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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 months

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Drag Him Back

@redwingedwhump and I did a WWI-but-with-vampires AU RP with our characters. Then we did an AU to the AU. And this is just a lightly discussed Au-to-the-AU-to-the-AU... just a thought I had in my head that refused to leave.

This is a one-shot just to get it out.

CW: Captivity, vampirism, referenced noncon but just implied, escape, some suicidal ideation

- 1917, Belgium

The door was left unlocked.

It was sheer luck that Emil even noticed. He was lying on his back on the bed, staring up into the canopy and listening to the sound of his own heart struggling to beat despite the lack of blood left in his veins. His neck still tingled, the aftereffects of the venom sending tendrils of exhausted pleasure down through his limbs.

One of the servants had come in to check on him, like they always did once his master was done. The emperor was not kind to his creatures, and there were three servants whose entire existence revolved around keeping Emil alive until His Majesty had finished with him.

Emil was long since past caring about the looks on their faces when they came in to wash the smears of blood and other fluids from his neck, his face, his stomach, between his legs. He barely felt it. The memory of the emperor's hands and his body cold as winter pressed against Emil's own wiped away any comfort he could ever have taken from the pity he saw on the servants' faces.

He barely felt alive.

Someone helped him to stand long enough to change the sheets on the emperor’s enormous bed. Someone else wrapped a bandage around his neck before easing him into a hot bath to soak his aching muscles. A third laid out fresh clothing for him. A fourth only watched the others. Emil laid there, trying not to think about the stinging pain he felt far too deep inside.

Instead, he thought about how lovely it would be to sink beneath the warm water and simply not resurface. Let it close over him and put an end to this nightmare for good.

But… he could not make himself seek that death, which seemed nobler sometimes and like cowardice at others. Deeper down than his despair, a single point of certainty burned - if he could only hold on long enough, his chance for escape would come.

And then, unlike the last three attempts he made to run, he would not be dragged back for the emperor’s displeasure to write itself on his skin. The next time, it would work, he would be free, and he would stay hidden from the emperor’s gaze for as long as it took for the vampire’s eye to turn itself to some other unlucky bastard that would be put into his place.

One day.

If he lived long enough.

If he could hold off that final despair.

He let his head tip back against the lip of huge wrought-iron tub and exhaled, listening without really hearing the servants’ whispered words as they spoke above and around him. The clink of porcelain, a teacup on a saucer settled down next to the bed. The commands by the emperor’s own personal servant, a rung above the other two on the ladder.

Someone came and helped him to sit back up, washed his hair for him. Emil never opened his eyes even to see who it was. He murmured answers to the questions put to him.

He did enjoy the way they knew to scrub at his scalp, though, the gentleness that with the emperor was laced with humiliation, but with the servants was simple efficiency.

It didn’t matter.

As long as it wasn’t the emperor touching him, back already to bring him to the brink of death but refuse him the final peace, he didn't mind. As long as it was only a human servant, with warm hands and a beating heart. As long as he did not feel those chill, long fingers closing slowly around his throat, feel the cool breath against his jaw, the graze of those sharp fangs over the scars of dozens of wounds left to heal only with time.

As long as it was a human who touched him, at least he could feel human himself - if only for a moment or two.

He had not felt human often, these past two years. Instead, he wore a pendant on a leather cord like pampered dogs wore collars, the emperor’s vampire clan mark carved into it. It was a collar he could never - would never dare - remove. Emil remembered the first time it had been slid over his head, how cold the pendant had been, at first. He had been kneeling on the floor, arms bound behind him and tears still drying until his face felt like cracked sand. His father’s body had been still warm from the slaughter that had taken his family and left him the heir to lands that had been conquered.

Not that being heir meant much, when the emperor had seen him and demanded his life.

If only... if only it had been just to feed.

He had been lifted to his feet by the emperor’s seemingly effortless strength - oh, but he hadn’t been the emperor, then. Just a minor noble, someone whose ambitions had been laughed at by the wealthy humans who thought themselves above vampiric predations. But the vampire plague had taken the country faster than anyone thought possible. It had spread east and west into the neighboring lands, and when they had come to Emil’s home, there had been no stopping them.

Emil had been a prize, that’s all, a symbol that the soon-to-be emperor could take what he wanted whenever he wanted it. There had been protests, but each one had been quelled. Every riot violently suppressed, each battle won, the man who held him rising and rising in the world until finally, half of Europe knelt at his feet.

