France, 1917

A shudder rippled through Ludovic as he slept, and Edmond Dantès felt his heart clench in response. The nightmares came to his friend every night now – or rather, every night that Ludovic actually slept, something that happened less and less.

His condition was getting worse.

Another shudder – Ludovic's whole body trying to curl into itself as if escaping something, and Edmond bent over his friend.

"Ludovic," he whispered. "It's alright, it's a dream."

The first time he'd woken Ludovic in a nightmare, Ludovic had lashed out, disoriented, and broken Edmond's nose. Edmond was a lot more careful these days, but he still couldn't bear to watch Ludovic suffering, trapped in the growing nightmare of his own head.

Over the months they'd spent in the trenches together, Ludovic had become more important to him than anyone. They both struggled with the ghosts of their pasts, they'd both done things that made them feel like monsters, things that they were still coming to terms with. They could be completely honest with each other, about everything. They understood each other.

A shell impacted somewhere, far enough away that it was no threat to them, but the sound of it jerked Ludovic awake. Eyes wild, he fumbled for his rifle, propped against the trench wall beside him, and Edmond caught his hands.

"It didn't hit us, we're alright," he insisted.

But Ludovic didn't seem to hear him. His eyes were raw with panic, his head jerkily moving from side to side as if he was looking for something.

"The top," he muttered. "We're going over . . . are we going over . . ."

"No," said Edmond firmly, clasping Ludovic's face in both hands to keep him still. "We're not going anywhere. Not now."

But even as the words left his mouth, a sick feeling bloomed in his stomach. This war had raged for years, and there was no knowing how much longer it would continue. Sooner or later, they would go over the top again.

Ludovic's eyes finally focused, staring back at Edmond. He clutched Edmond's wrists.

"You're alright," said Edmond again.

Ludovic gave a shaky nod.

He started to stand up, and Edmond finally let him go.

"I thought . . . it was like we were . . ." Ludovic struggled to find the words. His eyes seemed to glaze again as he looked around the trench, and then he just . . . collapsed.

Edmond caught him as he fell.

For an awful moment he thought Ludovic had been shot, even though there was no noise, because the collapse had been so sudden, and spots of red had splashed onto Edmond's sleeve as he caught the other man. Then he realised that those spots of red were tears. Ludovic hadn't been physically injured, but he was violently shaking in Edmond's arms.

Edmond pulled him back into the shelter of the dugout where Ludovic had just been sleeping, and gently lowered him to the ground.

"The mud," Ludovic whispered, clinging to Edmond. "All the mud and the blood . . . I can taste it . . ."

Edmond understood what was going through Ludovic's head.

Just weeks had passed since the end of the worst battle the war had seen so far – the battle of the Somme. Nightmares of those hellish four months plagued Edmond too.

The joint operation between British and French forces had been intended to achieve a decisive victory over the Germans, and Edmond had felt hopeful about it when the offensive finally began, because maybe this would be the start of the end of the war.

Instead, nearly twenty thousand boys and men had been slaughtered in the space of an hour.

And the killing hadn't stopped.

As the summer heat was replaced by autumn rain, the battlefield became a sea of mud. Soldiers fought, slept, ate, worked, and died in it, and there was no escape. For miles in every direction, there was nothing but death and desolation. Trench life had always been awful, but the horrors Edmond had seen during the Somme were enough to break anyone.

Besides the staggering casualties and numbers of wounded, thousands and thousands of soldiers had fallen to shell-shock, as Ludovic was now doing.

Edmond had fought in two wars before this one, and he'd never seen anything like shell-shock – but then, he'd never been in a war quite like this one. It was the first time that lethal gases and high explosives had been used on an industrial scale, the first time he'd seen anything like the tanks that rolled over the blasted mud. The gases that burned away men's skin. The exploding shells reducing them to nothing but bloody chunks of meat. The flying shrapnel that ripped whole faces clean off. Edmond had used bandages to hold a man's jaw to his head, trying to keep the whole thing from falling off. He'd used the bodies of soldiers he knew to shore up damaged trench walls. He'd used his bare hands to hold in people's guts as they spilled out of horrific wounds. He'd held their hands as they cried and screamed and begged for their mothers. He and Ludovic had worked together to untangle soldiers trapped in barbed wire, while shells pounded the ground around them.

Some shell-shocked soldiers appeared to have lost their sight, despite not having suffered any physical injuries, and Edmond wondered if it was because their minds simply couldn't cope with seeing any more carnage.

Ludovic was still shaking; he couldn't seem to stop.

Edmond hugged him as tightly as he could, at the same time trying to use himself as a shield so any passing soldiers wouldn't see that Ludovic had broken down.

Shell-shock had caught both the military and medical establishments completely off-guard. Severely shell-shocked soldiers were dubbed noisy, mental cases and sent back to Britain, and Edmond didn't know what happened to them there. The ones who stayed in France . . . sometimes they were accused of cowardice and shot dead by their own people.

Even vampires could be killed by guns – Edmond had already seen it happen during this war.

Maybe he couldn't protect Ludovic from enemy fire and enemy shells, but he would not let anyone on this side hurt him.

Ludovic had become his dearest friend, and Edmond would die for him.

Eventually, Ludovic stopped shaking and sagged limply in Edmond's arms, leaning against his chest, but Edmond kept his arms tightly around the other man, afraid that Ludovic would fall apart again if he let go.

