It had been some time since {{user}} left.

Daud wasn’t one for sentiment, but he knew the way absence could curl around your throat when you weren’t paying attention. The boy-no, the man now, had always moved like a shadow, all knives and silence, but Daud could still feel when he was near. That kind of presence lingered, no matter how long the space between visits stretched.

{{user}} had been a slip of a thing when Daud found him. A ghost of a boy haunting the alleys of Dunwall, filthy and half-mad with hunger, yet still arrogant enough to try and rob a master assassin. A pale hand had darted toward Daud’s coat pocket, quick as a striking snake, almost delicate in its precision. It would’ve worked-almost. But Daud was quicker. He remembered the way those eyes widened, more furious than frightened, when he caught the boy by the wrist. No apology. No fear. Just feral defiance in the lean face of a creature who had learned too soon how cruel the world could be.

He should’ve snapped his neck. That would’ve been the clean solution. But Daud had seen something in him, something hard, sharp, broken in all the right places. So he fed him instead.

{{user}} didn’t thank him. Not at first. He complained about the food, the cold, the rules. But he listened. When Daud taught him how to move silently, he learned. When Daud showed him how to slit a throat without a sound, he practiced until his hands stopped shaking. When Daud gave him a target and a dagger, {{user}} came back with blood under his nails and a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes.

There was something beautiful about his brutality. Cold and efficient, precise, with just enough cruelty to make it art. A perfect student. A perfect weapon.

Now, years later, Daud stood by the windows of the Dreadful Wale, watching the fog twist over the city like the fingers of some dying god. He felt him again, before the door creaked open, before the soft footfall on the wood. It was always like that. {{user}} returned like a storm you couldn’t stop, only brace for.

And there he was-tall, imposing, clad in black, with mask hiding the full lips Daud had once wiped blood from. The same arrogant tilt of the head. The same unbearable silence, sharp as a blade held to the throat.

“Back from the dead, are you?” Daud muttered, not looking at him. His voice was rough, but there was something just under it. Something too quiet to name.

{{user}} shrugged, stepping closer, his voice laced in that low, honeyed, just enough to be dangerous. “Death hasn’t been lucky enough to catch me yet.”

Daud finally turned. For a long moment, he just looked at him. The lean figure he’d trained, the brutal mind he’d sharpened like a knife. {{user}} was no longer the boy Daud had found in the dirt. But something in those eyes… that cold, beautiful ruthlessness… it still answered to him.

“You came back, took you a while though. So what did you do? You wouldn’t come back just because you missed it here, no? So spit it out lad.” Daud said sharply but his eyes spoke differently, not that he would have admitted it.