A/N: Set ten years into the future. Season 3 never happened. I've been wanting to write this story for a long time now, I just lacked the proper beginning.
A single instant, frozen.
Daniel, eyes wide in shock, floated a hundred feet in the air. His hands still glowed from the force of the blast he'd unleashed. He hadn't mean to strike so hard - he'd thought that he and Vlad, enemies for so long - had finally begun approaching something like peace. But when the other man had delivered his shocking ultimatum - join him, or Daniel's family would die - well...
He'd lost it. Completely and utterly, like he'd sworn so many years ago when confronted with his own darkness that he would not.
A hundred feet below, Vladimir lay in a still-growing crater, forced into human form by the blast. His eyes, too, were wide, though with a combination of shock, fear, pain, and some terrible, unnameable emotion.
In the silence which followed the impact, Daniel could only stare at the bloody piece of steel rebar that protruded from his enemy's chest.
Slowly, with the dust settling back to the earth around him, Daniel landed, though he dared not transform.
'I didn't mean to,' he whispered faintly, dropping to his knees.
'...'m sorry...' Vladimir rasped. 'Never...never meant to...never hurt...the son, not the mother - Daniel, I...' Through his almost inaudible ramblings, the older man groped blindly for the younger...but at last he fell limp, terribly still.
In the haze of panic, the young man did the first thing that came to mind; he tried to find a pulse, both in Vlad's wrist and in his throat.
Nothing.
He laid an ear to the man's chest - still nothing.
Daniel sat up. What would happen to him now? No matter how much Vlad pissed him off, he hadn't meant to kill...and it was only now, as he stared at the older man's battered body, that he realised that the demand had been delivered, not with anger, but with desperation.
Without knowing exactly why, he touched the other man's face - and nearly jumped into the clouds when Vlad grabbed his hand.
'Please...help me,' the man whispered, his eyes wild, unfocused, staring.
Daniel bit his lip. He stood.