A Hundred Years, One Separation and a Lifetime of Blood, Mayhem and

Author: Treesh Aradia
Pairing: Eric/Pam
Fandom: True Blood
Word Count: 1,700+
Disclaimer: Not mine. I wish... but no, not mine.
Spoilers: I don't think there are any.
Summary: What Pam saw, did and with whom when she awoke to her new life.
A/N: I have no book knowledge, having yet to read them, and I have taken liberties. Un-beta'd.

The Beginning

1900

Pam Ravencroft awoke to her new life unlike her other waking days. The first difference was the fact that it was twilight. She could feel the passing of midnight in her newly rejuvenated bones. Secondly, there was the pressing of skin at her back and it was cold. Not that it was distinctly different than her skin. She could tell she has been situated here, without heat, for hours.

Wherever here was.

To say she was troubled was a grave understatement. She refrained from moving lest the body nestled with hers woke up. Assuming it was sleeping. She could not tell. There were no susurrations, no intakes of breath.

No heartbeat.

Her panic rose to even higher levels.

And then she heard it…the voice belonging to her future. The one she would listen to; execute a many different requests for. But she did not know it yet. Having never heard it when she was alive…except for the previous night, when she was lost and frantically looking for the passage to London.

"Relax." It was a command, given in the surest possible tone. And it did nothing for her. She was naked and if she guessed correctly, trapped in a box - a box very similar to those at wakes. Without preamble she turned to her companion. With wide eyes…expecting to find…

"Who are you? I need to get back to the ship." She could not help but stare at the cheekbones, the slightly upturned lips and the eyes. They were blue and they were haunting. She guessed if hers expressed anything, it would only be fright.

A chuckle and then, "I can tell you, that ship has definitely sailed. Come, we have much to do, edicts to memorise and heed. Being a vampire childe doesn't just mean dystopia and killing anyone we like."

Learning

So Pam learnt… after getting over the incredulity and certain amount of fear. That he, Eric Northman, 900 year old vampire, was beautiful made it easier to accept her current 'situation'. She cannot lie.

The first time she tried to kill someone, a lost sense of humanity had her pausing, fangs breathing down the neck of an Irish drunkard at the tavern near their gravesite. It cost her. The drunkard had adrenalin working for him, so too the pitchfork next to the crate she had pushed him against.

She was stunned and bleeding at the right shoulder. Drunkard was wavering and not very focused, but she did not enjoy dismemberment enough to move and chance a mishap, which she was sure Drunkard was capable of doing given the way his eyes beheld his impressive fear.

The sudden movement at the left of said drunkard told her dismemberment would be nothing but a dream.

"No one touches her," Her sire tells him, nails red from the wound he created at the base of the Drankard's neck. The only affirmative to that particular statement was the gurgling sound of chocking on blood while attempting to breathe and the smell of piss from the dying human.

Eric looks at his childe, captures the regret on her pale face and decides not to punish her for her weakness. "Maybe we can get another one from Henri's whore house."

"Another one?"

Equals

1920

She finds out from the other vampires whose nest they are visiting that there was a hierarchy and that it wasn't just there for aesthetic value. There had always been one, and that the vampire Serena has overstepped her place. And of course with that, came consequences.

The nest host, Joan, was rather ardent in crucifying and tarnishing Serena's name. Afterall, Serena did kill Joan's maker.

"She must get the maximum punishment from the magister. She's only a fledgling and no one, no vampire master, elder or chief much less, disturbs the order! A childe is obedient and a sire commands." Eric, having heard the spiel from where he was seated let out a derisive snort.

"Joan, leave the petty squabble for when we're actually at the magister's." Eric suggested.

Joan narrowed her eyes "Well not everyone can be as stoic as you." With that she flounced out of the hall.

"Just us now Miss Ravencroft. Whatever shall we do to kill the time?" Eric raises an eyebrow, inching closer to Pam's form on the couch. She laughs and pushes off the body she has just finished draining. "I wonder Eric."

*

T

B

It was as they were laying together, on the floor of the hall, having fallen off the couch after their rather strenuous exertions that Pam brought up the issue of hierarchy. "Is it true, what Joan said?"

He took a moment, still perusing and stroking the long blonde hair infront of him, before answering. "Yes."

"And is that why I am never in trouble? Because I submit?"

