Owen: “I'd kill for you. Please, let me kill them for you.”
Do you all see my vision? No? Well, I'm going to explain it anyway.
I don't think Owen, after being turned into this immortal creature that is suddenly stronger, healthier, faster, and more powerful than he has ever been, would just go, “Oh, Louis says I shouldn't kill people, so I guess I'll be a good little vampire.” Especially if we're assuming these people haven't even tried to hurt Louis. (They were just waiting for the right opportunity and it never came or they were stopped or something.)
Because when you become a vampire, you die. And then you wake up with bloodlust.
Okay, cutting here to geek about my thought process on what actually happens when someone gets turned, because I have approximately twelve different ideas about vampire physiology, but I really love what I've settled on for Nobody Has To Understand.
In my version, I think you have to die to become a creature of the night. There is a very brief period during the turning where the vampire's blood can force its way through the barely-dead human body and begin the transformation. At that point, it's essentially a gamble.
If the human's body reject the vampiric blood, they die.
Congratulations. The vampire just got a meal.
If their body accepts it, they wake up as a fledgling.
Congratulations. The vampire got a meal and a fledgling.
And I imagine that first awakening is fucking horrible.
The fledgling wakes up with nothing but vampiric blood running through their system. Their body is cold, unnaturally cold, and suddenly every single one of their senses is sharper than they have ever experienced. Every sound is too loud. Every smell is overwhelming. Every movement catches their attention. Their own heartbeat is gone, and that absence is probably terrifying in itself.
And underneath all of that is the hunger.
It's an all-consuming, animalistic need for blood that they don't yet know how to control. And the longer they ignore it, the worse it gets.
They don't necessarily become violent immediately. I actually really like the idea that the first stage is mostly confusion. They're dead, they're cold, everything hurts, everything is too loud, and they have no idea what is happening to them. They're trying to understand why they're starving when they literally just ate, why they can't feel their heartbeat, why the person standing beside them suddenly smells so fucking good, why can they hear multiple heartbeats?
But circumstances also matter.
If that fledgling wakes up somewhere isolated, with nobody around? Maybe they have a chance to learn. Maybe someone can restrain them, talk them through it, teach them how to control the hunger.
But if they wake up in the middle of a crowded room full of humans?
There's blood everywhere.
And suddenly that overwhelming hunger has a very obvious solution.
That's where the feralness can come in.
Which is why I really, really love the interpretation of Owen as a monster in fics. Not a misunderstood little guy who is secretly harmless, but an actual creature that is capable of being terrifying, and is kind anyway.
Because I don't think Louis keeping Owen from dying is enough to make Owen a good person.
I don't think Owen simply wakes up, looks at Louis, and thinks, “Oh, that's my sire. I should be nice now.”
I think Owen wakes up starving.
I think his first instinct is to survive.
I think there is a part of him that is screaming for blood, and every human around him is suddenly prey.
Louis, who is trying to teach him restraint.
Louis, who has to tell him no.
Louis, who has to teach him that humans aren't food every time Owen's instincts tell him otherwise.
And eventually, Owen learns.
But that's the important part: he learns. It takes effort. It takes time. It takes restraint. It takes Louis.
And even after all of that, I don't think the hunger just disappears. I think Owen is always, on some level, a monster who has learned how to live among people.
That's why I love the idea of Owen going, “I'd kill for you. Please let me kill them for you.” And Louis just looking at him and going, “No.”
Because Owen isn't saying it as an empty romantic gesture. He means it. He would kill for Louis. He would probably kill very happily for Louis (as we all know).
And Louis has to be the one who says, “I know. That's why I'm telling you no.”
Owen's morality isn't something Louis magically installed in him when he turned him. It's something Owen has spent years building on top of instincts that are fundamentally telling him to do the exact opposite.
He's a monster. He's just Louis's monster who has chosen, over and over again, not to act like one.
This is just my two cents about how their dynamics could play out if Louis had lived. Could've probably done something more cooler, like a drabble maybe?, if I wasn't packing up and this just came to my mind mid pack.