No one cared about the nobleman who had become blood supply and plaything, begging on command and baring his throat with only a crook of the emperor’s ringed finger. His schoolmates all probably assumed he was dead. It... it had been a kindness the emperor had done, to have him announced as having died with his family. It had been a mercy, that everyone believed he was buried back in Austria-Hungary with his parents and brothers.

Really... he was, in a way.

The Emil who had witnessed his father’s bloody death had died then and there, in the dining hall of their estate. He wasn’t sure who had risen from kneeling and allowed himself to be led in numb horror to the conqueror’s bed, but it hadn't been the same man who had gone to his knees in the first place.

He might have left his own mind, during the bath.

He was in the tub, staring at nothing. Then he blinked and found himself lying back on the bed in the fresh, clean bedding, head on a pillow, staring once again up into the gilded canopy above him. He wore a loose white shirt and dark pants. On a side table, that cup of tea had long since cooled and lost its steam.

Who had made it?

Where had they gone?

When had he gotten dressed, or been dressed, without noticing?

Moreover… how long had Emil been lost in wherever it was he often went, after the emperor’s visits?

It didn’t matter.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, the room briefly swimming around him. The emperor’s temporary accommodations in this strange place - some neutral ground between invader and invaded, where representatives met at tables to bicker and argue before the vampires slaughtered them all anyway - were the nicest available, but he would have been happier sleeping on the floor, if only he were allowed to sleep alone.

Or to sleep during the night.

But he had to stay awake. If the emperor wanted him again, he would be punished if found sleeping without permission again.

He couldn’t have said what inspired him to look over at the door. It was purely some thoughtless fancy, but he felt his breath catch in his throat when he realized… the door was cracked open. He could see a sliver of the hallway just beyond it.

Emil swallowed, his throat tightening nearly to breathlessness as he tried to understand. The door was never left unlocked, had never been open. All his prior escape attempts had been through windows he’d broken or jumping out of the emperor’s auto and running into the crowd. This could not be real.

It must be a trap, a test, the emperor toying with him. Another of his games. It... it must be.

Emil pushed himself fully upright, then. He slid to the edge of the bed and stood, leaning against one of the four posters for balance as his head swam the world spun. His heart lurched painfully in his chest, beating with labored throbs that made it hard to expand his lungs.

Somewhere in this cavernous place, his master would be smiling as he watched nations fall at his feet, as the radio sent updates on the battles in France where human men fell in waves, some rising as vampires to turn on those they had called friends - against their will, but when one’s vampire commands… the fledglings, as the emperor called them, obey.

There was no way for the humans to win, and yet they fought to the bitter end. Even brought some of their own vampires to the side, including the oldest one to survive the madness of life too long lived.

They had held longer, here, and now the Americans were involved, but...

He was distracting himself. If it was a trap, well, he would have to step into it and feel it close around his foot. But if it wasn't... could he live with himself if he ignored even the tiniest, slimmest chance?

One foot in front of the other, each step a little less difficult than the last. He went from the bed to the doorway, just barely brushing his fingers against the heavy wood. When he eased it open a little further, some part of him was braced for screaming rusted hinges to give him away, but… no. The hinges had been oiled recently. The door swung, smoothly silent, and Emil stared into a perfectly empty hallway.

Of course, it was nearly midnight.

The vampires would all be moving around, the servants had come by and done their work, and only the blood would be left, some of it tied down and some simply too frightened or lost in the haze of the vampire's venom to wander.

Emil was far past being frightened, by now. And the emperor did not always give him enough venom to leave his mind too emptied to act.

If he tried to run and was caught again, he had no doubt he would be killed for it this time. He had pushed his master’s patience too often, to its limits. And yet… was the way he lived now even living, or simply an impossibly slow death anyway?

Emil took one step.

Then another.

He shuddered, goosebumps on his arms and a chill down his spine. He felt dizzy for an entirely different reason as he stood in the hallway, alone, for the first time since his capture two years before. No servant, no minder, no guard, no emperor-master whispering vile promises in his ear with a hand curving around his waist. No vampire nearby licking their lips and threatening to turn him to mincemeat whenever his master grew bored and threw him to the pack to be devoured.

Gas lamps gave off a warm, flickering yellow light up and down the hallway. The emperor disliked the new electric lights, as he kept calling them, the same way he loathed the automobiles that nonetheless outpaced the horses. The rest of this building was wired for the electricity - but the emperor’s own quarters were still lit with gas.

