First Kill Fanfiction Novels & Stories

Man, the search for a good redemption arc in that fandom can be a real mixed bag. You've got the obvious candidates, obviously - Juliette going from 'must kill' to 'must protect' or Calliope struggling with her legacy. But I've found that the best ones don't always stick to the mains. There's a writer on AO3, goes by Sandarach, who wrote this phenomenal series from Margot's perspective. It's all about her guilt over turning Juliette and her attempts to atone by secretly protecting humans from other monsters. It's a slow, painful burn over like 200k words, but the character work is insane. You really feel every ounce of her regret.

AO3's tagging system is your best friend here. Filter for the 'First Kill' fandom, then include tags like 'Redemption Arc', 'Character Development', and maybe 'Angst with a Happy Ending' if you can't handle pure tragedy. Sorting by kudos will surface the popular ones, but don't ignore the smaller works. Sometimes a hidden gem with only a few comments nails the emotional complexity better than the blockbusters. I'd steer clear of Wattpad for this specific ask; the tagging is too chaotic to reliably find nuanced stories.

The 'fix-it' scenario has to be number one, hands down. It's basically the DNA of the 'First Kill' fandom. The show’s ending left this huge emotional crater, and so many fics are just authors and readers collectively deciding 'nope, not today.' You see it in post-canon stories where someone finds a way to reverse the kill, or in elaborate AUs where the circumstances that led to it are completely rewritten—like a supernatural loophole, a time-travel reset, or a universe where the hunter/vampire dynamic is flipped. It’s less about the technical how and more about restoring the possibility of that relationship.

Beyond that, there’s a heavy reliance on the 'hurt/comfort' structure, often with a side of 'mutual pining' and 'angst with a happy ending.' The inherent tragedy of the premise is the perfect engine for it. One character is racked with guilt over what they did, the other is dealing with the physical and psychological fallout, and the story builds toward a fragile reconciliation. It’s cathartic, you know? It lets you sit in that messy, painful space the show created, but with the promise of healing that canon denied us. My bookmarks are full of fics that start with Juliette or Calliope having graphic nightmares and end with them holding each other in the daylight.

I keep returning to fics that interrogate Cal's vampire heritage versus her hunter instincts. The show set up this neat binary, but writers love to mess with it. A recent one I read had her accidentally turning a human while trying to save them, and the fallout wasn't just guilt—it was this practical, horrifying scramble to teach this new vamp control while her family hunted them. It flipped the 'monster' label completely.

That kind of story moves past good vs. evil into messy survival. The moral conflict stops being internal angst and becomes about the consequences of your choices on other people's lives. You see Cal making compromises that Juliette would find abhorrent, and suddenly their whole dynamic is on shakier ground. It makes the romance way more interesting when their moral codes aren't just clashing but actively evolving in ugly, necessary ways.