Work Text:
“Hello, Old friend.”
The trigger of the rifle laid tantalisingly close to his finger, the violence written into the metal felt like coming back to a broken home. The tool that had comforted when human life could not laid again in his hands, to drop those who sought to fight against everything he believed in.
But in his own mind, there were no Cullen Games anymore, no Edward, and no Twins. Only the frostbitten air of trenches a century past, and the rifle. He remembered each scratch and dent in the metal, but ran his thumb over the same four words he had carved in himself - Michael, Danielle, Mikey, Emily. When he had done it, the first night he had fed on a soldier from his own ranks, he had not intended for the edges to be so sharp, for them to dig into his skin when he trained the barrel on an unsuspecting man. Maybe it was better that way, his own bleeding hands scarring in a reminder of the monster he was.
But even his own blood ran cold, no suffering of his could ever have brought him warmth. It is in violence dragged forth by the Beast that he is warmed by the blood stolen in the night, but only then. It seemed as though even the beast knew it was monstrous, and took shame in that. He was not known, not truly. He had a number and name and rank, but that was it. He became he who haunted the trenches, he who you avoided if you knew what was good for you. It was there that Arthur had truly realised the extent of the curse, he had not known of the masquerade then, but he wouldn’t have broken it either way, for who is there to tell of vampires when you hardly believed it yourself? He hadn’t a family, friends had drifted even before the war, and there is no solace in men who could be gunned down tomorrow.
Perhaps if he’d have been a footsoldier things would’ve been different. There’d have been camaraderie that comes with forced proximity, even if he took night shifts; but with no proximity to the others, he did not drift amongst them, and did not let them hear the stifled grief-cries that left him at dawn and dusk.
Dawn and Dusk.. when vampires run rampant, and when they must submit to their nature, wanted or not. Even now, he screams to the beast that he did not want this, did not deserve the fate he was given, damned to hell whether he believed in it or in anything else. Final death hung over him like a guillotine, as much as he longed to burn in the sun, reduce to ash in the fire, bleed out from the heart impaled on a stake, the beast’s survival outweighed his own, and his survival ensured its. So he cowered. He always fucking cowered. It made him sick, just how much of a coward he was, he was not truly charismatic, even in war he hid. Hid behind a scope and a barrel of deadly aim. He had been deadly, too - but when you’re feeding from them, less blood loss is always best, naturally. So the Beast sharpened his eyes, stopped the tremor that had plagued him since his first frenzy. Once even his dexterity had been stolen into a tool for the monster, Arthur Bennett had not felt truly himself, not a hundred years on, perhaps not until he is in the ground, or in the wind.
But today, his wings are clipped, weighed down into the earth that calls for his destruction. Metal pressed into his hands that shocked any friendship into excuses, unnatural as his very vampiric nature. A reminder to the brain that had defrosted for the charm of two blonde haired boys - They will die, their demons will get bored of them. But not you, never you. The Beast called within him, a monster has too much use for one who has nothing to lose, forcing his human nature to preserve the life twisted into a marionette of violence, the scope trailed on royal blood.