It took only a few seconds to move from the door to the end of the hallway, but Emil felt like it took ages. Each second ticked painfully, violently by the second hand on a clock hanging on the wall. His heart seemed to pound in time, his hands shaking so hard that when he tried to open another door, it took him three tries to grip tight enough to pull.

This door’s hinges squeaked - just a little. Emil froze, heart in his throat, and stared with wide, white-rimmed eyes around him, waiting for the shouted demands to be still, for a hand to clamp down and drag him back to the bed, where the emperor would have him chained, just like he had at the beginning.

His ankle still wore scars from the metal cuff that had been closed just a little too tightly. It had taken months to earn its removal, months that must be earned again after every single escape attempt failed.

The wounds lingering along his throat beneath his bandage stung, reminding him of his place in this dance of war between nations - to lie in bed and wait to be wanted, to be consumed, once again. He had wanted to play soldier, as a young boy. He had never gotten the chance as a man.

No one came after him, and so Emil moved further, keeping to shadowy areas, shifting in and out of emptied rooms when people walked past, staying carefully out of sight. He found boxes and boxes of papers, telegrams and notes from the front. The further he went, the more what snatches of speech he overheard from those he was hiding from were no longer in a language he understood. At some point, his careful movements had taken him out of the emperor’s quarters and into the enemy’s.

This building was neutral ground, but only if you stayed to your own side of it. He caught snatches of French and English, but no longer any German.

Emil was trespassing, then, and it was only a matter of time before he was noticed. There was no escape here - taking advantage of that unlocked door had been a mistake. As high as his hopes had risen, they crashed far, far lower. He found himself shifting into a wardrobe, sitting heavily down and curling into a ball, hands over his face. He would be found, turned over to the emperor, chained back to the bed again. He would be made to regret ever trying, yet again, to find some life outside of the hell he had been forced into. The Allies would sneer at him for the blood doll he'd been forced into being, and would care no more for him than anyone else.

The rumors said the Allies had offered asylum and even amnesty in some cases to any of the newly-turned vampires who could find their way to them, the ones forced to fight against their will. But would they offer the same to a man tied to a bed for two years?

Emil might rather die than see the look in their eyes as they understood what he was, what he'd done.

He had to get out of here, or death would come in the end anyway. No matter how well behaved he was, the emperor would become bored with him. Worse... he might choose to Turn him, and then he would be subjected to the man’s commands burning through his vampiric blood for all eternity, or at least until he was no longer wanted and was disposed of anyway. There would be no choices for him. There could be no final rebellion, not unless he took his chance now and ran.

Two of the enemy came into the room and Emil went still. He could hear them talking, but all he knew in their language was hello, goodbye, please and thank you, useless things like that. He had no idea how to say, I am not a spy, please, I need help, what do you want to know about the emperor? I will tell you anything, just don’t give me back to him, please don’t give me back. Please don't torture me, I know nothing useful, I only don't want to be his any longer.

The two men spoke. Papers rustled. Eventually, though, the door opened and closed again. Emil waited, counting to one hundred three times inside his mind, and then he cracked open the wardrobe to peek out.

The men were gone.

One of them, though, had left his dress jacket draped over a chair.

Emil moved in a rush, ignoring the dizzy spin that still clung to the edges of his vision, pushing himself out and jerking the scratchy wool on. It fit almost perfectly, which felt like some small miracle of luck. His pants were all wrong, but it was dark at night and dim even with the lights. Maybe he could go unnoticed, if he was quick and looked busy.

He rapidly finger-combed his hair, trying to get it to be less mussed, to be more the English style he'd seen here and there.

He made it halfway down the hall before he realized, with something like embarrassment more than terror, that he was still barefoot. It was just that, losing so much blood, his feet mostly always felt cold and a little numb. He was never allowed shoes unless the emperor took him outside anyway. He hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t wearing them. Someone would eventually see that...

But maybe he could make it outside before they did.

If he could make it outside, he could disappear into the city streets, leave the soldier’s jacket somewhere to be found and maybe returned to him, and… he had no idea what would come after that.

Emil no longer cared.

He hadn’t felt this alive since the emperor had first taken his chin in hand and called him beautiful, right to his face, since the pendant had been slid over his head and settled cool against his skin to mark him as no longer fully a man.

He hesitated as he pushed up a window inside a dark room, feeling the breeze from outside come inside with a biting chill. One hand went up to graze fingertips along the leather cord, to find the carved pendant. He…

No.

If he wanted to even have a chance to survive recapture, he could never take off the emperor’s mark, no matter how he hated its eternal weight and how easy it was to forget it was even there.

