Chapter Text
Sae couldn’t remember the exact year he was born, when he was growing up nobody except scholars cared to record the passing of time and there were very few of those. He remembered a time before the Romans came which meant he must have been born in late BC before their first invasion.
In all honesty he remembered less than he would like to admit of his childhood, he grew up like most children did on a small farm discontented from the rest of the world in the north of England. The real story was how his family found themselves there.
Apparently a few years before he was born his parents and a small group of others took a ship from a yet undiscovered country and sailed into the distance to escape those who wished to take their lives.
The story was that after months of treacherous travel they crash landed on English soil and found a home there. It would be over 1500 years later when Sae finally learned the name of his home land but by the time he was finally able to visit it was nothing like his parents old stories.
Throughout the years some people found his appearance odd or different but as the years went on he found that it didn’t bother him and people knew better than to question a predator. His parents worked hard every single day to provide and whenever word came around of a conflict they kept their noses out of it.
Sae asked them about it and their reply was that they’d had enough conflict and they wanted to grow old in a time a peace. In the end they were unable to keep their little corner of the world for very long they had no way to defend against a creature of legend.
Sae thought that he was around eight when he was first turned though it was give or take a year or so, he supposed that in the grand scheme of things his age hadn’t really mattered.
The reason he couldn’t remember his exact age of turning was because luckily he did grow after his turning albeit very slowly. He spent hundreds of years lamenting the fact that he would stay a young child forever before realising one day that he was getting a little taller.
He grew at a snail’s pace about one year each two hundred till he finally stopped over one thousand years later when he reached the physical age of about 17. From what he knew of other vampires they grew the same way if turned as a child but if they were turned any older than that then they would just be stuck at that age.
The few days before it happened there had been word from other nearby villages about a wild animal butchering farm animals and ripping people from their beds. At first they thought it was only rumours but as the stories grew closer to home people began to take it more seriously.
Sae’s parents suspected a wolf and put of extra fencing around their home and livestock, of course that could never stop what was coming but they didn’t know that at the time.
The home they lived in was built from clay and mad with a single room that the whole family shared. Sae slept soundly on a bed of hay soothed by the sound of his mother’s breathing. The creature attacked Sae first pouncing on him and plunging razor sharp teeth into his throat.
He was too shocked to even scream all he could do was stare in crazed green eyes and gasp into the air. After a only a few seconds his body felt numb, his limbs wooden and too heavy to lift.
Moments before he was fully drained his father drove a pitchfork into the back of the creature’s head. It choked and coughed up dark blood all over Sae’s face. Drops slid into his mouth as he continued to gasp for air almost fully dead to the world.
The creature pulled the weapon right out of its flesh and turned on his parents taking them out with ease draining their blood with a rabid ferocity.
Sae’s death was accompanied by his parents dying breaths and a slurping sound. Instead of dying properly every nerve in sae’s body lit up as if on fire and his own blood began to pour from every orifice like a foreign poison ejecting itself. The transformation only lasted a few minutes but to Sae it felt like a lifetime, by the time he felt able to sit up the creature had finished with its meal.
The creatures hunger had finally been satiated so when it turned back to Sae it fell back to the floor when it accidentally stared into Sae’s wide eyes. They stared at each other awkwardly for a while and the longer Sae looked the more he realised that the creature that attacked him wasn’t a creature at all but a young man with blonde hair and bright green eyes.
Sae was confused and scared while the young man stared at him with regret and shame. He shuffled along the floor to Sae his parents blood still dripping down his chin. Sae realised that he should be terrified of this man doing all he could to escape but for some reason he no longer cared, his brain no longer seemed to fear a creature of the same species.
The man knelt on the rough floor his forehead pressed hard into the dirt. “I’m so sorry” he whispered the same phrase over and over again for what felt like hours till Sae finally built up the courage to reach out and tap him on the shoulder. The man flinched back as if he’d been struck and finally gave Sae a proper look.
“I’m so sorry… I was so hungry… I can’t control it yet, I didn’t mean to curse you too please forgive me” he continued with his chopped explanations till Sae grew sick of them. “What’s happening” he whispered his voice full of childlike innocence, an innocence that clashed grotesquely with his new nature.
