Chapter Text
Loss.
He had to admit the intensity of the feeling was unexpected.
How many years had it been since he had last known it?
Ignorant.
He had hardly known how to deal with it then, that desperate disorientation, but he had been different then. So long ago. It might as well not have happened at all.
Impudent.
Yet it had, it was embedded in him still, Godric venting contemptuously in his face.
The words eating at their bond from the inside, like worms, each of them revealing his maker as a stranger.
You are of no use to me. I am not like you. What do you know of me?
Deep as they lay, in the recesses of his memory, Eric was still surprised at how well he remembered them, at how offensively they still rang inside his mind.
Infant.
They were nothing, really, compared to what he had heard from others, or inflicted on them. They paled in comparison to most of his exchanges with Pam.
But that had been the beginning. It amazed him still that he had not foreseen it.
He thought back to the many similar diatribes that had followed, the ones had deflected, before growing accustomed to them. What an exercise in patience it had been, Godric’s new proclivity for melodrama— a later-life temper, Eric had thought, a misplaced frustration at being so different from ‘the humans that shared their space’... All the rot that Godric had eventually started to verbalise, and never again shut up about.
Eric had not known what he had been fighting. He had refused to acknowledge it.
He still thought it was so unfair that he had lost.
Perhaps he was ignorant.
When he finally acknowledged defeat, he had felt no guilt. He had been drained of it by then. He thought of the night they had broken apart and felt an ugly temper rise inside him, at once murderous and wounded. He could have—no, let us not dwell on that, let us think of the loss.
Every day it returned to him, every night, loss rubbing itself in his face in dreams that lingered after sunset. His impotence, the knowledge that he couldn’t slice through this as he had, once, through his enemies...
He had missed Godric so.
He had hated him so.
It had taken Eric so long to crawl back to form after leaving—no, let’s not dwell on that, let us think of the loss.
On that night, there had been nothing left to lose.
Until tonight, of course. Until this dawn. It had never occurred to Eric that he might one day find himself waiting for the stink of cinders to sweep up his nostrils, longing to be one with them.
The sun was rising. He could sense it on the palms of his hands, pressing hard against the concrete, his arms tensed against the walls of the narrow stairway. It felt warmer, even in the dark. If he turned around, he would surely see the fine, rosy light of dawn wedging under the door to the roof. But he wouldn’t, because beyond lay...
Sookie sobbed. Eric could feel her chest heaving inside his own. He could feel her tears as if they ran down his own cheeks, her gulps at the horror she was about to witness in his own throat.
Father. Brother. Son.
A hissing heat crawled under his skin, burning a path into his innards, obliterating Sookie’s feelings.
Let me go.
The concrete felt warm. As did his skin, hissing, bubbling, crawling. With a hurt he had not known he was capable of feeling, Eric realised he couldn’t muster up more tears. He felt feverish, frozen, cold under his hissing skin.
A burning smell slithered up his nose.
Surely, a stronger word than loss existed.