to him with their lovey-dovey act and the fishing rod routine. It's not really that different from the kinds of manipulation he does to get a story, and the best interviews are the ones where he's up against someone who plays the game just as well, and when he gets his answers it's a victory. So, if you'd told him what was going to happen at this interview before he got here, Daniel would have said he'd thrill at the challenge of two people to crack.

And in a way, it's still the case.

But there's something about Armand that pisses him off. On a personal level, with his standard tactical anger becoming an actual struggle to hang onto. "There's something else going on," he tells Sianna when they're in the room they're staying in, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "That flashback... and here's the thing. He said he saved us. Why the fuck would he do that?"

"It doesn't seem like his style, that's for sure. Not with that grin he had on his face talking about men he drained for sport," Sianna agrees. "Maybe it was the drugs?"

That's a possibility. It's come up that the only way for a vampire to become intoxicated is by drinking from someone who is. Louis brought it up in relation to alcohol, but it definitely explains why he'd wanted Daniel to get high right away. Daniel can guess the plan was probably to drink him, fatally or not, right away, but the interview caught both of them up.

"186 boys he's brought back here, and you're the first he didn't consummate and then drain."

Armand's voice, an echo of a fragmented memory in Daniel's mind, like that flash of him staring earlier.

"Is that what makes you fascinating?"

"No," Daniel says, shaking his head to dispel the memory. "No, that's not — I mean, yeah, OK, if Armand didn't want Louis getting high, yanking him off me would fix that, but he didn't have to actually save us for that. Hell, given their need to cover things up, it would have made more sense to just kill us even if there were too many drugs for me to be drinkable."

There'd been rumors in the neighborhood at the time, about guys disappearing from the bars known for gay cruising. There were always rumors, of course, but this one had had a few people spooked. Daniel hadn't exactly been investigating it, at twenty he'd been caught up more in a romantic idea of collecting stories no one would think mattered. (OK, fine, part of him still likes the idea, he just knows better than to think most people do.) But the idea he might come across something had occurred to him, even then.

"186 boys..."

Why did they let him live? Why bother?

And why did Armand go to so much trouble with the whole fake Rashid thing? Using the identity of one of his actual employees — while acting nothing like Real Rashid, as far as Daniel has been able to tell — and pretending to be human, why? Supposedly to be close to the interview without being involved, but still. It's a lot of effort to fool one random old man, reporter or not.

Supposedly, if those blog posts he found online are accurate, and if they're not he's no worse off, telepathy takes focus. Best chance to get around telepathic spying is to wait until the people you're worried about are distracted. Daniel gets his chance when Louis and Armand start fighting over Fred Steins being slipped in with Louis' photographs. The argument's loud enough that Daniel can hear their voices, if not what they're saying.

He starts searching the Talamasca files, first for the Roman coven and then for Marius de Romanus, looking for more information based on what Louis and Armand talked about. It's a sick situation Armand came out of, Daniel's pissed at the guy but he can still acknowledge that. But right now, what he cares about is that it's information. Something to use to try and dig answers out of the data he now has. Absently, part of him notes the rising volume of the argument and thinks, oh yeah, you two are real happy together.

But there's a sense of deja vu, too, and then...

"Even as she cried, a splinter of coldness in you. Is that what makes you fascinating?"

Armand's voice, echoing in his head again, intent and bitter, a wild look in his eyes. The ringing in Daniel's ears again, a voice on the TV, a — oh fuck, a dead body wrapped in cellophane like fucking leftovers.

His head is pounding.

"Don't be afraid." Louis' voice now. "Just start the tape."

Daniel's own voice on those tapes. Armand turning a tape over and over in his hands.

And there'd been something, something when he listened to Armand talking about Lestat. Like they've sat across from each other before, time and time again, like... 

He doesn't know. Not yet.

Daniel pushes aside the pain in his head as Sianna curls up in his lap, and types San Francisco into the search bar. It gets him nothing, and his head is swimming now, flashes of memory coming faster than ever but no less coherent. Daniel makes himself focus, types his own name into the search. Comes up with photos, him and Louis going to the apartment. Armand and a wrecked-looking Louis dragging him out, unconscious.

And, enhanced copies of the original recordings.

He puts his headphones in where the tapes ended, because the recording here? Not finished.

"Morning!" Armand is yelling.

"I lost time," Louis is gasping. "Things got a little heated."

"With a boy! Things got heated with a boy!"

And here it is, Daniel realizes. At least some of it, anyway. Some of the answers he's been looking for. All he has to do is keep listening. The fear is real, but the need to know is stronger. It always has been.

He takes his chance when Armand goes out for lunch the next day, leaving him and Louis alone for the very first time in all of this. Daniel’s not exactly thrilled about being made an accessory to murder, but he’s always been good at getting angles, and this one’s being lit up by a fucking signal flare. It’s the only chance, and a bit of guilt trip to ease the way can’t hurt.