The man looked at him helplessly “it’s a curse” he whispered “the curse of eternal life… you have to feed on the blood of humanity to sustain yourself”. He grew jittery as his eyes flickered around the room “I’ve only been like this for a matter of weeks I cannot help you… I’m sorry” with that he turned and fled the mud hut with an inhuman speed.
That was the last Sae would see of his maker for around 2000 years. He was left at eight years old to figure out the mechanics of vampirism alone. As the years past he found that he couldn’t really blame the man for fleeing. After going through his own fledgling stage he understood how difficult and confusing it all was.
It didn’t take him long to learn the main rules, most people didn’t fear a child making it easy for him to find prey and it was only a few hours after being turned that he realised he could only move in the dark. He had truly become a creature of the night.
After many centuries his body seemed to grow immune to the suns rays but he still operated mostly in the dark on habit. It wasn’t long after his turning that he lived through the invasion of the Romans. He saw their rise and fall then saw the same pattern repeat with every new invasion and war.
Sae was very young when he was turned and because of that he developed very few morals when it came to humans. He didn’t waste his time hunting animals, he ate when he was hungry and he was hungry for human blood. He would drink from anybody as long as they were easy prey he really didn’t care who they were.
He constantly moved from place to place and once the ready of the world opened up to him he exploded a multitude of countries. The vampire that had turned him wasn’t English he knew that, the man had a slight tan since he hadn’t yet spent long out of the sun and his accent was European.
At the start of Sae’s very long life he met very few other vampires. All that he met were horrified at his young appearance and years later when he heard about the vampire laws he learned that one of them made it punishable by death to make a child vampire. When Sae was created the laws were not yet in place since at that time vampire society was as rudimentary as the rest of the world.
Most of the vampire’s Sae did meet ended up killing themselves after only a few hundred years driven mad by the lifestyle. When Sae first heard word of vampire’s forming covens he made sure to keep himself far away, he didn’t take kindly to being told what to do. In some respects he would always keep the mind of a child being frozen like that for so many years though he liked to think that he seemed pretty well adjusted from the outside.
Sae thought that he was going to be alone forever, that was until he met Rin.
They met at the back end of the 1400s as the war of the roses was drawing to a close. Sae’s body was about 15 at the time and he was living in the south. One day he was walking through some slums when he heard the familiar noise of a vampire feeding.
He followed the noise till he found a young fledgling about the same age as Sae’s body feeding on a young woman. When the boy noticed him he turned and snarled but Sae just continued to stare impassively. “Who’s your maker?” He asked. The sound echoed of the walls of the tight space.
The boys eyes went wide when he realised that Sae was the same as him. He shrugged “I don’t know they left me o guess” Sae nodded. He knew by that point that it definitely wasn’t allowed to turn people Rin’s age, the vampire was probably trying to escape persecution.
“do you know the basics of it all?” The boy nodded. “Are you like me?” He asked. Sae shrugged “sure but I think I’m quite a bit older than you” the boy gave him a funny look “you look the same age as me, and your even shorter than I am” Sae gave him an offended look before laughing. “I’m older than I look” he replied. “How old” the boy asked. Sae just shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter”
He didn’t want to scare the boy by telling him that he was older than the religion that ran the whole country. “I’m Rin, who are you” he asked curiously. It had been a long time since Sae had a proper conversation with anybody and he was getting sick of the questions but at least the boy wasn’t terrified and trying to run away because Sae was not in the mood to chase a fledgling through the streets.
“Sae.. you wanna stick with me?” He offered tentatively. He had spent centuries alone and he had to admit that he wasn’t immune to feeling alone. Rin nodded enthusiastically and thus began a brotherhood that transcended and notions of blood relation.
Sae taught Rin all he knew about being a vampire and in return Rin looked up to him like he hung the moon and stars. With Rin, Sae made sure to never reveal that he could go out in the sun, he didn’t want to give him false hope. Afterall it would be centuries before Rin could once again walk under the sun and Sae didn’t was t him doing anything stupid in an attempt to follow him.
One became two and after a while Sae nearly forgot that he and Rin hadn’t been grown in the same womb. They were as thick as thieves traversing the centuries side by side going through it all together.
