I got into Being Human a week ago (mainly because of Mark Pellegrino), and in all complete honesty, Bishop/Aidan was the first thing I shipped. I really hate that there are so few stories for it.
So today in my English class we were watching The Crucible, which is about the Salem Witch Trials, and because of Bishopsorphan's headcanon that Bishop was there during the Trials (I'm not sure if that's a canon detail yet because I'm only halfway through Season 2), I started getting ideas. So yeah, most of this is a strictly Bishop thing, and then there's a second part that isn't quite an epilogue which has the Bishop/Aidan stuff. It's kind of hard to describe the structure of this story. But either way I hope you enjoy it and maybe also go watch The Crucible because it's very good.
Bishop smiles the warmest when he is the most upset.
-o-
Salem, Massachusetts - April 1692
It is extremely unlucky that the mass paranoia and confusion of the Salem Witch Trials occurs when he happens to be visiting. It is even more unlucky that he ends up with a noose around his neck along with all the others.
He's in town because three years of asking and reading and traveling have told him that his granddaughter lives in Salem. Bishop's maker is resting deep underground, and he has yet to gather a clan—so he is lonely. A family member left over from what he left in England over a hundred years ago was a light in a dark place, the only thing he looked forward to in a long time.
Bridget Bishop. He thinks she's beautiful the first time he sees her, and it's all he can do not to tell her exactly who he is and envelop her in a hug. Instead, he merely tells her his first name—James. She is soon to be married to a very well-liked man, and James is happy for her. His steadily growing closeness to her makes her fiancé and father jealous, but he can't bring himself to care.
Barely five months pass—five months of James settling in, making a home for himself near Bridget, feigning a Puritan lifestyle and limiting his kills to the very old and the neighbors' animals as well as those in the forest—before the first accusation of witchcraft is thrown. However, James Bishop knows witches, and there are none in Salem. Everyone around him is being driven to panic in their fear of Satan's influence, but Satan has far better things to do than take over Salem, Bishop knows. Satan isn't even the cause of witches in the first place—it's individual demons who do that. But of course James cannot tell anyone this, nor can he do anything but stay in his home and wait for the panic to just go away.
The panic hits James full-force when Bridget is accused under the pretenses of sending her spirit to make a man stab himself. When she is taken away to the court, James smiles and tells her everything will be fine.
For her, anyway. And everything is fine once James stands up in the court and announces,
"Bridget Bishop cannot possibly be a witch. I know because I am the real witch—I hexed Charles Williams to stab himself."
It's the only way to keep her safe. She cries for him while everyone else, especially her father and soon-to-be husband, shouts about how they knew it all along, how a man who wouldn't give his surname was surely not to be trusted.
When that loop of rope is pushed over James's head and tightened around his neck, he smiles as though none of it is happening. The smile that stretches over his lips belongs on a man relaxing at home with a well-cooked meal or someone about to get married. James Bishop smiles because he fully expects to die and refuses to believe it. And he doesn't want the last thing Bridget sees of him to be his face contorted in fear.
There's pressure on his back and suddenly nothing under his feet—but he's still aware. He can still see. Everyone is cheering in relief (or victory?), and he can still hear it. In the next moment he realizes that his spinal cord was not snapped—his vampire body is too strong to be broken that easily, it seems. But he can't be blamed for not knowing. No one ever tried to kill him before, after all.
Still hanging there, James raises his head and looks up at them all with a twisted, satisfied grin and black eyes, getting a huge kick out of their screams of horror. As easily as if it were string, he pulls the noose away and takes merely a fraction of a second to get up behind the executioner and sink his teeth into his neck while everyone screams louder. He can hear women and children crying amongst it all, and it's music to his ears as he takes the first few gulps of fresh, young, human blood that he's had in months. Bridget is safe and he can't be in Salem any longer after this, anyway, so he doesn't see any reason to abstain.
It's no question that Bishop flees soon after. He certainly can't massacre the whole town, especially not without any help. The only thing he really resents as he treks all the way to Boston is that he can never visit Bridget again, for she believes he is a monster.