The worst of it is, once they start piecing it all together, a lot of it isn't even surprising.

Daniel always knew Louis almost killed him. He's always suspected, from some of his inexplicable triggers over the years, that somewhere in the gaps of his memories were traumas he was probably better off forgetting. Even if the not knowing is the one thing he can't tolerate when he has any other choice in the matter.

Louis almost killed him, and then saved him. Armand yanked him off Louis, but then spent days tormenting him and was ready to eat him.

But Ysabeau barely stirred herself to get involved with the interview or the anger, and Armand's tiger... had never actually hurt Sianna. Cornered her, kept her pinned between those massive paws, and when Armand had spoken softly of death to Daniel, when he'd drawn him close, the tiger's rough tongue had groomed Sianna's fur like she was her own cub... but for all the pain Armand inflicted, his daemon had inflicted none. She had watched Sianna as intently as Armand watched Daniel, but...

"Is that what makes you fascinating?"

What Daniel remembers is Armand trying to talk him into wanting death, dragging out his worst fears, the worst things he'd done — the latter not a particularly exhaustive list at twenty, Armand would have better luck now, though he wouldn't need to bother. Back then, though, young and cocky and stupid, Daniel'd still been able to drag out denials, that liked his life, that he had something in the city.

"I don't want to rest," he'd said.

But he'd known Armand was going to kill him. He'd understood that. And if it was going to happen either way, well...

Yeah. Daniel had cooperated in the end. Had figured if he was going to get eaten anyway, remembering how much it had hurt when Louis bit him, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much. He still remembers Armand's hold as gentle, in that last moment. Still remembers the tiger nuzzling Sianna till she almost relaxed, and then —

Then Louis, stepping in. Louis, drawing out Daniel's deepest held hope.

Ysabeau, nudging Sianna out of the limp sprawl Armand's tiger left her in.

Daniel leaves Louis in the reading room long enough to go get his own book, finding the pages almost without having to look. Reading the words aloud as he sits back down on the steps and Louis watches him, as Sianna climbs back up his back and Ysabeau paces under the magnolia tree, he hears his own voice in his ears, but under it the echo of Louis in his memory. 

“Listen as though I am the voice of God or an angel talking to you. Telling you this room doesn’t matter, this night doesn’t matter. You’re not inconsequential, or a junkie. You’re a bright young reporter with a point of view. There are stories that need to be told. If things ever get bad again, these are the words you’ll hear in your mind like a tape, playing over and over like a song stuck in your brain. These words will hold you up and carry you. They are your lifeline.”

Daniel did remember that, as coming from a free-baser who immolated himself in front of Daniel, which makes sense, because Louis was still burnt up for the conversation. He remembers, and he and Louis sit in the Zen garden, buried under the weight of the memories. Ysabeau lays her head on Louis’ thigh and Sianna’s in her usual place on Daniel’s shoulder, and while Louis and Daniel aren’t looking at each other, their daemons never break eye contact.

It's Louis' words that have shaped Daniel's life. It's not that he put something in Daniel's head that wasn't there, but he... reinforced it. He made Daniel's deepest hope a firm truth, a lifeline just as he'd said. Something that Daniel held to even when everything else fell apart, and he tells Louis as much. Two marriages, his relationships with his daughters. He could never push for more effort in his personal life, but for his work he'd do anything.

That had always been in him, a tendency to focus on something to the exclusion of everything else, but what he'd thought was just growing up had been Louis as much as anything else, that bright line in his mind even when everything else was a wreck.

And then there's Armand.

There's the fact that he absolutely edited both Daniel and Louis' memories. Which is what Daniel suspected from the moment Louis said his memory cut out at the same spot Daniel's did. It wasn't the drugs. It was the supposed love of Louis' life.

Daniel can't deny that under his own anger, he's pretty damn satisfied to see Armand's cheery mood crash and burn when the bastard comes back from lunch. 

But the tiger doesn’t seem upset at all. She just stares at him, stares at Sianna, until Ysabeau snarls outright at her, until Louis and Armand storm out with their daemons following. 

Daniel’s no less satisfied, but now he’s also unsettled all over again. This room doesn’t matter, this night doesn’t matter, Louis said, but the thing is — the thing is — 

The thing is, that part’s wrong. Divisadero did matter, does matter, it’s why he and Sianna are here, everything turns on what began there, because it didn’t stop there. It’s continued here, but somehow Daniel thinks there’s still something missing. He just doesn’t know where to pick up the trail to find out what .

Daniel doesn't expect the reveal that Rashid and his bird — some kind of corvid, though Daniel’s not sure what kind — are Talamasca, but it isn't exactly surprising, either. Raglan James made it clear that his organization has a vested interest in all of this, which means having someone planted in the household makes sense. If Daniel were a betting man — he's not, actually, gambling's possibly the only vice he's never bothered with — he'd say they had someone in the theater troupe in Paris too, assuming they recruit vampires. Failing that they had eyes on it somehow, just less connected ones.