"Will it ever end?" said Ludovic, his voice ragged.

"Yes," said Edmond.

Ludovic had asked him that once before, but maybe he'd forgotten. Then, Edmond had told him that even when this war ended, another one would eventually come along. Now, all he wanted was to reassure Ludovic that this hell wouldn't last forever.

"Do you think me a coward?" Ludovic asked, his voice slightly muffled against Edmond's shoulder.

"No," said Edmond fiercely.

He didn't fully understand shell-shock – there were reports of officers suffering from it even though they'd never been to the front line – but the idea that it was born of cowardice rather than the utter horror they'd all been subjected to, made his blood boil.

"Every time I close my eyes I see them," Ludovic said.

Edmond didn't ask who 'them' meant – they'd seen more soldiers die than he could count. They'd been on battlefields where they could no longer tell if they were wading through mud or blood, crawled over shattered bodies and pieces of meat that couldn't even be identified as human beings anymore.

"So do I," he said.

"You do?" Ludovic pulled back slightly so he could look up at Edmond. His hands were still shaking.

"Do you really think I'm not affected by everything we've gone through? Do you think the nightmares don't come to me too?"

"But you haven't fallen apart," Ludovic said. "Why not?"

Edmond faltered.

He felt the same terror and uncertainty that plagued Ludovic – that plagued so many soldiers. Living and dying out here was a matter of luck – all of them were painfully aware that the next bullet or bomb could be the one that killed them. Edmond had come within a whisper of death already, and the proof of that was the small piece of shrapnel still lodged in his side from a shell blast. Sometimes he woke up choking on a scream, and sometimes, when the shells were falling and the air was full of flying earth and blasted bodies, and all he could hear was explosions and screaming, he thought that maybe there wasn't an end to this hell, and maybe it was better to lie down and die in the mud, rather than continue trying to survive this.

But he couldn't fall apart – for Ludovic's sake, more than anything.

Ludovic needed him, because this war was tearing him apart, and someone had to hold the pieces together.

Edmond couldn't tell him that, though. It would put even more pressure on Ludovic, and Edmond didn't think his friend could take it. So he locked everything away and bore his own suffering in silence.

"After three wars, maybe I'm just used to it," he said.

It was the first time he'd lied to Ludovic, and he hated it. But he had no choice.

"I just want it to end," Ludovic whispered, looking down at his hands. They still couldn't stop shaking.

Edmond covered them with his own hands, holding them still. "It will," he said. "Things are always darkest before the dawn, Ludovic. This war will end, and we will survive it. We will."

England, 1918

The war did end, at last. Germany was defeated, and when Edmond and Ludovic were finally demobbed and allowed to return to England, it was to celebration.

For so many people, the horror was finally over.

For far too many soldiers, it wasn't.

With Edmond's help, Ludovic had coped with his shell-shock enough that he remained in France, fighting, rather than being sent back to England. Sometimes Edmond had wondered if that was the right thing to do, if maybe Ludovic would have got help if he'd been sent back. Then he remembered the way other shell-shocked soldiers had been treated – with contempt and disgust. They were told that men should be able to control their emotions and their fears. They were accused of malingering. They were disciplined and mistreated. Sometimes they were executed.

Edmond could never have put Ludovic in the hands of people like that.

Ludovic had lived in London before the war, but he couldn't go back there now. Nightmares still ravaged him, and there were times when, after he'd woken, he didn't know where he was. Sometimes he forgot the war had ended, and loud noises still made him cringe and reach for a rifle. Noisy, busy London wasn't safe for him anymore.

So Edmond took him back to his own home in Wickham, a quiet village miles away from the hustle and bustle of city life. He hoped it would do Ludovic good.

But sometimes Ludovic still forgot that they weren't in the trenches anymore. Getting him out of the house and walking in the nearby woods seemed to do him good – unless it had rained and the ground was too muddy. Then the sound of it squelching underfoot could make him freeze. Twice Edmond had found him sitting outside, not even noticing that his skin was blistering from the sun. He talked often about the blood on his hands – his stepfather, the monk, Elise, James – and how he was a monster, and nothing that Edmond said could change his mind. He took to avoiding mirrors because he couldn't stand to see his own reflection. One night, his nightmares were so bad that Edmond had to hold him down until he awoke, and when he eventually fell asleep again, Edmond didn't dare leave him. His presence seemed to help, and from then on, they slept in the same bed. It didn't always stop the nightmares, but it seemed to make them that little bit better.

But however much Edmond tried to help him, Ludovic just seemed to pull further away, retreating into himself until he was a shell of the man that Edmond had known. Edmond still held out hope – huge advances were being made to help victims of shell-shock. There was more understanding of their condition, more ways to help them overcome their trauma, and Edmond was determined to help Ludovic in the same way.

Then, one morning, he woke up and found that Ludovic was gone.

Taking care of him meant that Edmond himself rarely got much sleep these days, and he must have been so exhausted that even his vampire senses hadn't stirred when Ludovic climbed out of bed and left the room.

Edmond searched the house, but all that Ludovic had left was a note, thanking Edmond for everything. That was it. No mention of where Ludovic had gone or whether Edmond would ever see him again.

He feared for Ludovic, for how he would cope in the outside world, but he feared for himself too, because without Ludovic, he had to face his own fears of that awful war. Once again, he was alone in the world, and it felt worse than ever. 

A/N: This was inspired by a WW1 photo, that I've included with the story :)