Author's note: First thank you all so much for reading! There will be no Godric/ Eric slash in this story. However, Godric, his maker and Remus will have some brief flashbacks, and I have planned several of my other OC's with…interesting pairings. The rating should not go above T though.

The only characters you will probably recognize directly from the show are Godric and Eric (Remus is from the comics). Since we know so little of their expansive past together, I have taken several exciting liberties in recreating some of it…the fun part about FanFiction;) French used in this story (and any other language, probably Swedish, German, and some Latin) is translated at the end of each chapter.

Updates will occur about every week to every two weeks until this is finished…when that will be however, is anybody's guess;)

Reviews are more than welcome! Not only do they make me giddy and happy inside, but they help me make this story better. Language translations are thanks to one of my lovely reviewers…And anything anyone else wants to suggest or question or comment on feel free!

Alright…I think that's it. I hope you all enjoy!

Chapter 1

Could you be a companion of Death? Could you walk with me through the world, through the dark? I'll teach you all I know. I'll be your father, your brother, your child.

What's in it for me?

What you love most: life.

Life.

Northern France - 1463

Death and his child stood unmoving at the edge of the forest.

The polished plane of their eyes reflected the chaos erupting brutishly before them. There were bursts of red against, within flesh. The sickening aroma of skin melting into bone fracturing into ash and dust. Shadowed figures fleeing into the darkness, screaming in fear as they ran from torched houses. Everywhere there was fire. The smoke leaking all too readily into every unclaimed space of air. Bare feet pounded against the earth as if to beg entrance. Claim some type of sanctuary from the hell above. There were shouts and hollers. Rabid, barking dogs. Somewhere a child was crying. There was blood.

Always blood.

The spectacle was atrocious, but that, of course, was no stranger to Death. Or his child.

Never to those whose existence had spawned the term…

"It is no longer safe here, my son."

The younger of the pair sighed, closing his eyes as the finality of his Maker's tone fastened like a heavy yoke about his shoulders. Disappointment flared and mingled with the anxiety already simmering within him. "Godric—"

"I will not hear you argue with me tonight, child," the older one silenced, a hint of agitation coloring his words. "We cannot stay here. It is time to move on…Past time."

Dipping his head in humble submission, the younger sighed again, "Yes, Godric."

Heat from the flames was spreading. Reaching with wide fingers into the cool of the night. The pale, gray-green of Death's eyes flickered over the burning village. They watched red-hot cinders drift upward on the wind.

"Go to Paris," he directed. "Stay with others of our kind, but do not boast your presence, Eric. I will meet you there in a few days."

His companion shifted, "You are not coming with me?"

"No. I still have some things to attend to here." The ancient child's gaze hovered over the darkness of the adjacent forest. "They cannot wait."

"Then I walk beside you."

"No."

"Godric, Paris is hours away," Eric insisted, his brow darkening as he turned more fully to address his sire. "I cannot just leave you alone out here. I will not. What if—"

"Eric."

Obedience, my child. Respect…The familiar phrase slithered cold and snake-like through the bond thrumming between them, and Eric swiftly silenced his argument. Allowed himself to shrink beneath the reproving gaze bearing down upon him and the words that accompanied it:

"I know well what I have asked of you," his Maker hissed quietly. "You will do as I say."

"Yes, Father," Eric muttered, his tone subdued, his voice contrite as he lowered his head once more. "Forgive me. I just…worry for your safety…I could not bear it if you were destroyed."

Death softened, cupping a cool palm against his progeny's cheek, "I am quite capable of taking care of myself, dear one."

Eric nodded, leaned into the touch. "Of course."

The crackling of nearby trees against the advancing blaze drew the attention of both creatures back into their immediate surroundings. That raging chaos that Eric would have long ago been in the midst of, feeding and plundering even as the fires lapped at his neck. But Godric had stopped him. Known somehow…And a firm tightening of the bond between them had left the once king all but frozen where he stood for several minutes until the immortal child himself appeared. Scolding Eric harshly for his lack of forethought.

Recklessness was weakness.

And weakness was a trait with lethal consequences in this life—this death. Consequences which Death himself refused to endure.

"Leave, Eric," the creature instructed, lowering his hand. "Go to Paris. And whatever you may feel from me…do not return."

Hurt slashed through the berserker's face and their bond like sharpened silver. A thrust of refined metal stabbing beneath their shared ribcage. Then Eric was gone, blurring into the south.

The elder delayed for a long moment, relishing the warmth as it buffeted against his skin, as it swirled and danced about his body in tantalizing waves. His fangs slipped into their rightful place, bold and prominent, eagerly prodding at the softness of his lower lip. Closing his eyes, he tasted the air. Listened beyond the present anarchy unfolding before him. The faint hum struck him as an afterthought, seeking perhaps to disguise itself innocently among the dull flutter of the leaves, of the snow as it settled about his shoulders. But to his attuned ears it rolled like thunder across the landscape. Aggravating a frail serenity.

