It feels like falling, like there is nothing he can do to stop it, like it would be a mercy if the process could hurry up and smash him into oblivion against the unyielding earth. But no, they cling, they coax, they prolong an inevitable thing.

Less focus on keeping his mind shut up tightly, and even at a glance, it might feel a demolished building. If memories are sorted into tiers, if trauma is layered in defensive patterns, if triggers are things that shatter walls, then it feels a little like all those structures have collapsed. Here, the scent of Louis' blood springs to mind a vision of a young man neither of them would recognise, laughing through a bloodied mouth, and Armand's voice: something else Louis and I share from you now.

Split seconds. Another, Louis' grasp on him now like the way he held him at the end of the feast, like the way his maker was so gentle, gathering him up in his frenzied state. Another, Daniel's voice, Louis' voice, speaking past, speaking to. Frail and stupid, this creature between them, either a phantom in the room, or the real thing, bleeding and gasping.

"But you hate me," comes out as a higher pitched whine than he intends, if he was intending anything at all. "You have hated so much of me. And I only wanted to make him go away from you."

The active struggle has paused, held in suspension. Not limp in Louis' arms, bound tightly in tension as if ready to spring aside, half-collapsed to the ground as if he could slide from Louis' grip through gravity alone. A wet choking sound on a struggled gasp inwards.

"I don't want to do it anymore," comes out as rage anew, voice hoarse with some attempt at volume, petering out immediately. "I can't watch you love another, I can't, I can't, just leave me here. I did this," a gasp in, a wild look thrown to Daniel. Daniel, who will be sensible. "I saw him here, he had come here, and I fought him. I did this."

So. There it is.