Chapter Text
Jonathan has known hunger, far before he was Jonathan, far before he was called “vampire.” He has hungered for all of his unlife, watching from the shadows those creatures of light and blood with an envy man could never conceive of.
When the things that called themselves humans found him, they cut him again and again, and he did not bleed. Jonathan’s jealousy distorted into rage, and he drank his fill of them. Neck, wrist, he drank from the scarlet flood like a fountain before these parts even had names. This first taste of blood was sweet and plentiful, and for a little while, the hunger was sated. It would not be so for long.
After many centuries, Jonathan did not know how many he had devoured, and he did not care.
Eventually, he met Georgina Barker. Jonathan stalked her idly, following the pulse of warm life all the way to the river she liked to drink in the heat by (gloating, a child of the sun) until he was upon her.
Georgina was not afraid. She smiled at him even when he revealed what he was. She loved him, clothed him, and finally named him. She christened him Jonathan, God has given. The utter perversion of it twisted his mouth into something unusual—
A smile.
Georgina laughed, and the creature of the night knew love.
Jonathan learned the customs by which his wife lived, learned to speak, learned to stomach that awful stuff she called tea. Jonathan engaged politely with society, and did not bite her family.
But Jonathan was too much what he was to understand when his Georgie aged. He had not even considered how sickeningly mortal she was, so consumed in his newborn emotion he was. When he realized that her life would bleed away the same as those he devoured, he had been frantic. He searched for a cure, a way to defeat death. It was not possible, and so he did not find one.
And then Georgina died, and centuries passed.
Jonathan knows hunger always, but now he hungers for more than just blood. He has slipped too far into humanity’s eye to ever truly leave, and he does not desire to.