Title: Deviations
Fandom: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Movieverse)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 500
Content notes: Vampirism.
Author notes: For the fan_flashworks The Other Side challenge.
Summary: Henry wasn't used to it, even after three hundred years.



Henry wasn't used to it, even after three hundred years.

Oh, the scenery was so often the same -- he recognized the particular shade of gloom present in almost every alley or tight, twisted crook -- and the scent of sweat and grime, the whiff of cheap booze eking out from a man's pores, were all familiar to him, or nearly. But the first taste; the gradual unpeeling; the drag and drip: these were once again new with every life he took.

It drove him half-mad. It all but consumed him, richly, exquisitely, and so it wasn't something he generally cared to afford less than full concentration, let alone offer up the sort of thought necessary to will himself invisible.

And now, Abe. Of course it was Abe.

Hell, but Henry knew how he must have looked. Upon seeing a vampire at his victim's throat, any normal sort of person would recoil in the same sharp, elemental way that a fieldmouse fled a hawk. But Abe wasn't normal. Indeed, by any reckoning, he was phenomenally singular: Henry had molded him as such.

So here was Henry, bloody, disheveled, trembling with the rush of having fed. Exposed and wretched, because perhaps Abe would never have been ready to know the truth of Henry's nature, and even so, it was better to disclose than be discovered. And here was Abe, quaking as he threw that damned, wonderful axe in a neat arc towards Henry's head. Henry steeled himself, cried for Abe to stand down, but Abe was fast and Henry could not let himself harm his protege.

A sudden awareness: Abe had done it. Barts's stink -- along with, oddly, something earthen, equine -- still lingered on Abe's hands, but it was fading, and surely it wouldn't be long before Abe left Henry for good. Henry felt a pang of dread, rapier-thin and swift enough to slice a clean line through his guts at the thought: solitude, immense and irreconcilable.

Abe spat, "You, a vampire? How can it be?"

"How?" Henry repeated. Now Abe had him pinned to the ground, held tight like a beast. The coat of silver on the axe's blade was close enough to set his hair on end. Every fibre of him called out to fight back, or simply flee, but still he huffed, "Do you really want to know? Shall I start at the beginning, when I was a hunter, like you-- or when Adam murdered my wife and left me... Not for dead, but transformed?"

Curiosity was a capable counterpoint. Abe growled, "Go on," and allowed Henry to sit up.

The damp of the paving stones seeped into Henry's clothes, and any remaining warmth from his kill escaped him. It was only a matter of minutes before he'd recounted the depth of his own damnable failure. The first mistake of what would become legion.

As Abe listened, the hatred in his eyes melted into disappointment. That too was something Henry hadn't got the hang of--

Even after three hundred years.