Sin & Salvation

Summary:

In 1994, William Eisen is in his last year at Silas University. Married to his college sweetheart, with a baby on the way, the future looks bright... Then the girls start disappearing. Twenty years later, and Will returns to Silas a changed man. This time he isn't looking for missing girls; he's the one taking them.

Notes:

Inspired by a Tumblr post suggesting that Kirsch's father was called Will, and he called him Wilson as a joke. This fic will basically tell the story of how and why Will was turned - while also retelling season 1 from his perspective, as he struggles between his loyalty to Mother, and to his son.

Chapter 1

Toxic smoke burns at lungs that are long past the point of needing clean air. Will holds the smoke in for longer than he needs to, hoping to feel something other than the ache of despair deep in his chest. Will hates this place with a passion. He's had close to twenty years to prepare himself for coming back though. He's known this day was coming for a long time.

Trudging up the stairs of the main administration building, he makes his way inside. The corridors are all too familiar. He doesn't have to think about where his feet are taking him, and so his mind begins to wander. He thinks about one of the last times he walked these halls. Things were different then. Simpler.

He stops at the receptionist's desk, right outside the office of the Dean of students. The plump woman sitting at the desk peers at him from behind thick, bifocal lenses. The extreme prescription of the glass leaves her eyes looking engorged - Like they're a second away from popping out of her head.

Her skin is a sallow yellowy colour, a result of a twenty a day habit. The smell of stale tobacco clings to her clothing, assaulting Will's delicate senses. "Gutten tag, Herr Eisen." She greets him in German, though her English is fluent (if a little broken).
"It's Luce now." Will corrects her, not managing to keep the snarl out of his voice.

"Of course it is." The ailing receptionist gives him a knowing smile. With her knitted cardigan and tightly permed hair, she looks like a harmless grandmother. Will knows all too well that appearances can be deceiving, especially at Silas University. "It is nice to have you back, Herr Luce."

"Is mother in?" Will demands, making no attempt to hide his disdain for the frog-like receptionist. Without waiting for an answer, he turns and pushes open the ornate double doors that lead in to the office.
He stops in his tracks as he spots the Dean standing in front of the stain glassed window. She's in the middle of lecturing another of her children when Will walks in. She scowls at the interruption. Her features soon smooth back out as she realizes just who is at the door.

To the outside world, the Dean of Students is an imposing woman in her early forties. Towering over most people at 6' 2", she shares the same raven colored hair as Will. Her eyes are a piercing bottle green color, and seem capable of staring in to a person's very soul. She is a power dresser. Commanding respect and authority whether she's wearing a pantsuit or a cocktail dress. Her skin is as smooth and pale as alabaster.

To her 'children', Lilita Morgan is the ancient creature that they owe their after-lives too. A vampire older than Christendom, she has stalked the earth for many a millenia.
"William, my dearest!" She opens her arms expectantly. Will does his duty as a good son and greets her with a warm embrace. He can feel his 'sister' staring at him the whole time.

"Millarca." He greets her with the name he first met her by, though it is a pseudonym of her given name.
"William." Carmilla returns his greeting in the same clipped tone. She seems just as eager to be back at Silas as Will does.
Of all mother's children, Will and Carmilla are her favorites. Will has no idea why someone as petulant as Carmilla could hold that coveted title. It probably has something to do with her age. At 335, she is mother's oldest surviving child. None of them like to dwell on thoughts of just what happened to the ones turned before her.

At 42, William is her youngest child. Just like in human families, this status comes with its perks. It earns him more leniency and indulgence than his other brothers and sisters. Not that he needs it, however. Will is the perfect doting son.
"Carmilla, we're done here. You may leave. As we discussed, I'll have your new room assignment within a few days." Lilita Morgan speaks in a scholarly English accent.

It's the type seldom heard in modern England anymore. It is not her original accent. The ancient vampire is older than many of today's existing civilizations. The quaint Cambridge accent is leftover from a bygone error. From when the British Empire had expanded out across the globe.

"Yes, Mother." Carmilla keeps her gaze low to the ground as she rises to her feet. Will always finds it amusing to see his, usually feisty, sister so demure in front of their mother. In his eyes, Carmilla is all bark and no bite. In front of mother, she doesn't even have her bark.
"Buh-bye, Kitten." Will gives her a patronizing wave as she goes, enjoying the way she glares at him for using the nickname she hates so much. Usually, she'd be trying to rip his head off for it.