“Oy, Nightley, is that you?” A voice spoke up. He knew none of the words, beyond you, and he turned to look, startled. He felt like a deer freezing in the glare of sudden light. The man in the doorway squinted at him. “You look rough, Lieutenant. Trouble sleeping?”

He recognized the lilt of the man’s voice as a question having been asked. Emil swallowed, and took a chance - he nodded, and hoped he hadn’t chosen the wrong response.

“Me too. Bloody hard as hell to sleep with fangs all over the place. Although I guess you have it easier than most, since you’re used to the damn things, aren’t you?”

He chanced another nod, a shrug of his shoulders. The man came closer and Emil’s heart dropped into his stomach, terror sending chills down his spine, his arms, even to the very tips of his fingers and toes. He would be known, in a moment. He would be handed back to the emperor, to face his rage, or he would be used as a bargaining chip in the negotiations and the emperor would simply find some other pretty creature to claim for his own.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Blackthorne’s sort of a prickly business. Oh, shaved off your moustache, did you? Odd choice, thought you liked the damn thing. Anyway, you want a smoke? I’m dying for one, myself, always helps me relax.” The man held out a cigarette.

Emil took it, trying to hide how badly his fingers trembled. He nearly dropped the damn thing. The man lit his own cigarette with a match, fire briefly flaring and then dying out, and lit Emil’s as well.

He chanced, keeping his voice raspy as he inhaled and exhaled the cloud out into the night air - he hadn’t had a smoke since the emperor claimed him, it made the blood too bitter for him to enjoy - a simple, slight, “Thank you.”

He knew how to say that in English, at least.

“Welcome, lieutenant. Bloody mess, this war with vampires business. Keeps a man from his bed at all hours, and I feel like I’m just… buildin’ a wall that’ll get kicked over as soon as it’s done.”

Emil made a sound. Was it a yes, or a no? Even he couldn’t tell. The man’s tone gave him nothing to go on. He was guessing and he had no faith in his luck. It wasn’t as if he’d had any before this.

The man chuckled, unbothered, and turned away. “Not in a mood for natterin’ tonight, are you? Well, I’ll leave you to yourself, then. Oh, Blackthorne was looking for you. Shall I tell him you’re in here?”

Emil heard the question-sound again, and he paused, staring outside, and then just nodded.

“Huh. You are a quiet one tonight. Well, fair enough.” The man, sounding maybe a little upset, disappeared back out into the hallway. He was gone, though, and Emil inhaled his cigarette so deeply the embers flared bright in the near-darkness. He listened to the man walking away and slowly followed, closing the door behind him. He counted to sixty, and then moved back across the room and eased the window open the rest of the way.

It was easy enough to shift one leg out, then the other, turning and moving slowly downward until his bare feet touched cold grass.

In the room he had just left, the door opened again. “I swear,” Said the voice of the man who had given him the cigarette, “I thought it was you I saw in here, Lieutenant. Oy, wait, look over there-... someone's gone out the window!"

Emil let go in a panic, turning to run and then coming to a sudden stop. There was a high fence all around the building, too high for him - weak from blood loss and the enforced idleness of captivity - to climb on his own.

There were shouts from the room behind him, and welcome adrenaline flooded his veins as he simply turned on his heel and ran like hell. There had to be a gate, a way out onto the streets, somewhere he could safely disappear to. Or even a stable, a place to hide long enough to try to think of his next move.

There had to be somewhere-

He was so busy looking over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being followed that he ran directly into a wall.

He landed with a thump on his back on the grass, the breath knocked out of him, mouth open like a fish on land until his lungs cooperated again and he could inhale with a wheeze, trying to climb to his feet, stumbling. A hand caught him by one arm, and he jerked back as hard as he could.

“Hey, Lieutenant, are you-”

He took off running again.

"Hey!"

"Catch him! He's got my dress jacket!"

"Who the hell is that? Is that one of the Germans?"

His head pounding, vision narrowed to a single panicked point, a tunnel of clarity surrounded by sheer, impenetrable darkness, Emil ran.

He couldn’t run for long. He adrenaline wouldn't hold out. He could already feel it threatening to flag, but there was a tree next to the fence, and if he could climb it, he could get over.

Then he would just have to be able to keep running.

If he could just run for long enough, maybe he could get far enough away that the emperor would not drag him back to hell.

#original writing #whump #captivity #escaped whumpee #runaway whumpee #vague military whump #referenced noncon #vampire #vampires #referenced blood drinking #some vague pet whump vibes #war whump #WWI #alt history

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