It does mean that there must be some ways for humans to fully shield from telepathy, though. Sure, he could see Armand and Louis deciding to let the Talamasca have their plant so they could keep an eye on whoever it was, but Daniel's absolutely certain if they were playing that game, Rashid and his raven are not the escort Daniel and Sianna would be getting the second time they leave the penthouse. Which makes Rashid possibly one of the bravest people Daniel's met in quite some time, because he's definitely going to be dinner if they catch him.

The fact that Daniel wasn't let out alone this time is telling in and of itself. He's guessing that they didn't buy his story about his researcher digging up information. Especially now. Louis may have bought that Daniel simply had a backup of the interview, but Armand probably won't. Daniel's not sure what's going on there, but he's got a feeling Louis' anger isn't as lasting as his own, or at the very least, that Armand will know how to talk him down. And once Armand's soothed Louis' temper, he's probably going to start poking at just what triggered Daniel's memories.

And if Daniel's right that there's more he's still missing, he should probably take a closer look at what the Talamasca got for him. Before he does that, though, he does what he probably should have done immediately and backs them up in the cloud, because his laptop might be encrypted now but he's not going to take the risk.

There's something fishy in all of this. Daniel already has some idea where this is going, even if they're past the point of the last interview by now. Sure, Daniel's high as fuck brain had gotten the brilliant idea to suggest he could be a better version of both Lestat and Claudia, which, fine, he's said some idiot shit when high but that one might top the list. Also, he kind of did end up in Claudia's position, in a way — her place as Louis and Lestat's kid was a band-aid on that marriage, and him living as a "testament of our companionship" was one for Louis and Armand.

Yikes, actually, as the kids would say.

Still, the diaries are here. Claudia isn't. It's not hard to draw some conclusions. Also, he remembers now, the way Louis and Armand talked about her during their argument. This story is leading to Claudia's death, Daniel can pick that up easy.

But that's not what's fishy. Or it's not the fishy thing that's bothering him. Armand was the head of the coven, he was and is powerful, and sure, maybe with all of them trying to fight him that wasn't a fight he could win. Daniel doesn't know much about the psychic shit, but he figures it's possible Armand couldn't pull something like he did during Louis' and Santiago's dust-up if the whole coven were trying to resist.

Fair enough. But he had to know something, at least, didn't he? Enough to warn Louis? It's obvious to Daniel that Claudia wasn't lying about Armand threatening her; he probably didn't give a fuck about her either way, but that also probably means he wouldn't have cared if she escaped as a byproduct of Louis escaping. If he wanted her out of the way, and wasn't lying about believing the whole 'doomed anyway because of her youth' thing, then from Armand's perspective, he'd just have to wait her out.

So, Daniel's missing something. Also, there's the Lestat of it all — he's not sure, because again they've reached the point where the first interview ran out, but Lestat's not dead, and that's gotta mean he's not out of the story, not when he co-owns the damn theater.

Armand said something, he didn't hear all of it, being wrecked and also in another room, but during those days in San Francisco, he'd said something about contacting Lestat. Daniel was already sure Lestat had survived what Claudia and Louis did, and now he's sure the guy was alive in 1973, probably still is now. So there's that, and the question of just what Armand's involvement in Claudia's death was, and why the theater burned down.

But most of that is the kind of thing Louis will be telling him in the next couple of sessions. Sure, he'll either avoid some parts of the truth or maybe he doesn't know all of it, especially with Armand's memory editing in play, but still. Trying to comb through the Talamasca files for more information before he even really has a framework to start with isn't going to be useful. He could just try to read whatever he can, but that doesn't seem all that productive either.

So for now, he should be looking for clues to anything about his own memories. But where to start?

"Why does Raglan James think we should fear Louis more than Armand?" Sianna asks.

It's a good question, because on the face of it, that warning makes no sense. "Louis is more reckless?" Daniel guesses. "Armand and his tiger might come for us, but not if we don't give him a reason, however flimsy, while Louis and Ysabeau might just snap with no warning?"

"That would only mean we should fear both of them. The way he phrased it made it sound like he thinks we should be afraid of Louis and Ysabeau instead of Armand and his tiger. So, why?"

Shit. She's right. He'd missed that. And it's one hell of a thing to miss, because Raglan James does not strike Daniel as the sort of person to have phrased that carelessly. Sure, he's obviously having way too much fun playing secret agent, however deadly serious they both know the situation to be, but if anything that makes it more likely he'll choose his words with care. Hidden messages and all that.

Which means there's a reason he thinks Daniel should be afraid of Louis but not Armand, all evidence to the contrary.