She wouldn't dare so much as raise her voice at him in front of Mother though.
"William." She chides him, though there's no real substance to it. "Leave your sister be. We have more important matters to attend to. Come, sit." she waves him over to one of the plush wing-back chairs sitting in front of her desk. Instead of taking her own chair behind the desk, she comes around and sits beside Will.

She takes his hands in hers, looking every bit the doting mother as she admires her boy. "It must be quite hard for you, this being your first time back at Silas in twenty years." It wouldn't be his last. Mother and her children had been gracing Silas University every twenty years, like clockwork. They would carry on doing so as long as it was necessary.

"Not really." Will shrugs, hoping to disguise the tightness in his shoulders. "My old life is in the past. I'm grateful to be here, with you, Mother." The answer pleases the narcissistic vampire. She gives his hands a squeeze before releasing them.
"That's good. I have a favor to ask of you, my boy. This is the room I would like you to take up this year." She reaches back to pick up a piece of paper from her desk, handing it over to Will while watching for his reaction. She doesn't have to wait long to get it.

"This is in the Zeta house?" He frowns down at the address written on the page. He would do anything to please Mother, but Will failed to see how pledging as a Zeta would achieve anything. "I'm not sure I'd pass the initiation test... I have too many brain cells."
"Are you questioning me, William?" For the briefest instant, Mother's expression contorts, showing her true colors. The monster lurking just beneath the surface disappears as soon as Will starts back peddling.

"Of course not, Mother. You know best." Satisfied by his answer, Mother nods in approval. She leans in to press a solitary kiss to his cheek, before dismissing him the same way she had Carmilla.
Will drags his feet on the way over to the Zeta Omega Mu house. It's all the way across the other side of campus, so he has time to think. Once again, he finds his memories haunting him as he crosses the campus. He comes to an abrupt stop in front of the building that houses the Summer Society. His heart aches just looking at it.

November 20th, 1994

"Will!" Lucy shrieked at him as he finished climbing in through her open window. She was only half dressed, and moved to tug on her bathrobe. Will just chuckled. It wasn't like he hadn't memorized her body in exquisite detail in the three years they had been dating.
At almost six foot, she and Will were the exact same height. That was where the similarities ended though. Long blonde hair trailed down her back in a loose ponytail, and she had the toned physique of the champion swimmer she was. Will couldn't even swim. Lucy had offered to teach him many a time, but he'd always made up some excuse.

"What? Is Priscilla, Queen of the Damned, here?" He looked around the dorm room that Lucy shared with her enigmatic room mate. Will had no idea why the third year philosophy student had even pledged to the Summer Society.
"Will." Lucy chided. She was President of the society, and the kind of person who could find the good in anyone; even her neurotic room mate. "Please don't call her that. Millarca isn't that bad."

"Riiiight..." Will rolled his eyes and dropped on to Lucy's bed, tugging her down on to his lap. She didn't object.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she kissed him long and slow. "Hmm, and what did I do to deserve that?" Will's grin stretched right across his face as the young couple pulled apart.
"Maybe I just felt like kissing my husband..." Said Lucy, sharing the same goofy grin. Will could go to his grave a happy man if her smile was the last thing he ever saw.

"Your husband's here? Shit..." Will made a show of frantically looking around, earning himself a slug in the arm.
"Very funny, Mr Eisen." Lucy scorned. She was wearing the playful smile that had first captured Will's attention in their freshman year.
"I thought so too, Mrs Eisen." Teased Will. He could still hardly believe that she had agreed to his proposal over summer. They'd eloped and married within a week of Will asking her to be his wife. Will had known from their first date that he would marry Lucy Abendroth.

His young wife bit nervously down on her lip as she shifted off his lap to sit beside him. "What is it? What's wrong?" Will had known her long enough to recognize every micro expression that graced her soft features. Something was worrying her. "Is it Carla? Have you heard anything?"
Carla had been Lucy's room mate from freshman year, right up to their final year. She'd gone missing in the first month of being back at Silas.

Carmilla had taken her place within a matter of days of the administration announcing she had quit. Neither Lucy, nor her Summer sisters, believed Carla would just up and walk out in the middle of the night though. They had been trying to get to the bottom of her disappearance. Though, it had been months now and they were still no closer to finding out the truth.

"No. It's nothing like that. We still haven't heard from her." Lucy answered. She tried to reassure him by taking his hands in hers, but that only served to make him worry more.
"What's wrong, Luce?"
"Nothing's wrong... at least, I hope not." Lucy said, starting to ramble. Her striking, pale, blue eyes dropped to their joined hands as she bit down on her lip again. "I have an early Christmas present for you."