And yet again, Bishop is completely alone. He smiles.
When Bishop is happy, his first instinct it not to smile—instead, his face remains blank in shock for at least the first few moments Because he's so unused to being genuinely happy that he never believes it when it happens.
Sadistic happiness doesn't count because it's inhumane. Bloodlust doesn't count either. Polite smiles are necessary and entirely voluntary. Real happiness, at this point, seems like it doesn't even exist anymore. Or perhaps it's just not possible for vampires.
-o-
Twice in the next hundred years, Bishop grows fond of a human for a short time—one of them a woman, the other a man. Neither lasts long. Both of them fade from Bishop's heart after a few years. Life (or the afterlife, if you want to get technical) for him is traveling and hiding and feeding with only a few other vampires found along the way. It's boring and lonely.
When Thomas Paine, one of the vampires he's met, publishes Common Sense, Bishop can see what's coming. He rolls up the pamphlet with a face of satisfaction and waits for the war to begin. Except he doesn't just wait—he plans. He finds the other vampires in the area and tells them he wants to bring the clan together without Hegeman. They begin recruiting.
Bishop is probably more picky than anyone else. He really shouldn't be, as beggars can't be choosers. But Bishop is selfish, and he fears that he deserves the worst so he holds out for the best.
When he sees Aidan Waite on the battlefield of the Revolution for the first time, Bishop stares for an unhealthily long time. He's perfect. Bishop chooses him in a heartbeat—or what would be one if his heart could still beat. It takes at least a week for Bishop to let himself smile at the man he turns and plans to build a world with.
And then Aidan really begins to hate him; he spews profanities at him and runs off to his family, and Bishop tries to hold him back, fights back—but then he just stands there and takes it. He smiles when he tells Aidan he won't last more than five months trying to be normal.
Bishop is right, it turns out, but mainly because he takes action and kills Aidan's family himself. Aidan has no choice but to return and stay by his side now. This time, it's a month before Bishop really smiles again.
The next two-hundred years or so are fluctuating between he and Aidan being as close as soulmates can ever be and Aidan's rebellious nature taking over. Bishop is always either at his happiest or at his loneliest.
Whenever he wakes up and finds himself wrapped up with Aidan in bloodied sheets, he revels in the feeling for a solid five minutes before smiling and pushing his face closer into Aidan's neck. And every time Aidan pushes him away, Bishop does everything he can to pull him back—even if it means killing a girl the man's grown fond of or any innocent people. As many innocent people as it takes. And the smile he gives him practically begs.
Aidan renounces him for good and he smiles.
Aidan returns (on conditions), and Bishop's expression is set for a long time. He's not sure he knows how to smile anymore.
Until that night, when he thinks he's going to die, and the smile comes easy. He finally has Aidan by his side as he carries out his plan with the Elders, but he doesn't smile until Aidan proves, even now, to be more faithful to that wolf he's living with and the principal of rebellion than to him.
Bishop is alone.
Bishop smiles.
Thoughts of having Aidan to himself again are long-lost memories, but he clings to them. Bishop loves Aidan with all that he has, and sometimes love is tough. Sometimes you need to stab the one you love in the lung to get him weak, get him to return to you and be loyal again.
Or perhaps he does that because he just needs to get Aidan angrier for what he has planned.
When Bishop plans the fight, he doesn't do so with the intention to kill Aidan. He does it with the intention that Aidan will kill him.
When Aidan follows through, Bishop spends the last second of his life caressing his face. And for a flash of a moment during that last second, he smiles.
I actually did notice that in the show, Bishop smiles when he's saying how he's alone and whenever he says anything else self-deprecating. So I figured he had this complex of refusing to believe that he's sad or angry or anything and just trying to cover it up by looking like he's happy or he doesn't care. God, I love Bishop. So many feels for him.
Now that you've read this, I know you've got something to say about it, so please do so in the reviews because I really want feedback. Seriously.