Disclaimer: I don't own the movie or book rights to "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: I hated how unresolved Speed's death was in the movie. Like he got bit and the train exploded and, yeah, I couldn't let it go. – This fic is told in Joshua Speed's point of view, but includes an entry at the beginning written by Abraham (in his journal) after Speed's death on the train.

Warnings: *Contains: angst, very mild sexual content, vampires, vampire turning, blood, adult language, adult content, deals with aspects of: depression, loss, loss of a loved one/friend/lover/established relationship, period appropriate language and attitudes.

Remake thyself (and the world will stay the same)

Chapter One

April, 14th, 1863

Today, the light in my life has guttered itself. For while I believe the war against the South and the forces of evil that supported it well and truly won, I know my heart has been dealt a blow for which there is no cure. Even now, I scarcely believe I can breathe without you. Speed, my dearest friend, forgive me for what my life had wrought upon yours. For you died in the service of not simply this country, but for goodness itself. Without you, the darkness could not have been held back. But forgive me more that even now I cannot make myself wish different. If I were a better man I would pray we'd never met. But I am not, and surely damned for it. For I cannot imagine a life on this earth where I had not met you. Our time together cost you your life. And still I am selfish. I knew you in every way. Man to man, employer to employee, friend to friend, one lover to another and it will take my own ending to strip that from me, if that is indeed what happens to a man when his death comes calling. Somehow I think it the opposite, I believe that we carry on who we are into the next life. So, if that is true, perhaps you are looking down on me even now. Smiling, heralding the small little curl that always started on the right of your face before reaching your eyes – the same one I became so intimately acquainted with over the years.

We searched for days through the wreckage. William had to be carried away for food and rest. But none would go near me. Perhaps it was my expression? An innate warning all beings can recognize – the rue of suffering, loss. I know not. But the fire must have taken you. Henry would not speak on the subject. I believe he felt ashamed of thinking you capable of deceit. Our ruse worked so well it fooled the most wily of our friends. I only hope he doesn't take it to heart. I told him you would not think badly on him believing the lie over the truth, regardless of how short that duration was.

When we first met that day in Springfield, you told me 'a friend in need is a friend of Speed.' Never I feel has that statement been more true. For I do need. Just as I did at the store, your friendship and guidance, your love, laugher and, of course, your wit. I miss-

I can speak no more of this. The hour is late and I am smudging ash and filth across the page even now. Yet the thought of farewell is incorrigible to me. Instead, allow me this. Even when we were apart we always ended our correspondence with 'forever yours.' So I will end this entry the same way and put my faith in God that we will meet again.

Forever yours,

Abraham.

It was ironic, he decided later. The truth of it. The penny paperbacks that rambled endlessly about the romanticism of the vampire bite. Their glossy covers painted macabre and deliciously intriguing, showing the exquisite agony of the fatal prostration. Of women – all luscious and beautiful - of course - sprawled in their murder's arms. Bare skin creamed and perfect, pining to be taken.

It was complete tosh, the lot of it.

Because when Adam's fangs sliced – vicious and growling into his skin - he knew nothing but hell itself. A poisonous lancing burn that shattered through him, synonymous with every word that had ever been birthed to describe infinite suffering.

For a long, endless moment nothing else existed. Nothing beyond the pain and the fangs worrying into butter-soft skin, slicking his own blood down the curl of his neck and across his chest. Then- Abraham. Their eyes met through the smoke and the ruined metal of the train-car roof. But there were no words. At least none that he could hear over the ringing in his ears. The man's mouth was open, expression pain-struck and twisted. Agonized, as if he was somehow in his place.

He took a small measure of comfort from that. Pain, like every other emotion they'd experienced together over the years had always been transmutable between them. Shared. To know that in spite of everything, that had not changed, gave him courage. Strength enough to suck in a feeble gasp when Adam let him drop, crumpling to the floor as he streaked away, faster than his fading eyes could follow.

The battle raged on.

Supernatural versus the natural.

Just as it always would.

Only this time, Abraham and William were on their own.

His hand reached out, stretching in front of him as he tried to will dying muscles to grasp at the edge of one of the boxes and haul himself up. His nails grated across the grainy wood – ineffective and mewling-weak – before he slumped into himself. Pressing his hand against his neck as his lifeblood trickled between his fingers.

But it was all a ruse. A stop-gap measure. Victory or defeat, he was lost regardless. His only salvation - that singular pin-prick of brightness still available to him - was that it would be quick. Either the bite would have him or the train would take him down with it.

It had too.

For the alternative was altogether too much to bear.

Only it didn't.

And even the train failed him.

Henry found him before sunrise, turned and animal in the wreckage. Pinned down by iron beams and twisted girders that his injuries and fledgling strength could not budge. It had taken the elder vampire's fangs, bared and growling inches from the throbbing bite of their sire to bring a measure of control back to him. To wrench back the madness, the anger, the blood-lust, if only for a moment, as he clung to Henry fiercely.