"Really? Christmas is a like month away-"
Will stopped talking as Lucy moved his hand, placing it over her stomach. In that single instant, the world seemed to shrink. Everything beyond the two of them ceased to exist. No, scratch that. There was nothing beyond the three of them.

"Hey! Creep much?" Will is roused from his memories as a redhead shouts at him from the porch of the Summer Society. She storms up to him, hands on her hips as she waits for an answer. The redhead must be some kind of modern day Amazonian, as she towers over him.
"Just admiring the view." Will leers. He isn't the man he used to be. Mother saw to that.

He has a role to play here at Silas. If Mother wants him to be a Zeta, then he might as well start as he means to go on. "How about it, Babe?"
"Gross." The amazonian rolls her eyes at him and stomps off back towards the house. Will only lingers for a minute longer; saying goodbye to his old life for good.

He expects his Zeta room mate to be someone of interest to Mother. She uses her children to gain the trust of those she either wants to turn, use, or sacrifice. Will has no idea what his mother would want with a first year Zeta.

Things become a lot clearer when he enters the room he will be calling home for the duration of the academic year. "Hey Bro!" The boy, and he is a boy, greets him with a high five. Will leaves him hanging. He's too stunned to do anything but gape at the overgrown man-child standing before him.

Even if his piercing blue eyes aren't a give away in of themselves, then the scent of his blood is. There's no denying it. Will feels his mouth go dry, and his mind blank.
"'Sup, Bro? I'm Kirsch." The freshman tries offering his hand out this time. Unfazed by Will's odd behavior towards him, his goofy grin hasn't budged from his face. He's a trusting kind of soul. Will can see it in his eyes; in her eyes.

November 24th, 1994

"I still can't believe I'm going to be a daddy." Will grinned, while rubbing his hand over Luce's stomach. It was still as flat and toned as he'd always known it to be; but now there was a tiny life growing inside of it. Will hadn't been able to keep his hands off his wife since she'd told him the news. "I'm going to have a son."

"Or a daughter." Luce pointed out. The two of them were lying curled up on her bed, with Lucy leaning back against Will's chest. "It might be a girl." It was still too early to tell the sex of the child, though a dating scan had revealed Lucy was already eight weeks gone. The baby was due late July. Will had teased her about timing it right for graduation.

"Nah." Will shook his head, still running his hand over her stomach. "It's a boy. I can tell."
"William Eisen, I am not one of your father's heifers! You can't just rub my belly and tell me I'm having a boy!"
"Sure I can." He teased, barely dodging his head out of the way to avoid the cushion Luce launched at him.

The Eisen family had been breeding and raising cattle for generations. Will had delivered his first calf at the tender age of nine. "Fine. Maybe I'm just secretly hoping that it's a boy. I kind of like the idea of having a little William running around... If it's a girl, she'll just have to be Wilhelmina. What do you think?"

"I think that you are having absolutely no say in what this baby gets named." Lucy laughed at him, her soft giggles like music to his ears. He leaned in to kiss the side of her cheek, still grinning down at her stomach.
"Okay, okay, we'll compromise then...how about Wilson?"

"Dude? You okay?" Wilson Kirsch's friendly smile starts to waver as his new room mate carries on staring blankly at him. His mother always taught him to give people the benefit of the doubt, but the bro he'd been roomed with was a little on the weird side.
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm good, Bro. I was at a raging party last night, I'm still pretty out of it. Name's Will." He takes Kirsch's hand, trying not to look him in the eye.
"Party man, huh? This year is going to be suh-weet, Dude!" The teenager grins, offering him another high five, followed by a fist bump.

Will plays along, acting the part of devoted Zeta. He keeps his gaze low as he moves across to the side of the room that he presumes is his. His things have already been dropped off, with his neatly packed suitcases sitting atop his bed. For one fleeting moment of madness, Will considers picking up his cases and just taking off. Mother would find him of course, but at least he'll have a head-start.

It's too painful to be in this room, around this boy. His boy. Kirsch is a living reminder of everything that was so cruelly stolen from him some twenty years ago. Stolen by the likes of Mother, and Carmilla – his bitch of a sister. It's no accident that Mother wants him to room here. She owns Will. Has done since the day he surrendered himself to her. He did it to protect Luce; to save their unborn child.

Mother is making it clear where his loyalties should lie. She's telling him – in her own twisted way – that there are still those she can use against him, should he forget which side he's on.