A/N:
I was inspired to write this after reading Lady Dudley's story, "Cookies?", because it left me wondering what Pam's nightmares might consist of.
I've never written anything for this site before, so I hope that it's well received, especially by my fellow E/P shippers. Please feel free to review, comment, and/or PM me. Thank you for reading! :D
This is prior to the Great Revelation, based mostly on TB Eric and Pam, and (obviously) pre-Bon Temps. In fact, I'd like to think that this nightmare is probably the entire reason they left Eric's farm on Örland, Sweden - at Pam's behest, of course.
Oh, and one last thing - last, but certainly not least - I'd like to thank the incomparable Lady Dudley for her inspiration and much-appreciated advice. She is an extraordinary writer, and if you are not yet familiar with her stories you should check them out. All of them. Right now. They're absolutely fantastic! :)
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Hell
Pam wakes up and is instantly nervous because it's morning and she's not underground.
She quickly calms though because she knows that Eric is near by his scent and as far as she can tell they're indoors.
The room looks like the interior of a long wood and mud dwelling with a smoldering fire pit in the center. There are reed mats and animal furs strewn about the benches surrounding the walls and dirt floor. The sturdy wooden door - she wonders how Eric managed to stoop low enough to fit under that lintel - is halfway open allowing the soft, clear light of early morning to peek across the threshold; outside sheep are bleating. It appears that the house is buried partially underground by the way the door is situated with a few short stone steps leading up to the grassy yard above.
Great, she thinks, what kind of hovel did he drag me to now? As if our farm on that windy s**thole isn't torture enough now he has me (barely) holed up in some rustic shed?
The truth is she would go anywhere and do anything - die, even - just to be near him, just to please him... anything to earn that smile of his.
She would follow him straight to Hell if he asked her.
To his credit, Eric had given in to her incessant complaints and upgraded the house on Örland. Too bad he didn't use the money to move them somewhere else, she thought. Why couldn't we just go back to Paris? Hell, if he wanted to own a farm near the sea why not something in a tropical locale instead, say, Barbados? She could easily see herself in a pale pink villa surrounded by lush gardens and luscious, exotic fruits - and she wasn't thinking about mangoes or bananas either. Well, she was, but not by standard definitions.
Eric turns to her and draws her closer to him for a kiss, but something is not quite right: he's so...warm. She's surprised she can feel as much through the bulky, crude shift she's apparently clothed in, which feels like burlap for goodness sake. Why on earth would she ever be caught (un)dead in something like that?
If this is his idea of a joke she's failing to see the humor in it.
Animal furs blanket them: coarse, fragrant (and certainly not in a pleasant sense) furs. Hmmm. She thought she'd quelled Eric's propensity toward some of his more irritating Viking habits (e.g., his insistence upon using filthy pelts as bed coverings) through her superior taste in interior design. She'd have to make it a point to rid the house of these things as soon as possible.
No worries. As always, Eric's deep pockets would be more than happy to take on the burden of her new wardrobe requirements as well as the redecorating. There is nothing he would deny her.
Then again, exactly where were they? They obviously weren't home. And why was she waking up at dawn instead of dusk?
Suddenly, she hears the babble of children nearby. She considers making them an early, or rather, a late snack, but the light is increasing rapidly outside and, disturbingly, her fangs don't descend. In fact, she can't drop fang at all. Out of everything that has transpired in the minutes since her waking this realization scares her the most and as she takes in stertorous breaths (why is she having to breathe?) her labored breathing wakes Eric fully this time.
"Is our little bundle of joy causing you grief again, my darling?" Eric inquires.
Wait.
WHAT?
What the hell is he talking about?
He gently touches her stomach as he leans closer and chides the child inside for giving his mother such a tough time. Pam looks down to see her normally trim midsection, swollen with the gift of new life, stretching that awful burlap sack she is wearing to its limit.
As if on cue, three young boys, aged approximately three to ten years, each possessing pale blond hair looking for all the world like teacup-sized Eric Northmans, shove the heavy entrance door wide open as they barrel down the steps into the house where they proceed to catapult their wiry, grime-covered frames upon the bed clamoring, "Mother, we're hungry! What's for breakfast?"
From somewhere nearby, likely enswathed in a similar mound of dead animal skin and fur, the piercing cry of yet another child erupts.
Horrified, she looks to her right searching for Eric's comfort, but is only greeted by his besotted expression. Under different circumstances she would have been flattered to see that look in his eyes. However, at this moment it was the last thing she wanted to see, and if she weren't so stunned she would have smacked that simple smile right off his face.
Dear. God.
She never believed all of that drama perpetuated throughout the ages by religious zealots and self-hating members of their race alike who insisted that vampires were damned, but apparently she had met the True Death and been promptly sentenced to Hell.