They grew at the same rate and they reached maturity at the same time in the 1800s, that was when they started to fall apart. Rin grew curious asking Sae questions about vampire life that he had never bothered to learn the answers to. Rin stopped seeing Sae as the elder instead believing them to be equals even though Sae was so much older.
Rin decided that their decisions should be two way instead of Sae dictating their actions like he had for so long. Sae didn’t mind all of that he had even expected some of it but there was one thing that he just couldn’t get past.
Rin was the only vampire Sae could bare to be around. He hated and feared all others choosing to avoid them at all costs. Sae was turned in a time where vampires existed as singular super predators while Rin grew up in a time where vampire’s chose to create their own society and travel in covens.
Rin wanted to learn more about their kind and meet new people like them while Sae though that they would both be safer alone. This difference eventually turned into constant arguments and there were multiple incidents of Sae fearfully searching for Rin while the younger went to seek out other vampires.
It all reached a boiling point when while Sae was readying them to leave a city Rin told him that he’d been in contact with the coven for weeks. He claimed that he’d made friend there and he wanted to bring Sae with him to join the coven.
Sae loved Rin, he was the only person that he’d been able to build a connection with outside of his parents. He wanted Rin to find happiness even if things couldn’t go on as they were. He had to let him go.
When he told Rin his plan to leave the city alone allowing Rin to join the coven they younger exploded. He just couldn’t understand why Sae didn’t seem to crave the connection and answers that he had always longed for.
They fought and Sae won leaving his brother unconscious in an abandoned house so he couldn’t follow him. Sae had stalked the coven for a few days before deciding that Rin would be better off with them. He hated himself for leaving but he just couldn’t bring himself to join the coven.
Sae was used to a world where the only vampires that didn’t want to kill him were desperate to kill themselves to escape the curse that plagued them all. The child that still lived deep inside of Sae just couldn’t let go of their fear.
Sae knew he was an ancient vampire, there were very very few born in his time or before still living and he knew that he did not fit in. Many vampires avoided their old churches in fear that their God would smite them down for their sin. Sae was born in world before their churches and even though he lived through the rise of Christianity he always just saw churches as normal building.
He did not fear him as there was nothing their God could do to one as old as him. In fact he often took refuge in churches since he knew it was the best place to avoid others of his kind.
Admittedly due to his avoidant personality Sae ended up missing a lot large event in history, really his immortality had been pretty boring. He did fight in the First World War since most young men in the country were doing the same and it would look odd if he wasn’t there but he didn’t enjoy it.
He may of had to drink human blood to sustain himself but even Sae didn’t want to see thousands of young men get butchered in a cold trench. He chose to stay far out of the way when the next one rolled around.
It was quite shocking for Sae to see the development of technology in the 19th century. When he first went to the cinema he spent the entire film frozen in shock, his mouth hanging open. He could have never even imagined any part of the modern world while he was still human, every single aspect of life was completely different.
There were many vampires who just couldn’t adapt quickly enough to the changes which ended up going mad and dying in the end. Sae managed himself just like he always had, by mostly ignoring new things until he couldn’t help but get used to them. Really he was better with new inventions than most humans since he saw their development and and way more time to learn how to use it all.
Sae did have a few close calls with other vampires in the modern era. Some would see his age and demand to know who turned him so they could be punished for breaking a law, Sae didn’t really know how to explain that his existence was older than the laws and thus his maker was technically innocent so he usually just ran away.
There were three main vampire laws that all members of vampire society were expected to follow. The first was that no vampire should make large interferences with human life for example becoming important politicians. That one generally wasn’t a kill on sight but if a vampire was found breaking that law they would still be punished.
The second was to not hunt other vampire’s or oust their existence to humans, that one resulted in death. The third and final was to never turn children into vampire’s which also led to a death sentence.
The thought process was that even though vampire children did grow eventually it would be far slower than the rate of maturity causing them to become trapped in their bodies leading to madness. Rin was the only other child vampire Sae had ever met aside from himself. It was seen as the ultimate cruelty to turn one so innocent into such a monster.
Sae didn’t see himself as a monster, he simply saw himself as a different species. A predator who prayed in humanity. It was in his nature to hunt and kill so why should he feel any ounce of shame for it?