Death cocked his head to the side.

There was motion, a vaguely perceivable shift of air and space, and leaves stirred, uneasy in his wake.

"I wondered when you would come after me, brother."

Godric stilled.

The icy water of a small stream rushed over his feet as his gaze wandered into the blackness of empty, tree limbs stretching out net-like above him. From some indeterminate point therein, a pair of silver-white eyes contemplated his presence. They were familiar to him as his own, as his child's, as his eternal memory spread across lifetimes he could only yearn to forget. And he frowned, silent as the water coursing gently around his ankles.

Brother indeed.

Snowflakes fell through the air in slow motion. Weightless. The figure that bore the silver eyes leaned forward, pushed out from the tree as if he was yet another limb, a mere, innocent part of the bark.

"Honestly, I had hoped you would delay," he said. Godric watched the lips move, noted the tips of scarlet fangs jutting from behind them. "I hoped that I would be forced to come after you…perhaps meet this child I hear you have created."

Emotion welled within Godric's veins, vestiges of something he was far too old to feel. He narrowed his eyes. He watched the moonlight reveal the speaker's face: little more than a long, pale, grinning thing guarded on either side by heavy tangles of black hair flecked with snow.

Again the lips moved, "He is quite the trophy so I'm told. A Viking, yes?"

"He is mine."

Laughter. Godric felt it in his core: the tinkling of coins against a stone table, frail clothing being ripped from his shoulders. Exposure.

"Ah. You are still sentimental," his companion chortled. Faintly Godric was aware of the creature shaking its head. "Unfortunate. I would think you would have outgrown that by now."

Heat seared through Godric's thoughts. There was the press of red iron against his back, the smell of burnt flesh engulfing him, vomit spilling from his mouth.

His hands balled themselves into fists.

Enough of this.

"Why are you following us, Remus?" he demanded.

The question was direct, the tone requiring no nonsense, but both were effortlessly thwarted nonetheless.

"Oh, come now," Remus protested. More laughter. More coins. "After six hundred years it cannot be that bad seeing me again. We must catch up you and I."

The immortal child took a breath, "I have nothing to say to you."

"Well you can stand there and listen then," Remus proposed, huffing. "Now…Where to begin…"

"Remus, tell me why you have come. I am not in the mood for games."

"And I am not your precious progeny," the elder declared, bristling a bit as he descended soundlessly to the forest floor. Silver eyes flashed in distain as they swept over the somewhat shorter, somewhat younger, but equally powerful being across from him. "I will not be commanded by you."

Tension hovered, pulsed—a taut, yearning cord across the vastness of space and time that had divided them.

"I will not be commanded by anyone."

In Godric's mind, a hard ground rose to meet his face, jarring his temple. Blood dripped into the grooves of polished tile from a shallow gash opening over his cheekbone. His eyes spun. There was pain, only pain…and the memory rushed to the surface yet again, all too alive.

The human child that had once been him was sobbing on the floor, muttering something intelligible in a language no one present could understand.

Lucianus Vettalii, his new master, regarded him with disgust.

"Get him up, Remus," he spat.

"Yes, master." The young slave dropped the branding iron and knelt at the child's side, reaching with trembling hands for shaking shoulders. He fought to contain his own wave of bile as his fingers ghosted over the blistering lesion so freshly engrained in the boy's shoulder. Swallowing hard, he cupped his hand around a thin, tattooed arm.

Battered as he was, Godric flinched away in an instant, screeching his disapproval to the very summit of his power. The small puddle of red and yellow-green that stained the tile about his face was violently disturbed.

"Damn it, boy!" Lucianus seized the small, leather whip that was carried on his person at all times. Without a thought, he let anger fly out from his wrist, kiss the air, bite into flesh. Aimless. So long as it hurt.

Remus cringed and tightened his hold on the boy's arm, "I am sorry, master. He…He is afraid!"

"Get. Him. Up!" The whip was ceaseless and unyielding. "Now!"

The servant pulled at the child, arms and legs both resisting him at every turn, catching him in the chest and in the shin, while the whip lashed at them both. Eventually, and yet not soon enough, he succeeded. He got the boy to stand, to face their master.

The Roman slapped Godric hard, sending his small head rolling weakly back into Remus's chest. Revolted by the vomit befouling his hand, the man nearly growled, "Go and clean him up. Have him prepared for me within the hour."

"Yes, master," Remus replied.

Lucianus seized Godric by his chin, glared cruelly into his face, "I will break you, savage. You will be mine."

