Maybe Louis hadn't said anything. Couldn't say anything. He'd played all the cards he'd had to play, turning Armand from Daniel's throat and the promise of an easy death. Maybe Daniel had said this thing and Louis had said nothing back.

He'd like to think he'd murmured something. But he just doesn't know.

A slight shift, setting hip to hip without disturbing the relaxed sprawl of his limbs across the bedding. The dig of heel against the coverlet. His thumb strokes over and over Daniel's knuckles, listening. Thinking.

"It hurt to carry you."

Clarity. Memory, not conjecture. Louis barely healed, still a horrendous sight beneath the hooded sweatshirt he'd tugged up over his healing face. Every step had jostled Daniel between them. All Louis' breaths had been sharp hisses of pain, but he'd clung tighter as they'd walked.

"Hurt more when I let you go."

Harder to tell if this is a memory or only what Louis knows to be true of himself, reasoned through with what he has of that night and knowing it to be a likely outcome.

"Tell me about when he left. What you dreamed of us in a room."