When The Moon Turned Red | Maximus and Edward

[Maximus Petrescu]

Maximus moved like a shadow between the headstones, each step silent, each breath drawn from habit more than need. The scent hit him first, iron, pine, old parchment... impossible to forget even after two hundred years.

It had to be Edward. 

Maximus’ lips parted in something that wasn’t quite a smile. He’d imagined this moment in countless ways: thunderous confrontations, tearful apologies, blood spilled on marble floors. But none of them prepared him for the jolt that ran through him now; part triumph, part terror.

He gripped the cold stone of a broken angel as he stepped from the dark, his coat trailing like smoke. His blue eyes locked onto the figure standing across the graveyard path. Time hadn’t dulled Edward’s presence. If anything, the centuries had carved him into something sharper, more unforgiving.

Maximus’ heart ached under the weight of his memories. He had offered Edward eternity. Offered it like a gift. In truth, it had been a theft. Of mortality. Of choice. Of peace.

Now Edward stood before him again, whole, unburned by the sun, untouched by the centuries—and Maximus felt it in his bones: the fury that must live behind that stare. The fire still burning where trust had once lived.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t dare.

Instead, he drew his blade from the sheath at his back as a precaution, and took a single step forward. If this ended in violence, so be it. If it ended in forgiveness, he would bleed for it all the same. But tonight, he would not run.

Maximus didn’t lower the blade, but he didn’t raise it either. It hung in his hand like a memory; cold, unrelenting, always there. The wind stirred the trees, sending skeletal branches scratching at the sky. His movements calculated and slow, Maximus stepped closer, his boots crunching over damp gravel.

“I still remember the night,” Maximus said, his voice low, as if the truth could still break something. “You were bleeding out in that ditch. An enemies blade through your ribs, lungs half-collapsed, your pulse nothing but a whisper.” His fingers tightened around the hilt. Not out of fear for he’d moved beyond that long ago but from the weight of it all.

“There were children in the village,” he went on, quieter now. “Injured. Dying. Helpless. I could’ve reached them. Maybe even saved a few.”

He met Edward’s eyes, those eyes that once trusted him, “But I chose you.” The words echoed like a confession inside the hollow chapel ruins.

“I gave you the dark gift and called it mercy.” He took another step, close enough now to see the faint glint of the moon in Edward’s eyes, but still far enough that he couldn’t reach him if he tried.

“You didn’t ask for it. I never gave you that choice.” The guilt coiled in his gut like a second heartbeat. Yet underneath it, just barely, something else stirred; pride or maybe it was selfishness. He wasn’t sure there was a difference anymore.
“If you want justice,” Maximus said, his voice growing sharp now, “I won’t stop you.” The silence thickened, heavy with what was never said and what could never be undone.

Maximus stood still, blade lowered now, but his grip didn’t loosen. The weight of it was anchoring, grounding almost. The silence stirred something dangerous in Maximus—not fear, but a memory.

He blinked, and the cold graveyard faded.

_______________________________________________________________

It had been dusk when he found Edward, crumpled at the edge of the forest road, bleeding into the roots of an old elm tree. The boy was no more than thirty. Despite a dire prognosis, the boy appeared stubborn. Fiercely alive.

Maximus remembered the gurgle in Edward’s chest, the wet rattle of every breath. His blood had soaked the front of Maximus’s shirt as he lifted him. "Stay with me," he had whispered, running faster than the wind, his steps sounding like that of a war drum in his ears.

He'd already made the choice before he realised he had.

The village lay no more than two miles east. He could see the injured children huddled in his mind—injured and defenceless, with no one left to protect them. A healer’s touch, a drop of his blood, could’ve saved them.

But Edward’s eyes had opened one last time - dull and glassy - and they’d met Maximus’ just once. Please, they had said. Though no words passed between them.

And Maximus had turned west. Into the woods. Into the shadows. Sinking further into damnation.
_______________________________________________________________

A crow shrieked overhead, dragging him back to the present.

The graveyard was cold again. Damp. Still.

Maximus looked at Edward and wondered what haunted him more: the dying boy in his arms or the man who now stood before him, forged from centuries of that moment. "I thought I was saving you," Maximus said. “Maybe I was saving myself.” His voice cracked, barely audible over the rustle of dead leaves. “You didn’t get to choose.” He stepped back, just slightly, with the blade falling to his side. “I did.”

The sky rumbled with distant thunder. A storm was coming. And Maximus couldn’t tell if that was mercy… or the calm before something far worse.