He recalled the strangest things of that early time. Snatches of a hundred different memories and impressions. The feeling of broken bones slowly snapping whole. The fading echo of his own blood lining his parched throat. The taste of Henry's relief and sorrow tainting the air like a twinned emotion when he'd appeared in his line of sight. The whisper of his name that aired out into the lightening sky. Baring his teeth in response to the snarling growl he'd let go of without thought.

But most of all, he remembered the smell of him. Of Abraham. Alive, salt-streaked and care-worn across Henry's skin as he leaned into the vampire's embrace and breathed it in with shaky pulls of air. Greedily cementing the scent of his dear friend in mind as well as body. Making him firmly his anchor, not only in his past life, but this new one as well.

It damned him, but the first taste of blood on his tongue was nirvana. Like the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden itself, it was nourishing and sweet and he quickly found himself lost to it. Guzzling greedily as Henry crooned praise from the wings. Keeping watch as the man they'd cornered – a murderer for hire with blood still drying on his hands – twitched under his hold.

And when he raised his head, he looked up with new eyes. Tongue chasing the cooling drops of red as he met Henry's through the darkness. Finding an animal sort of joy in it when he flung back his head and let his prey crumple at his feet. Hissing as strength and purpose flowed through him once again.

They didn't have to speak.

There was no need for it.

He understood now.

He knew.

That was what Adam's bite had taken away. Life. The very essence of it. It was only in taking it from others – those less deserving, of course - that they could live again.

At the time he rather thought Henry found a measure of solace in the fact that he would now go through life with a true friend close at hand. Someone who would not wither with the ages but rather flourish alongside him as the world turned and humanity pushed its limits ever higher.

Pity was, he hadn't exactly been of like mind at the time.

Abraham wasn't to know.

On that he'd insisted.

He didn't want to take the memory of a clean death away from him. Feeling it kinder to allow the man to believe in his purity of heart – or at least find a sort of repose in the quickness of it. In a way, that part was the easiest. Allowing the world to think he'd died on that train or even the battlefield – as he later learned his death had been reported. It was the part that came after that was the hardest.

The lie was kinder than the truth.

Even for his dear Abraham.

By the time he'd marshalled himself – honing his ungodly skills and achieving a measure of control over his bloodlust - almost a year had passed and his old life was dead and buried. He read his obituary in the papers and listened blankly to Henry tell him about the funeral. Too grisly fascinated to tell him to stop when his throat threatened to close up on him completely as Henry ducked his head, speaking quickly around the tearful jolt of dialogue shared by his children, his wife – Abraham.

Such a queer thing.

So, Abraham never knew. He never knew that the day he'd died had also been the day of his rebirth. Never knew that scant miles from him, his friend still lived. Still thought of him. Missed him. Dwelling on how things might have turned out different. If only. If only.

They had shared much over the years. Meaning, perhaps more to each other than two men in such times could ever hope to express. For while they had their wives and their children, they'd always had each other first. Blasphemy or not. Even Abraham had said as much. Their feelings for each other were the purest thing about them. And if that was a sin, then he would commit it a thousand times just for the cheek of it.

He was quite sure Henry didn't know the truth of it, what they had meant to each other. It had never been something they'd put to voice outside of each other. But he was sure the man suspected. Abraham had once told him that Henry had once said that their scents were so intertwined the vampire often had trouble telling them apart, even seconds after they'd gone. In fact, they rarely spoke of Abraham at all. Years passed. The First World War, then the second, waiting for Henry to say something. To wax about shared regrets and lost loves. But he never did. After a while, he rather thought the man respected him too much to chance an upset between them.

He felt ancient long before his time. Like the bite hadn't just stolen his death but his soul as well, his laughter and humor. Or maybe that was afterwards. When a bullet and fell thoughts took Abraham away from him - away from all of them that evening at Petersen House only a handful of years later.

The awful truth of it was he'd never regretted his decision to stay away more than when the papers on the morning of the fifteenth of April, 1865 stopped him cold.

He found himself halfway to the White House at least a dozen times in those first few days. Drawn by some innate, lingering human instinct to come together in times of upset. He'd even tried to justify it to himself. Surely Mary could do with a familiar face? Surely she might have need of him?

But he always stopped himself before he made it to the door.

That life was behind him now, more so now than it had ever been.

For with Abraham gone, the truth was he had no reason to stay.

In the end, he allowed Henry to coax him into traveling to the Orient and Latin America. Chasing down rouge covens and fleeing vampire nationals from the southern states trying to setting down new roots abroad. It was a distraction. He knew it was. But he allowed himself to be drawn into it all the same.

They both needed time.

Time to heal.

Time to forget.

Time to understand what their lives were without Abraham Lincoln alive and well. Flashing that boyish smile and finding hope, even in the darkest of places. Finding their footing in a world that was rapidly changing and an enemy that was changing almost as quickly.

It was a very long time before either of them stepped foot on American soil again.

A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – There will be one more chapter, stay tuned.