Sae’s life remained relatively unchanged in practice until the seventies when he accidentally walked right into the middle of a very powerful European coven. When covens first became a thing they only really consisted of small groups of vampires who chose to travel and hunt together but as time went on so did they.
Most covens in the modern era were all connected and able to communicate across countries. There was more of a hierarchy with some older vampires taking their place as leaders of large parts of vampire society. Vampires were no longer lonely predators instead they built communities in between the cracks of humanity. Things were decided as groups and nearly all of the remaining lone vampires were abandoned fledglings, mad or violent.
That was probably the reason the reason they didn’t just ignore Sae when he wandered into their territory like they would have done a couple of centuries before. The drawback of having nothing to do with other vampires was that Sae had no knowledge of their comings and goings which meant that he was very uninformed.
When they found Sae he was feeding on a middle aged man in a Smokey alley close to a bar in Paris. The man was blackout drunk which meant that his blood tasted a little off. Sae didn’t like the taste of alcohol laced blood but he had been hungry and the man had practically wandered right into his arms so he took advantage of the opportunity.
He was about halfway through his meal when he felt two pairs of eyes burn into his back. A younger vampire would never have sensed but Sae had long grown used to staying cautious of other vampire’s. He decided to stay calm finishing of his meal before greeting his visitors.
He dropped the body and took a step back wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket before aiming his vision to the pitch black rooftops. Sae had the eyes of a predator built to hunt at night and he could see the other two vampires clear as day.
“You got something to say or are you just going to stare?” He called. The two vampires froze for a moment turning to each other before dropping down into the alley. They stood at the entrance blocking Sae’s escape though if he was really desperate he could just scale the brick wall.
Both vampires looked young but both were over 17 meaning they weren’t child vampires. The younger one had blonde hair and a sharp grin while the elder was well built with dark skin. Both vampires looked him up and down trying to decide if he was a threat or not.
Sae just stared at the boredly waiting for them to make their judgement. Eventually the older vampire stepped forwards with what Sae assumed was meant to be a warm smile. Coming from a vampire it looked like a shark grinning at a school of trapped fish.
“Hey, your new around here right” Sae just nodded and stayed silent. “You look pretty young do you mind telling us who turned you if you know?” Sae rolled his eyes. This man assumed he was a fledgling. “I think you just missed him” Sae remarked with a hint of amusement in his voice.
The man smirked and took another step forwards. “I dunno I’m pretty fast, I’m sure I could catch up”. What an arsehole. Sae hated being treated like a child by vampires far younger than him. At least he had reached full maturity, it was far worse when he still resembled a preteen.
“You missed him by a few centuries, I think he’s long gone by now” the man’s eyes went wide as he shared a look with his companion. “Your serious?” Sae just nodded. “How come your not registered then?” Sae tilted his head in confusion “huh?” The vampire sighed deeply before explaining.
“All new vampires are meant to be registered especially child vampires, it’s been the law now for nearly one thousand years… We’ve know about you for a couple of days and we could find no report of you, it’s why I thought you were a fledgling. it’s very rare for people to slip through the cracks”
Ah
Sae might have missed that law. Well he never claimed to be an expert on vampire society. He swore that nobody had ever mentioned that one to him, he definitely never registered Rin when he first met him.
They continued to stare eachother down in silence for a while before Sae finally broke his gaze and went to leave the alley. “Well now you know… nice to meet you I guess” just as he tried to push past the other vampire he caught his wrist in a tight grip pulling him back. Sae gave him a withering glare but he wasn’t in the mood to fight, especially not in the territory of other vampire’s.
He smile apologetically “unfortunately your going to have to come with us… we can’t let you keep running around unregistered you see, I’m sure you understand” Sae tugged hard on his grip but it was unrelentingly. Sae glared at him a little longer “it won’t take too long, we have guests from other covens at the moment so it’ll be easy to go through all the motion”
Eventually Sae just nodded and let the taller vampire pull him along to wherever his coven was based. He was in no way eager to be introduced to so many new vampires but he could recognise that maybe being registered was a good thing. It meant that if he ran into other covens in the future they were more likely to just leave him to his own devices.