He examines her. Twenty years of close proximity gave him insights to her personality. And he knew this topic would bring out the more sarcastic nature of his childe. "You are never in trouble not because you submit but because you are too smart not to heed wise suggestions." Secretly he thinks maybe it's also because he has never commanded her to do anything she didn't want. He didn't like to lord over her like he did the previous few… He felt something for this one. In a way that should trouble him.

"So there really isn't any egalitarianism? Even after all these years with you? I'm just slightly better than the servant?"

He suppresses the urge to frown. And laughs instead. "20 years my darling is short change for me."

And even though he can tell she would like to continue their conversation, he sets her in the most satisfying position and soon, the hall is filled with their mutual groans.

*

T

B

It is only when she was sleeping that Eric whispers to her the words he guesses even she might be surprised to hear. "You are my Queen and you are cherished above all else. There are no equals if I keep you on the highest, most well-regarded platform."

It was better than any other admission.

Better even than an 'I love you'.

Defiance

1935

"Are you still harping about what that bloody Joan said?" Eric asks, in the midst of the burning house and the several dead bodies they have left behind them.

Pam pauses, looks at him and tells him monosyllabically, imitating him fifteen years ago, give or take, "Yes."

He throws his hands up. "I give up! I only asked you to take the trash out! Is that so hard? It wasn't a command was it?"

"Oh so it was like a suggestion and I am smart enough to know its beneficial to 'heed' it?" She rushed to his face, bunny ears exacted on the word heed. "You know, maybe William was right. Maybe I need to break away from the chains of oppression and be liberated!"

Damn those forward thinkers of their time. Those bastard humans and their newfangled ideas about liberation and alienation and Marxist bullshit.

"Maybe you should! Then you'll see how very good you actually had it!" His anger snaps and he rants at her, knowing in the back of his mind though, he would most likely suffer as she will from their separation. "Go! See if I care about your stupid hide, you ingrate! I can get other servants."

She gasps, horrified. She really was a servant wasn't she. Always taking up the slack, disposing the bodies… "I HATE YOU".

And she storms off.

Encounter

1946

They meet again in the middle of a vampire raid. Their companions too caught up in pillaging and drinking the quiet empty houses in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. It was serendipity that two vampire nests would raid the same houses in the same town. In the same country. But here they were.

"Pam." They have been stuck on stand still, facing each other with only three metres between them. It seems like forever since they've laughed together, plotted, killed and frolicked into peoples homes together. Too long. The better past has seem to diminish the significance of their last disagreement.

"Eric." Not childe. Not sire. Names, equals. She knows that now. Having been more attuned to their society in the years she has since 'broken-free' from him. She wants to scream 'screw distance', 'screw edicts' and just leap into her familiar. Because he was familiar…everything… the scent, the hard planes, the chilly eyes and soft lips. His hair was shorn now, but she could recognise him from a mile away, amidst a thousand vampires and a sea of blood-soaked humans.

The air was charged and Eric was the first to break. "Come here." He says in his native tongue. He knows how much like a command it was, how much it might anger her. But he was desperate. He was really, actually, pleading.

Pam raises her eyebrow, arms crossed. She replies back, "you come here."

"Still on that?"

"Still unwielding?" She volleys back.

"Screw it." And he breaks, happily does, and simply kisses her hard.

Business

2000

"Why do we accumulate so much money and not do anything with it?"

"What do you mean?"

"We, or ok, you mostly, have all these stock and bonds, but the only thing to show for it is the mansion."

"Well what do you think we should spend it on? More shoes? 'Cause I have seen your wardrobe and you certainly have enough shoes of every colour."

"I don't mean just clothes and stuff-"

"You said stuff. Please refrain from watching HBO and that simpleton show Buffy."

"Eric, stop it. We should set up a business."

"Ok, and while we are at it, we should also set up a lemonade stand in the middle of the day."

"I meant a business that we can see to at night. Like….a pub."

"That actually sounds… fun."

"Yes, as much as we like lazing about and killing people - although we really should stop with the league trying to get vampires equal rights - a club! Let's go into the club business."

"Definite possibilities. Name?"

"Scarlett Room."

"I am not going to own something called Scarlett anything. I prefer something slightly more classy and a with more…masculinity in its name."

"Please, you called that pet dog we had fifteen years ago Fangs. You cannot do classy."

"Fang...hm."

Fin