What if Marius hadn't turned back when he watched Armand in Paris?
He had always found comforting. Until that night, when he’d found out the way burning flesh smelt, including his own, and how screams of true terror sounded. Deep down inside he’d buried these memories. One hundred years had past. He’d not troubled to see ghosts since that dungeon where he’d…died anew. Something was following him, foot falls deliberately heavy. He couldn’t sense the other. No prickling of another vampires soul, *hollow laughter. Perhaps…* Dragging his mind away from that fairy tale. Back straight as a coven masters should be. Armand turned and faced the spectre, he’d not consciously breathed in a century. But he held it now as he took in the other. There as if he hadn’t died in a inferno stood Marius. A ghost? This phantom came nearer. Paler as a creature of death twice over should be, but just as beautiful as he remembered. It had naturally occurred to him as an ‘old one’ the fire mightn’t have been true death for his Master. No rescue had come. How changed he himself was, Amadeo was a faraway dream. Armand stared at his Master. His maker. Marius the slayer of the young, or so he’d been indoctrined. His mouth moved and he spoke before he knew it, “Have you come for me then? Saviour or executioner?” His all knowing idol, lover and teacher. His sins laid bare. Perhaps this innui, suffocating existence had been his punishment. “I fell too far this time.” A statement and a question. Walking nearer awaiting judgement ashe looked up into icy blue eyes.