Fuck.

Daniel doesn't like the sound of that. Because whatever the details are, he's pretty sure that means San Francisco isn't the only time Armand's played editor with his memories. Searching his own name had only brought up the San Fran shit, but...

The cursor hovers over the Paramours folder in Armand's file. It's a long shot — or he hopes it's a long shot, because if it pans out he doesn't have a fucking clue what to do with that — but if nothing else, it'll tell him something about Armand. Armand who is definitely hiding more than six days in San Francisco, even if Daniel doesn't know what. Even if Louis probably doesn't know what either.

He angles the laptop so that Sianna can see it too, and clicks the folder open.

The files inside are labeled by date ranges, not names. 1974-1986 is the last in the list. Daniel's hand shakes, and he doesn't think it's the Parkinson's this time. He clicks again, and large icon photo files fill the little box. The first one, you can only see that Armand is holding someone with curly hair, which could mean nothing. It means nothing. But Daniel opens it anyway, looks closer.

A quiet ache starts building behind his eyes, even before he hits the right arrow key to flick to the next picture.

The next picture, which shows what Daniel already expected, for all he told himself this was a long shot.

It's a club in Philadelphia that still exists, so far as Daniel knows, called Otherworld. He remembers having been there in 1974 while he was in town for a two-article job with the Philadelphia Daily News. The image of the inside of the club has always been vivid, too vivid given it's the only thing about that visit Daniel remembers. They'd gone all medieval inside, like a castle, like Medieval Times for grown-ups except Daniel had the impression it was a more accurate recreation than that. Except that's — that isn't —

"This city thinks it's old. All of America is a child, it's very quaint of them, don't you think, Daniel?"

"Dubai is an infant, Mr. Molloy. No one's a native."

That fucker.

He'd called Daniel's first computer an "electronic typewriter" the same way he'd called an e-mail inbox an electronic mailbox. That's why that fucking phrase made Daniel's neck creep.

Daniel keeps flicking through the pictures. Some of them don't mean anything in particular, some of them just give him deja vu, and some draw up flashes of memory. The worst part is, most of the memories are good ones. He thinks that they were happy, for a while. It feels like they were. There's a movie, he can't remember what it is but he remembers Armand watching it over and over, laughing until he cries, red tears streaming down his face.

If you'd asked Daniel yesterday he'd have said Armand didn't know how to laugh, and now the memory squeezes his heart like he's a sentimental teenager.

Louis called Armand the love of his life, and at this point Daniel can say maybe the love was there once, though never enough to override the Lestat of it all and from what he witnessed mostly burnt out by 1973, never mind 2022. The thing he's got to deal with now is that whatever Armand really is to Louis, apparently, once upon a time, he was one of the loves of Daniel's life.

Armand.

The guy who tortured him for six days because he was pissed at Louis and Daniel was a convenient chew toy to vent it on. Who would have drained him.

"Belated apology number two."

Fuck him. Fuck him.

But Daniel remembers how it felt to love him now. Sianna finally knows it was Armand's tiger she's been missing all these years, when she remembered a larger daemon she used to curl up with. She felt safe with that damned tiger, and now —

Now they have to deal with this.

They wanted answers. Sometimes, the truth comes with a cost. The hope now is that they figure out a way not to be the only ones paying it.

If this is a game, they’re not done playing.

After they get through the trial, Daniel has a lot to consider. "There's no way he wasn't more involved than he's letting on," he says to Sianna once they're alone. The door is closed, a spare towel shoved under the crack between door and floor, and they're in the bathroom with another towel shoved up against that door. The water's running and

Daniel has Sianna in his lap, so they can talk quietly and hear each other.

He has no idea if this is cover enough. The telepathy shit means probably not, but then again, if they were listening to him telepathically all the time he's already fucked. Worth trying.

"So what do you want to do?" Sianna asks.

And that's the question, isn't it.

The memories are still hazy at best. Daniel hasn't put much effort into trying to regain them, honestly, because he doesn't think it's a good idea to keep pushing it while in the range of telepathic radar. Still, he's seen the photos now, and bits and pieces are trickling in. Foggy images, snippets of conversations and arguments and —

It's almost offensive that he's pretty sure the sex really was that good, actually.

Not really the point. The thing is that what he's got are a handful of photos and scraps of memory, and... And feelings. God , the feelings are the worst of it, because he was really, he just —

The thing is, Daniel’s been in love more than once. He’d thought twice, now he knows it was three times. For all that neither of his marriages had ended well, for all that he’d pulled the final trigger on both relationships, he had loved both his wives, even if he’d turned out to be fucking awful at it. And if he thinks maybe part of why that wasn’t good enough is that part of him was still stuck on a buried feeling that ran too deep to cut out, well… It doesn’t change that he’d meant it with both of them or he wouldn’t have tried marriage, for what meaning it had been worth. 

