Disclaimer: Moonlight is not mine. Otto von Bismarck is not mine.
This was written at the request of Kaz-za-15, who wanted more Mick/Josef. Unbeta-ed, so any mistakes in spelling should be pointed out.
Iron and Blood
All I have ever known is war. I was born in Germany in 1599 as Karl Josef Ackermann. My father was a poor farmer, as was his father, and his father's father. At the age of nineteen I was sent to war. What is war but a clash of forces? One does not need to know which forces, or why. I certainly did not. I was terrified and thrilled at the same time. War makes many men into heroes, but it also makes many into corpses.
It's never written down in the history books, but the battlefield in a breeding ground for vampires. A vampire is not easily killed, is violent without limits, and there is blood everywhere. When one is killed, they do not have to be commemorated. This is where I was turned, by my commanding officer, into a monster, a corpse. I would not get to be a hero. But I would live.
When the war was over, I went home. The war had been thirty years, but I had not aged a day since I was twenty six. This provoked another war, one between my small little village, where I had been loved, and me. I was driven out. I was lucky; most vampires return home only to be decapitated. But being driven out of my village had driven me out of my mind. And here was another war, in my mind as reality clashed with fantasy. Vampires were a myth that mothers told to keep their children from leaving the house at night. Yet, here I was, the embodiment of the nightmares. I was supposed to grown up and become a farmer, marry some girl, another farmer's daughter, and together we would have six or seven cute little nose pickers who'd all become farmers and marry other farmers. Instead, I was thrown out of my village with torches and pitchforks. It's a wonder I survived that war at all.
I spent decades wandering, never staying anywhere too long. I suppose my travels lead my to become the witty, educated cosmopolitan I am today. I learned to read and write, and speak fluently in French, English, Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Italian. I gained the wisdom of the ages in all areas. I narrowly escaped the mass purge of vampires in France in the late 1700s, and went to America. I met Coraline in New York, 1862. There were a lot of vampires there who'd left Europe around 1848. I saw the Eiffel Tower go up, President Lincoln get shot, countless wars that I did my best to stay out of. Things you wouldn't believe.
I'd lived as a young man for four centuries, and I can say with total confidence that every single generation believes that they live in a time of great change and upheaval. And they are all correct. The world is always changing, always reforming itself. But, it is also always battling with itself. All I have known is cruelty and brutality. All I have learned is how to make your way up, on the backs of others.
But you are different. You live to help others. You are a better man than most, and a far better man than I. Mick, you have proved to me that there is kindness and caring and compassion in this world of iron and blood. You have proved to me that there can be love, and it does not have to end in tragedy.
Josef shook his head.
"Love notes. Compassion and caring." He thought to himself, tearing the paper in half. "You're getting soft, Kostan."