They're still more or less inside twenty-four hours of that moment on the rooftop. Louis making a choice, looking between Lestat and Daniel and deciding he'd rather walk into a trap than see either of them hurt any more than they had been.

Maybe they should have argued last night. Screamed at each other. It might have felt less delicate than it does now, Daniel saying this thing.

And Louis can say what he likes now about certainty, about being so sure they would have come, retrieved him. But there had been a moment where that had not been clear. And Louis had accepted it.

He knows that won't ease any of Daniel's fears.

Tightens his grip on Daniel's hand, tells him softly, "I don't want to die."

Today. Right now. But Daniel is intimately aware of the ways Louis has wanted that, before. Maybe it makes all of this worse for him and Lestat both, knowing the exact shape of this thing in Louis that runs towards the last dregs of his own mortality. That wants to die.

"But I need you alive, and safe. I'll choose you, always. Do you think I could go on living if she burned you in front of me?"

She'd have taken Louis anyway, after. He'd have let her. It would not have gone so well, in this series of events, Louis thinks.