With Alice he never quite stopped feeling half like a teenager, like they'd both been when they met, and with Vivian they'd been rivals as much as lovers, and that had always been part of them, when it was good and when it sucked. Both of those loves had faded, but Daniel remembers them. Remembers the way how he felt was shaped by who he felt it for, and who he'd been at the time. 

He's not the kind of guy who thinks about that stuff much, but it's there, when something makes him face it for a while.

And it's the same with Armand. Daniel remembers the way it felt even if he hasn't got much of the detail to go with it yet. Wild and dizzying and reckless, with the bitter edges of San Francisco and Louis and Armand's refusal to turn him all in the mix, and the problem is, it didn't have a chance to fade. He doesn't know what would have happened, he only knows that it was locked away still going strong and now it's back and he —

He's not in love with Armand again. It doesn't work like that. He's not the half-grown idiot he was then and he's too fucking pissed off about San Francisco and the Rashid charade. The memories didn't take away Daniel's opinion of Armand as it exists now. But the old love he used to feel isn't faded either. It's just there , burning away in the back of his mind, not current but not really over either, just... waiting, it almost feels like. Waiting for what, he doesn't know. But somehow this is the worst of it, that in spite of it all, he can't make it just stop outright either.

And here's the thing. Daniel figures he owes Louis, for the way things ended in San Francisco. Sure, Louis almost killed him, but then he saved him, and he gave him... What Louis told him that day was what Daniel had always wanted to believe, the hope and wish at the core of him the way Armand had been looking for the darkness at his core. But what Louis did was put a stamp on it, an emphasis. Also probably had its role in why he couldn't ease off his career fixation even for his wives or his kids, but truth is he'd always been like that. Locked in on his goals, blind to the consequences.

And, if they're casting blame to the side effects of vampiric mind powers, the fact that he apparently had a high-drama love affair with a vampire clipped out of his conscious mind was probably not helping his relationship issues either. So, all things considered that's as much something else to fling at Armand as something to maybe be a little annoyed with Louis about, and really Daniel's pretty sure he'd have fucked up enough on his own anyway. If he'd lived long enough, which without Louis' help he wouldn't have.

The point is, it doesn't sit right with Daniel to just let this play out, to let Louis believe there isn't something he's missing. And on top of that, well.

"I'd be lying if all this didn't really just make me want to get back at Armand and his damned tiger even more," Daniel tells Sianna, who chirps softly.

"Yeah, no shit, Danny."

"A splinter of coldness in you..."

Armand called that bit. Because it doesn't matter if Daniel and Sianna know they loved Armand and his tiger once. It doesn't matter if that love never faded naturally, if it's lingering in their heads now somewhere between real and not real. If anything, that makes it worse — because it was taken away, and that's just fucking infuriating. There's more to this story, there's a lie here and Armand's selling it, and Louis bought it, but there's a thread to pull somewhere. There always is. Daniel doesn't know what happens when he does, maybe it doesn't change anything, maybe in vampire terms whatever it is can be sorted out between them.

Maybe it can't. Maybe he's about to torch everything.

It doesn't matter, either way.

This game is over, one way or another, if they can figure out how to end it. And they mean to.

And when Rashid hands Daniel a newspaper with a script inside it, the red ink handwriting dizzyingly familiar, Daniel knows he can do exactly what he wanted to.

All it takes in the end is handing over the script.

One bit of proof, and it all falls apart.

“You were supposed to die with Claudia! Armand didn't save you, Lestat did,” Daniel tells Louis, and he tells himself Louis needed to know this. He even believes that. 

“Where does the bullshit start, Armand, Amadeo, Arun?” Daniel flings the words, the names, at Armand, and it's about Louis but it's about Daniel himself too. About all the fucking lies, all the damned edits.  

He can’t say he isn’t bitterly happy when Armand casts him one wild, pained, look before running after Louis. 

He can’t say it doesn’t feel like a victory, but he also can’t deny that it also doesn’t feel like an ending .

They should leave.

Daniel knows it, and if he knows it Sianna definitely knows it. Louis' threat to Armand is probably sincere, but also almost definitely toothless unless Armand lets Louis kill him, in which case that makes it even more likely that Armand and his tiger will kill Daniel and Sianna in order to make that happen. Basically, there is absolutely no reason to think Louis' threat means jack shit in terms of effectiveness, and that means they should get the fuck out of here.

They even pretend to, as the doors close behind Louis and Ysabeau, Armand still motionless where Louis flung him, the tiger next to her other half with her big head in Armand's lap. He’s gotta say, Louis flinging Armand into a wall was something of a surprise.

Daniel and Sianna leave the burning laptop where it is, glad to know everything's already backed up to the cloud, as Daniel scoops up the rest of his gear and they hurry back to the bedroom that's been theirs for twelve days.