The young Gaul had not understood the words. They were only sounds, hard, angry sounds that made him more indignant himself than afraid, but, weak and suffering, he yielded, passively slumping against Remus as the older boy dragged him away.

The bath had been torture, a villain scraping at his jaded skin, at the tattoos that bound him to his homeland. There were devils clawing inside of him in the name of purification, and tainting his most intimate spaces with pain. The brand on his shoulder was doused in water saltier than the sea. His eyes and mouth were raided and stripped of every ounce of moisture and blood, vomit and dust. Every part of him was invaded. Every part of him claimed. Owned.

When Remus escorted him back into the house and settled with him on his raw knees beside a bed, he made no protest. Not even when the master came in and closed the door and grinned and fisted a rough hand in his hair, hauling him to his feet. That was when he first saw the fangs, not white, but red. More sinister than sharpened steel. Coated already by the blood rolling like tears from two holes in Remus's neck. The Roman's eyes were hungry still, and Remus stood pliant, head bent, eyes downcast, waiting for whatever was to come. That was when Godric felt the first real twinges of fear.

"Hold him, Remus," Lucianus commanded.

And the slave obeyed.

"Yes, master."

"We will break him together."

"Yes, master."

Godric closed his eyes. Remus began softly humming some archaic, nameless tune, the sound melting into the steady breeze as it whispered across their undead frames. Ages seemed to pass. When the vampire child opened his eyes, his brother was less than a foot in front of him, a gaze burning lines of silver fire across his body.

"You have not changed, cārissimus," Remus purred. "Your neck, your chest…how they call to me still…as if we had never parted."

The immortal sixteen year old glared, stepping away from a hand ghosting across the rough fabric of his trousers. "You are mistaken. I am much changed."

"Indeed?" Remus rose an eyebrow, tisking with disapproval, "Sentimentality…It is such a dangerous trait, my brother. I do hope you are raising your precious child without it."

Hissing vehemently, Godric pushed the elder vampire away from him with all his strength. Remus's body carved an angry swath of felled trees and disturbed earth several yards long across the forest floor, and satisfaction roared within Godric even as he bared his fangs to the chill of the night. As he sped to meet his brother were he had landed. "You will not speak of him again," he demanded.

Remus blurred to his feet, a growl pressing against his throat, but before he could speak another word, Godric had him pinned by the neck against a nearby tree. Disturbing bark and fowl alike as his fingers dug fang-like into soft flesh. "Why have you come?"

In the silent moments that followed, narrowed eyes condemned the ancient boy for crimes long past. Remus's voice was a sigh, "You going to kill me too, brother?"

Godric loosened his grip.

"You do not even know yet why I am here."

Several human heartbeats passed. Godric released his brother, put numerous steps backward between them. Expecting nothing. Prepared for anything. "I should kill you," he said.

Remus shrugged, "Perhaps."

Lifting away from the tree, the elder vampire straightened the cloak that encased his body. Covered up tattoos around his neck that matched Godric's but to him held no meaning and proceeded to widen the distance separating himself from his brother. Walking in a wide arch, he placed himself on the other side of the small stream Godric had been standing in mere minutes before. He lifted his eyes into the sky and spoke frankly. Pragmatic.

"Several centuries ago I was approached by a vampire from the west. He was seeking out others of a mind to reclaim this world from the humans, to reassert ourselves as the dominant beings…You can imagine my response, Godric. I agreed to join his cause that very night, and I have been wandering the world with him for ages now, ending humans, making new vampires to expand our numbers, destroying those who oppose us..."

Here Remus paused, his gaze shifting from the dark above onto the motionless form of his brother. "What think you of these things?"

Wary, but unwilling to voice his unease, Godric responded with indifference, "I simply wish for you to reach your point before dawn."

The other vampire smiled, his silver eyes twinkling, "Of course." And Remus turned, began walking along the shoreline. "Recently, we have discovered old vampires, older than you and he and I, that oppose us and would make our goal impossible. As you know destroying vampires older than oneself is…difficult. Indeed, there is only one I know of who has succeeded and survived."

Godric felt himself stiffening against his will as he watched his brother retrace his slow steps.

"Do not fear, brother. You have atoned for your sins," Remus continued in his practiced tone. "By making a vampire of your own, raising him well past the usual age of releasing…Know that neither I, nor anyone who remembers condemns you for your actions. In fact, we ask your assistance in removing others from our kind who resist our cause. My…acquaintance sent me to find you months ago. I assured him you would be more than willing."

Above them, the night grew thin and frail. Distantly Godric could feel the pulse of the sun forcing back the darkness. The snow had stopped falling. A breeze sought to tangle more leaves within Remus's long, unkempt hair.

"What would I have to do?" Godric asked.

