A Cold Winter's Night
is a short series of Continuation and Flash Forward Fics for the vampire film Let Me In by VerbalHamster.
The stories, while fairly short and self-contained, form a loose chronology that follows Owen's Protagonist Journey to Villain from shortly after the film leaves off. There are four stories in the series, set in various years spanning from 1983 to 2019.
It can be found on both Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net.
A Cold Winter's Night contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Innocence: Owen and Abby's maturity and manipulativeness are left ambiguous. While it's clear the two are still children to a degree, they're ruthless about killing and using others.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's ambiguous how much of his "heart" Owen still retains after so many years of killing. He's friendly to the narrator of A Story in Retrospect, but it's not clear if he and Abby would have killed her were it necessary.
- Anachronic Order: The four self-contained chapters are set, respectively, in 2010, 1983, 2008/2019, and 1991.
- And the Adventure Continues: The last we see of Abby and Owen, they've caught a train to parts unknown once more.
- Call-Back: The presence of a certain phone in the first chapter, and the mention that same type of phone in the third chapter, pretty much seal a character's fate.
- Death of a Child: Occurs a few times offscreen in A Story in Retrospect, and from the perspective of a victim in The Warmth of Spring, although the actual act of killing isn't shown.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Owen is still quite pale, although it's only mentioned in passing once.
- Game Face: As in the movie and the original book, vampires' faces turn into fairly frightening visages when they're hunting or feeding.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Used a couple times, primarily in the third and to a lesser extend the fourth stories, with the third story involving numerous implied deaths off-screen, so to speak.
- Must Be Invited: Crops up several times, demonstrating how Abby and Owen manage the limitation without a human familiar.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Owen has two moments, one in After the Sunset, and another in The Warmth of Spring, although they're more points along his becoming a killer than anything.
- Our Vampires Are Different: As in the film, vampires can transform parts of themselves, like growing wings or claws. That said, the former is only implied but never seen in action.
- Parental Neglect: There are shades of it in the third story, A Story in Retrospect, slightly mirroring Owen's original home situation, albeit to a lesser degree.
- Pretty Boy: Owen again, although as with the pale skin, it is only mentioned in passing.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: By the time the series ends, neither Abby nor Owen has any qualms about killing for sustenance, whether it's adults or children.
- Unnervingly Heartwarming: Like the movie it's based on, there are a few tender moments between Abby and Owen after some of their more emotionally-shocking kills.
- Villain Protagonist: Not too surprising given the subject matter, but especially evident in A Story in Retrospect in which Abby and Owen are pretty much the narrator's only real, and mostly sincere, friends.
