OOM - At Fangtasia with Eric

[lazy_but_loyal]

[Continued from here.]

Pam opens the Staff Only door onto the main room of Fangtasia. It's empty and quiet, though some of the lights are still on, illuminating the dance poles and the stage.

The stage glows a deep blood red, the throne stands without its sheriff.

Pam drifts toward the edge of the room. She keeps her distance from Eric, knowing that the smell of rotting flesh upsets him as much as it would anyone.

"This is your nightclub, Eric."

Comments

[lazy_but_loyal]

She doesn't know what to say or do either.

After a while, she finally says, "You can't stay. You're in danger here."

Another pause.

"Why are you wearing only a blanket?"

Not that it was ever truly odd for the old Eric to be wandering around the house in just a towel after a shower or something, he would've just skipped the towel altogether.

[onceaviking]

He gratefully accepts the change of topic.

"I left my clothes by the lake. When I went swimming," he says.
Which doesn't really explain it.

[lazy_but_loyal]

"You went swimming in a lake? By yourself?"

What is Pam paying Sookie for?

[onceaviking]

"Well, they said there were alligators there. But I didn't see any."

It had been sort of disappointing.

[lazy_but_loyal]

"Eric," she chides him, "please, you can't just go out like that in the middle of the night!"

Because it was at night, right?

[onceaviking]

"No, it was in the morning. Or like - There was this fairy? And I drank her." He frowns a little. "Which was bad because Sookie liked her. Anyway, I ran around for a bit. And then I went swimming."

A pause.

"The water was really nice."

[lazy_but_loyal]

Okay.

What.

Pam is past chiding now.

"--Eric, what the fuck? Didn't you burn??"

Also, really, Sookie?! She's going to get a pay cut if she keeps letting Eric run around like this.

[onceaviking]

"No..? I mean, a little bit. But then Sookie came with this."

He picks at the blanket. And then he dcowls.
"And a stupid werewolf."

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam would facepalm except her face would come off in her hand.

"Eric," she says very slowly, "this is why you have to stay hidden. If you're not going to listen to me...then listen to Sookie."

Eric has no idea how much it pains and irritates her to say that.

[onceaviking]

He sulks.

"I did go back," he says. "I'm not a child."

To be told what to do.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam is silent for a moment.

"No," she murmurs. "You are Eric fucking Northman."

And she wishes he'd act like it.

"You have to go back to Milliways now." She sweeps past him and starts up the stairs before she starts crying and her face melts.

[onceaviking]

"Why?" he asks, trailing after her.
Even though he is secretly relief.

He doesn't like it down here.
And she is making him nervous.

[lazy_but_loyal]

"This is your place, Eric. The King's been here to see me, looking for you. He's got spies everywhere. If they find you, they'll take you in."

She drifts down the hallway and pauses at Eric's office door.

Would it even matter to show it to him now?

"Wait. One more thing." She opens the door and pushes it open, standing aside outside the room. "This is your office."

[onceaviking]

He follows her and when she stops and opens the door, he hesitates.

More chains?

There aren't.
There's a desk and a chair. Shelves cluttered with books and papers. Cardboard boxes.

And something on one of the shelves. He steps closer, lured in by a faint glimmer.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam remains just outside the doorway, looking in.

She knows what he's found before he even sees what it is.

"Your father's crown," she says quietly.

"Your human father."

[onceaviking]

He reaches for it, letting a finger glide along the dark golden crown.

"I don't remember this," he murmurs.

[lazy_but_loyal]

It breaks her cold, dead heart.

If he can't remember his life as a vampire or a human, what is there left of him? But Pam isn't going to give up on him. Not by a long shot.

"You were-- are the son of a Viking chief. Russell Edgington killed your family and stole the crown, but you got your revenge. Russell deserved everything you did to him."

Revenge, Eric. Remember how that feels?

[onceaviking]

He closes his eyes, letting the sensation of the cool metal beneath his fingertips grow till it fills his world.

"I don't remember any of that," he whispers. "Just the sea. And the sand."

A pause.

"And the sun."

And he misses it. Even more so now.

[lazy_but_loyal]

So this is what he does remember. Emcee had told the truth about that.

"You're a Viking, Eric. You know what Vikings did."

There are small paintings of longboats on the walls. Even a small model of one on another shelf. There's also a Viking sword displayed on the wall. Not real, obviously, but a replica Eric had deemed decent enough to buy.

"They raided villages, killed people, fought mercilessly in bloody battles. I can only imagine how beautiful you must have looked back then."

[onceaviking]

He looks at her veiled face.

They'd been surprised that he couldn't remember her, Jay and Emcee. But he doesn't remember her.
There isn't even an outline, a hole where the memory of her ought to be.

His mind is the ocean. Depths and sunlight and no empty spaces for anything that once was.

"I remember a ship," he says slowly. "A sail. Striped in red and white."

But no battles. No carnage. No blood.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Tucked into the corner of a framed picture of a Viking ship, there's a little portrait of Eric and Pam, wearing matching dark track suits. They're even smiling. Well. Smirking. But those were happier times.

"Do you even remember Godric?"

[onceaviking]

He shakes his head.

"No. Emcee thought I would. Because he was my Maker?"

Right?

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam exhales a very quiet sigh that doesn't even rustle her veil.

"Yes. He was."

There is barely anything left of Eric. But she'll be damned if she won't fight to get him back.

"I never knew him. But you thought he was the greatest vampire that ever existed."

[onceaviking]

He squirms a little, uncomfortable with being put on the spot.
And obviously failing whatever this test is.

"I did?"

[lazy_but_loyal]

"Just as I think the same of you."

She's not giving up on him. She's not.

Stepping back from the doorway in the shadows of the hall, she drifts away toward the Staff entrance door and waits for him.