"First, tell me how you killed Lucianus," the elder stated. "And second, meet the vampire I have told you of. He is most curious about you…Though he has issued one stipulation: as brilliant as I have heard he is, you would have to release your progeny."

Godric absorbed this slowly, let questions filter in and out of his mind, searching for prudence. He drew unnecessary air deep into his lungs. "What would I receive in return?"

Remus took several steps forward into the dark stream, his eyes glinting with promise. "Greatness, brother," he assured. "Depending on what he sees, you would supervise those who have been tasked with destroying the ancient ones. Your power would be legendary, as would you for your services. When we are successful, there will not be a thing, human or vampire, you could not have for the asking."

"And if I refuse?"

Several moments passed in silence. Godric watched as the faintest twinges of nostalgia graced his brother's face. He almost smirked. Almost.

"Listen, Godric. You destroying our maker was a great betrayal," Remus began. Something that was not quite pain was bleeding into his eyes. "But it has turned out to be an even greater blessing. You should not deny yourself the opportunity you have been given to fully reenter our world. To honor the Sanguinista Lucianus valued above all else—"

"And if I refuse…?"

As swift as they had come, the faint inklings of pain and appeal swept from Remus, were borne away by the stream and the wind. He narrowed his eyes. "The true death awaits all those who do not conform."

How predictable.

Godric shook his head, looked up and watched the beginnings of sunrise snatch night from the eastern horizon. His hands seized a wooden branch from the ground, a casualty from Remus's tumble through the trees. Behind him he felt the other vampire tense.

"You are a fool if you try," Remus snapped.

Before another second could pass, the red oak branch had drilled a hole through Remus's shoulder deep into the core of the tree and restrained him there. A feral roar shocked its way through the air, vowing vengeance, but Godric endured, unfazed.

"You are the fool," he snarled, glaring into his brother's silver, glinting eyes. "I have always been faster than you."

Warm blood dripped from his mouth in an eager gush as Eric stood from the dry, lifeless body at his feet. It had been a woman. Surely no older than he himself had once been, despite the gray hairs peeking out from beneath the rag tied around her head. While the bucket at her side sloshed ice water on her heels, she had clutched at the rag's ends, straining to hide her face and eyes from the cold. The poor scrap of cloth had shielded her from his presence as well. And she had died beautifully—without a sound of protest.

If only Godric had seen it.

Looking over his shoulder, Eric narrowed his eyes at the small hutch set back some thirty or so yards from where he stood. Faint inklings of dawn nudged at the skyline above. A simple softening of the blackness, but it was more than enough to make him a fool. To remove all desire for his Maker's presence. Indeed, after more than five hundred years as a vampire, Eric was beyond the age of such imprudence being tolerated by Godric. Not that he had ever tolerated such things. The olden youth was a fair Maker, but simultaneously as ruthless a father as one could ever be; anything that threatened the survival of his child was met with the severest form of retribution possible.

For his sake. To ensure that the life he had been promised would be lived.

The woman's blood began to roll down his chest as Eric lingered, motionless, deliberating his options and rebuking himself. Far, far against the western horizon, the lights of Paris shown, making one final stand against the powers of the stars and moon. He could be there in less than an hour if he flew, but flying put him closer to those first rays of light as they began to weave together sunrise high off amongst the clouds. Running would take longer than flying, and staying…Staying to build a grave for the day, however wise, was impossible. Godric had sent him to Paris. Would expect him in Paris. And to Paris he would go.

He could make it.

He would have already been there if the sight of the now dead woman at his feet—her skin trembling in the chill and yet encasing such warmth—hadn't been so…intoxicating. Thin furrows marred his brow as he nudged the limp form into the river with his foot. She hadn't been as tasty as she looked. Alas.

"Marine!"

The voice was hard, cross, a man summoning his wayward wench. Eric turned, saw the firelight spill into the yard as a back door opened and the voice yelled a second time. "Marine, ce qui prend si longtemps, eh?"

The vampire smirked, tempted once more from his aim by the sweet allure of an amusing kill. How delicious it would be to lure the man in, confuse him with assurances of innocence or overwhelm him, frighten him with his power…Racing off along the shoreline towards the city, Eric briefly lamented the loss of such a hunt. He reassured himself with thoughts of the many he would enjoy once he arrived at his destination. Perhaps stragglers on an isolated shipyard or monks chanting praises in a monastery. He could bless them with the knowledge of a true god, inspire their prayers with demonstrations of true divine authority and strength. Bathe their halls in red. Yes. He would, he decided. As soon as the sun fell.

For now, dawn was coming.

Translations:

Cārissimus – Latin (the common language of ancient Rome) dearest, or most beloved

Marine, ce qui prend si longtemps, eh? – Marine, what takes so long, eh?