Daniel packs in a hurry, Sianna pacing by the bedroom door, left open because closing it won't be of any use as a defense anyway. But even as they go through the motions they both know they aren't leaving. Not yet. So he leaves the bag on the bed and they walk back out to the living room. Armand has gotten himself upright and dusted off, standing motionless in the middle of the room, one hand on his daemon's head as they stare at the crater in the wall. Their backs are turned to Daniel and Sianna, but Daniel doesn't bother to be quiet. It won't matter.

"Not yet running away, Mr. Molloy? Do you trust in Louis' protection so deeply?" Armand asks, not bothering to turn around.

"No," Daniel says, keeping his voice bland.

"No? I can assure you, he was sincere, if you wondered."

"Actually, I didn't. But I figure it's the same thing as the maitre bullshit; he can't follow through if you aren't willing to let him." 

Armand doesn't respond, doesn't even twitch. But his tiger chuffs, a soft amused sound from the corners of the dreams Daniel's had off and on for decades. Which just pisses him off all over again, and what self-preservation he has goes right out the window. He’d rather have answers. "I have a few more questions, actually." 

"You cannot think I have any interest in entertaining your follow-up questions. The interview is over, Mr. Molloy," Armand says, and he's still not turning around, his voice still cool and unreadable, but his free hand has clenched into a fist and he's slid the other down to curl in his tiger's fur at the scruff of her neck.

"This isn't about the interview, Armand." 

The name feels different on his tongue, this time, and that must show in his voice somehow because now Armand turns, an irritatingly graceful spin and those orange eyes fixing immediately on Daniel's face. "You've remembered." 

"Not much," Daniel admits. "Bits and pieces here and there. But turns out the Talamasca were spying on us, and they had some pictures. Great memory aids, you know." 

"What do you want from me?" Armand asks, sounding tired as if this is all just so exhausting and unreasonable but he'll entertain it for a moment. Daniel wants to punch him, but that didn't do him any good when he was as young as Armand looks, much less now. 

"I want to know why, you fucking bastard. Why did you — I —" I loved you, damn it, Daniel thinks but doesn't say, and that doesn't matter because Armand can read his mind but all he has here is his pride so he's going to hold onto the last shreds of it, thanks. "Can't have a normal goddamn breakup, you have to go for the memory wipe? Really? Because that is just —" 

"You were dying!" Armand snarls, that put-on tiredness gone and rage taking its place. Rage like San Francisco, like countless half-remembered fights, a reddish film in his eyes that Daniel hazily remembers from a lot of those fights too. They argued about turning Daniel, he thinks, over and over because of course Daniel wanted it, why wouldn't he, and Armand wouldn't... 

"You were dying, and I could not — the very fact of me in your life was most of it, if I didn't remove myself in every way you were going to implode. I did the only thing I could do." 

Not the only thing, Daniel could say, but they've circled that over and over and he doesn't — 

He'd been an idiot when he was young, and his abrasiveness was less constant then but very much a part of him. Still, he'd had his charms, and he'd known how to use them. Daniel's pretty well aware he hasn't got any of those left. If he couldn't win this argument then, there's no way he can now, and that's if he even wants to. "We lived in Miami," he says slowly. "The... the Night Island. That's where it ended, in Miami. But why then?" 

Armand shrugs one shoulder, infuriatingly graceful. "I had been pondering my options for some time. You know how I feel about siring a fledgling. Your skepticism here in Dubai was nothing compared to your demands over our years together. You wished for me to turn you, and when I would not, you insisted that you at least deserved an explanation for why not." 

Daniel raises an eyebrow. "Did you ever give me one?" 

"This life is a curse. And fledglings always grow to resent their makers." 

"Easy solution to that one if it really came down to it," Sianna points out before Daniel can. "Hit up some other vamp to do it." 

Armand's eyes flash, his jaw working like Daniel's seen several times in Dubai — and now he knows, abruptly, that Armand does that when he's trying to keep his fangs from dropping. It's the tiger who answers, and Daniel feels like he should know her name, like he should remember, he's certain Armand told him, but he can't find it.

"And allow someone else a claim like that?" she says, and it's the first time in Dubai that Daniel's heard her speak. Against his leg, Sianna shivers at the sound of it. Her voice is low and rich, lilting with just a hint of an accent Daniel can't identify, and he knows Armand can't either, but where it comes from, well, that much is kind of obvious.

"In my soul's voice is the last echo of who I was, before all of this."

Armand told him that once, Daniel realizes. But he shakes it off. "OK, so you wouldn't turn me, couldn't stand to let someone else do it, so you decided to redact my brain instead. That makes perfect sense."

