Ich Bin Johann Albach
For @whumptober2021 Days 4 and 17: Do You Trust Me / Dread. Also, special thanks to @boxboysandotherwhump for helping me with the German here!
CW: War whump, Side character death and referenced war deaths, vampire whumpee, whumpee turned caretaker, use of venom as opiate, taken captive
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1918, the Western Front of World War I
The gray-green fog rolls through No Man’s Land, thick and soupy, the breeze blowing inexorably towards the trenches where the soldiers huddle, gas masks on, praying that the masks will be enough. Living medics and dog handlers curl around their canine partners, who wear their own gas masks, whining softly at the tension they feel from the men around them, unable to pant.
The silence weighs heavier than the artillery barrage had an hour before, it feels louder than the gunfire just after the shells stopped falling. The men wait, their own breathing audible through the mask, their blood rushing in their ears, for the gas to dissipate.
While they wait, the undead army does their own darker work.
In the fog, these phantoms move with purpose. A hint of the white armbands they wear might show through here and there, but they are little more than shadows. Some of them have the cross marking them as medics, others have a simple square to mark them as supply and logistics. Every single one, though, has the glaringly obvious, bold V.
They find men who are choking, drowning in their own lungs, and decide who will live and who will die here, in the field of battle. Those whose lungs have a certain thick rattle are dispatched quickly, with mercy - those whose lungs may recover are carried off the field. They give the men water, take their deathbed words to send back to those who love them and have been waiting for them to come home.
Tristan moves quickly, just another vampire in the pack of those enlisted by force, offered a chance at being seen as something akin to human if they serve honorably until the war is done.
The gas is slowly settling around him, the wind blowing it away, and the fog thins. He doesn’t have to breathe and so the poison can’t get inside him to do its damage. Mostly it just stings his tongue, makes it feel slightly numbed. He can see the skeletal stumps of trees, and steps carefully over bodies of those who have already gone still.
It feels like an awful waste of what was vibrant, beautiful life.
“Survivor!” An undead medic calls, their voice filtering thinly, barely audible. Tristan pauses, listens until he hears a second voice call a confirmation and knows someone is coming to help. Then he turns and keeps moving.
The quiet is soothing, after the noise that rattles the vampire boy apart. His hands are still shaking as he checks body after body for a pulse and finds none. The roar of the shells still rings in his ears, and the methodical nature of his work is all that keeps him, he thinks, from simply shaking to pieces.
He loses track of where he is in the battlefield after a while, so intent on checking the dead that he stops noticing which side of the battle the corpses he touches are on. It begins to rain, soaking into his wool uniform slowly, making it heavy and awkward. His hair sticks to the nape of his neck and against his forehead, and he has to shake it out of his eyes, over and over again.
Thank God, he thinks, for the rain - it washes the last of the gas away, and No Man’s Land clears into the strange unearthly hellscape he’s used to. He’s checking yet another dead man when he hears a scraping sound that makes him jump.
He looks up, blinking rapidly against the raindrops, and then goes very, very still.
He’s on the German side of the battlefield, and there’s a German soldier in a gas mask looking right at him, rifle raised.