#and sometimes it's lover sometimes maker sometimes teacher sometimes basically carer

[rainbowcarousels]

Why yes I think about it ALL THE TIME and now you have me crying in the club on a Tuesday 😮‍💨 How they’d been each other’s rock for the longest time and the center of each other’s worlds, only to have it taken from them when they needed it the most. How their very foundations were ripped apart (again in Armand’s case). And I know this is verging into fanon territory given that we weren’t exactly given a solid explanation in the text but it’s also worth considering how much Armand’s near dead experience informed Daniel’s delirium and state of mind. Armand was everything Daniel knew and all of a sudden (and as far as he knew), he was gone. And Armand had his one baby, his only child, completely go off his rocker while he was unable to do anything about it, only further cementing his believe that if he ever loved anyone enough to bring them over, he’d fail. Anne was truly cruel for that, even though she made up for it in the end. We only got a few glimpses in the last trilogy, but they seemed at such ease with each other, with the same familiarity between them that’s always been there, that I’d like to think they’d already talked about their pressing issues at length (enough for Daniel to move in with him I mean), and all was well 🥹 xoxo DA

I know it's fanon but it just lines up so perfectly for Armand's death to be at the very least a tipping point for Daniel. We know Armand is not in a good place in Memnoch, he's not really taking care of himself, he's in a fragile state and this just screams post-break up to me. I think @desertfangs has them break up in London just prior to Memnoch and given that would align with what we hear of Armand haunting London in that time period, it feels like it should be canon so I'm counting it as my personal canon.

The thing is when it comes to Armand and Daniel, this would be what, less than a decade after Daniel was made? They're still figuring out how their relationship has changed and how to function in this new way or adapt things. I think you can see the shift even in QOTD where Armand wants to push himself into the teacher role as Marius and probably Santino had been for him and if you look at how he talks and treats Daniel right afterwards, you can see shades of his relationship with them both in his tone and actions as if he's trying to figure out what sort of teacher he is all the while thinking it's only a matter of time before he realises he got what he wanted, he'll leave and Daniel does leave.

I don't think that was the reason - I think communication between them decayed without the mental link between them where he found himself second guessing Daniel's words when Daniel's words are often at odds with his actual thoughts and Daniel had been so used to him knowing that and not having to explain himself that it was bound to cause a blow out - but I don't think it was meant to be a permenant break so much as playing into the pattern of running off for a bit. As a side note, it's also why I think Marius makes such a big thing of Armand being able to hear B&S: he knows how hard it hit him and Daniel to lose it.

I do think Daniel does still have this certain wide eyed delirium that probably comes from having very powerful blood so everything is overstimulating, a long overexposure to the blood as a mortal, being made under circumstances that were not the most stable and getting floored by Akasha all in his first week or so as a vampire. A need for some time apart was probably always going to be on the cards, I think Daniel needed to at least try to show he can survive without Armand even if he's struggling because survival seems to be the mark of a successful fledgling but then, as in a lot of VC, Lestat Happens and all hell breaks loose.

(I am fond of the idea that Lestat's last memory of Armand going as he was pulled away got screamed to the vampire populace and this was in fact the specific tipping point.)

So I think when we get to the point of Daniel's delerium being severe it's Grandpa to the rescue, it's a side effect of struggling with his own delirium and the loss and grief he's feeling so he just retreats into his own worlds he can set up and control and make them beautiful because the world out there feels like empty chaos and he's lost the person who guided him through the chaos (or so he thinks at the time) and at least part of his withdrawal from the world to do his lil crafts was done deliberately to get away from his grief. It's just that once he's done that, it's a lot harder to find his way back again.

And I feel like this is the crux of the Armand issue: from what we know in TVA, I genuinely do not believe he knows Daniel's not really doing well and I do think it's something he learns later so I think there's this swing between 'Daniel wasn't here when I felt broken and I had to pick myself up but I'm his maker, he doesn't have to take care of me, it's his perogative to stay away if he can't stand me any longer' to 'Daniel needed rescuing and he's always been the one to do that, he'd always been the person taking care of him and he'd have tried if he knew, would have dropped everything in a moment to do it' but by then, Marius had stepped in, they were settled, he wasn't going to throw that out and for better or worse, he knows Marius can be devoted to caring for broken boys and seeing them get back up again.

But none of that logical line of thought shakes the fact there is a chunk of his life, especially once they get back together, that Armand had no connection with other than being part of the breaking point much as I think Daniel leaving was part of his. There's these big things that happened and while yes, I hope they talked about it, it's not the same as experiencing it and I think when they're ready to show that in the blood, to share that level of pain and deal with it as a shared sadness and experience, it'll be agony but they'll come away with a stronger relationship for it.

It just won't change the fact that he had a second chance to do it right this time with Daniel where he had failed before, to not be a blunt object seeking practical solutions and prove he can in fact take care of people without destroying them. He does still get this in Benji and Sybelle to a degree, but I think the fact he didn't get it with Daniel probably weighs on him and he can't help but call it back to his own feelings of abandonment as well as what happened with Nicki and even Claudia. He's trying so hard in the modern age to make caregiver be a huge part of him and to be seen as somene who keeps his children safe and even if Daniel was safe at the time, I can't help but think it would bother him that his own firstborn had to be cared for by someone else and that maybe Lestat would be the only person he would really admit this to because he would be the one to understand it. That it was love, not the lack of.

Sorry for the sudden essay DA, it turns out Armand is not the only one with a lot of feelings on the matter!