"I told you, you were dying. And then... Your Alice. We had met her in New York. Occasionally, during those years, you and I invited others into our bedroom. She was one of them, and I knew you were fond of her. Your teenage passions had faded, of course, but I believed it would be easy enough to reignite them. It was easier to let you go, when I knew that if I could hope for things to improve again with Louis, that you had a chance at finding love in the mortal world as you ought." 

Part of Daniel can only think, fuck, I owe Alice an apology. "We didn't overdose at all that night, did we?" 

"No," Armand admits. "But the process of altering memories can be trying on a human."

"Right," Daniel says. He doesn't know what he expected, really. He doesn't know what he wants. Some sign that he and Sianna aren't alone in being haunted by this piece of the past they're only just getting back, maybe? But what were the odds of that? 

"Is that what you think? That I am not haunted by you?" Armand asks, something unsteady in his voice. It's an act, Daniel tells himself firmly, but he isn't as sure of that as he'd like to be. 

"Stay out of my head." 

"You used to welcome me." And now he sounds wistful, like that's not fucking creepy. Although... No, Daniel realizes. That's actually true, they both liked it back then, because Armand didn't trust what people said even when they said all the right things, and Daniel's always had a tendency to push too far, to be too harsh or abrupt, and because Armand could read his mind he always knew what was behind the blunt words, knew Daniel wasn't misleading him and usually wasn't trying to hurt him, unless they were fighting.

Fuck, they were both screwed up. And maybe that hasn't changed, because Daniel has to admit that a partner who could read his mind has probably always been the one he was least likely to chase off... at least for any normal breakup reason, anyway.

"Yeah, I did, and you took it all away." And it hurts, that's the worst part of all. Now that Daniel remembers a little, the feelings are there even if he doesn't know what to do with them, and the way Armand excised himself from Daniel's life hurts. Because Daniel can — there's an absence, something that he didn't know was missing but now he does know, and it fucking hurts. Damn him for that.

"I was a fool to think there could ever really be a springtime for us, but there will be for you, one way or another."

The memory, just Armand's voice in a different accent, a near-match to his daemon's, whispers through Daniel's mind. Armand must pick up on it too, his orange eyes flashing red like they were in the moment he revealed himself as a vampire only days ago. He doesn't say anything, though, and neither does Daniel, the two of them left just staring at each other. He remembers that in San Francisco too. Armand would just sit and stare, between the questions and the throwing Daniel around like a ragdoll and the mindfuckery. Sometimes he would just stare, and Daniel stared back even when he actually could have looked away.

He doesn't know what either of them were searching for, then or now. Sianna is shaking on his shoulder, and the tiger is utterly still in a way Daniel's never seen her — usually her ears twitch, or her tail lashes, when she's not actually pacing. There's a pressure in the room, an expectation of something, but there's just nothing to say. Daniel isn't even sure he can argue with Armand here. He wants to, desperately, wants to point out the fucking violation of stealing his memories, even if Armand's telling the truth that it was the only way he knew to save Daniel from his own spirals.

But he is also still alive, which doesn't give him a great place to argue from.

"Fuck this," he finally says. "I'm not playing this game, I'm getting out of here." He turns on his heel to go back for his bag and —

And he can't move.

It doesn't hurt this time. Not like San Francisco. No pain, he remembers was part of the big speech at the end of every show at the Theatre de Vampire. Nothing hurts, he's not even caught in an awkward position. Both feet are firmly on the ground. He just... can't move a muscle except the ones he needs to breathe. Sianna tumbles off his shoulder, as frozen as he is, but he doesn't feel her land. Something catches her, like air turned solid, setting her on the floor, and then Daniel feels a heavy paw curl around her.

Cool breath on the back of his neck.

"This, you liked less, I admit, though we found uses for it that we both enjoyed. At the moment, though..."

Armand's hands feel delicate, in the first moment when they settle on Daniel's hips from behind. Then they curl in, a grip that could be crushing, Daniel can feel how easily his bones could break under those hands, but they don't. Armand doesn't do that. He just holds Daniel in place, like he wasn't already doing that with his mind. "Louis told me not to harm you. But while he has a claim on you, I do think mine is stronger than his."

No one has a damn claim on me, Daniel thinks as loudly as he can.

"Oh no?" Armand murmurs, lips ghosting over the bite scar on Daniel's neck, which —

He remembers now, Armand always bit him there. And sometimes he wouldn't heal the marks, deepening the scar every time he decided on that. Daniel used to think, and he still thinks now, that Armand got off on sharing that mark with Louis, and on how Louis wouldn't know that. Daniel mostly just liked the bite scar the same way he liked the more delicate scars on his hips, which he remembers now are from Armand's nails. He liked the proof that it was all real.

You said yourself, you let me go. So no, whatever claim you think you had doesn't count anymore, does it? Daniel thinks, furious again suddenly. It's the lack of choice in it that's the worst. Maybe Armand was even right, technically. Maybe Daniel would be long dead if Armand hadn't mind-wiped him. But he took away something that — something real, something that was worth keeping even if it killed him. He took it away without giving Daniel even the semblance of a choice in it.

"But I'm giving it back, Daniel," Armand murmurs in his ear.

"That's not how this works," Daniel snaps, surprising himself when he actually can talk. He still can't move, though, still frozen in place. "Maybe you're the same but I'm not, and now it's all just — fucking tumbling around in there, real and not real and it didn't grow or die naturally, Armand, you can't fix that with a thought. I don't care how good your psychic copy edit skills are."

The thing is, he's not sure Armand still has him frozen. It doesn't feel the same, it feels warm, loose, and he finds he can turn his head a little. Just enough, to see Sianna held very carefully between the tiger's two front paws, her muzzle pressed to Sianna's soft underbelly. Sianna's limp in the hold, and Daniel's pretty sure that's why he can't move now. "What are you doing?" he asks now that he can, even though he's starting to suspect.

If he's right, he's not sure how to feel.

"It repulsed me, repulses me," Armand had said, and yet...

"It does," Armand agrees, lips brushing the scar again. "But I find — I find that I still do not wish to be in a world where you are not. I thought that would fade when I let you go, you've destroyed everything I still had, and yet here we are. I cannot let you go beyond where I might follow, and also..." 

He snarls then, and his fangs sink into Daniel's neck at the same moment as his tiger's claws pierce Sianna enough that she cries out. Daniel gasps, caught between the burn in his neck and the soul-deep echo of Sianna's pain. But he can't move, again, frozen until his legs give out anyway, his head lolling back against Armand's shoulder, and he's too far gone to move anyway. Armand releases his psychic hold then and Daniel sags in his arms with a low groan, his vision blurring as his body goes cold. 

The tiger is grooming Sianna now like she never stabbed her, Sianna shuddering between her paws and shedding gold dust. 

My Chandra wasn't settled when I was turned. I don't know the loss of it, when your very soul becomes something new. But you will. And you will both hate us for it, but it won't change the fact that you're ours. And even in hating us, you won't be lost, will you, beloved?

The words, whispered into Daniel's brain, follow him down into the dark. 

The words are in the blood that spills down his throat. Armand's blood, like honey and lightning. 

And there's a garden at twilight, there's a villa under the silvery glow of a full moon, there's the full night sky in the middle of nowhere and city lights spinning above their heads, such different kinds of light but all of it beautiful, and it's all — 

Louis described it like the best high of all time. 

Daniel thinks it feels more like slipping into some dark river, muted swirling coolness.

By the time the convulsions start, and all the rest of it, there actually is water everywhere. Dizzily, Daniel's pretty sure he's in a shower, or maybe in the rain? No, there's tile under him, and he can feel all the tiny rough spots in what he would have thought was smooth ceramic before, he can count each drop of water where it lands on his bare skin, and there are worse places for all this to happen. 

He's almost ready to go under again, the cramps fading away to nothing, the water cleaning him so he doesn't have to move. The burn is there in his throat, an ache in his teeth, but it's quiet yet. It's nothing he can't ignore and he's so tired, and he — 

The pain is impossible , when it hits out of nowhere. Soul-deep and vicious.

Daniel screams, thrashing, hand pressed to his chest even though that does nothing, he should be bleeding there, should be bleeding everywhere, what is happening, everything is cracking and shifting and — 

Sianna's screams echo off the tiles when Daniel can't scream anymore, his throat locking up.

And then it's over. The sudden absence of pain as much a shock as the abrupt start of it.

It's over and Daniel sits up, soaking wet and naked and alone in a shower big enough it's gotta be Louis and Armand's. He's staring not into the black eyes, the deceptively cute face of the Sianna he's known since they were seventeen. There's no fisher looking back at him, sleek shape and dark brown fur he knows the texture of better than anything else in the world. 

He's staring into grey-green cat eyes, Sianna's fur silver-grey and brown, dark splotches all over her. She's bigger, that's what hurt so much. She's still smallish, not one of the big cats, but she's bigger than she was. She's bigger and the fur's all wrong, the eyes are all wrong, the shape of her is wrong, all of this is wrong.  

(For one dizzying moment Daniel sees through his daemon's eyes, sees his own eyes burning orange, familiar shade but foreign on his face.) 

"Daniel —" Sianna chokes out, and he's reaching for her before he even thinks to do it, he barely notices the new speed he can move at, because her voice is still the same. Sianna's voice that never changed except to get richer as they aged, Sianna's voice that has been his only constant, for all his life. She's still him, he's still her, they'll get through this, they'll learn to work with this, she's still fucking beautiful, they're still them. 

Armand and Chandra left them here. Just left them to this, turning them and abandoning them, for love and revenge both. 

They're alone but they're not, not so long as they’re a paired whole, and they already know, this game is just getting started.