Chapter 1: Disclaimer: I do not own the Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mysteries. I just like playing in Ms. Harris's backyard. Hopefully she doesn't mind!

Eric groaned as he stretched his long legs and leaned back in the comfortable black leather chair that had once belonged to him. He breathed in the smell of the club, heavy with the scent of horny, drunk, and desperate fangbangers, and frightened yet excited tourists. It was like coming home. He hadn't realized how much he missed this tiny corner of the world—his tiny corner of the world. He had forgotten how special this place was, or at least, how special it was to him.

He knew that Fangtasia could burn to the ground tomorrow, leaving nothing more than a pile of ashes and memories; only he would miss it for any extended period of time, or in any meaningful way. Only he had really benefited from its operation. Oh, certainly others had benefitted from it financially, but only he had truly benefitted from it. Were it not for this bar, this visually unimpressive and somewhat cliché human-vampire meat-market, he never would have met her.

He smiled a bit when he thought of her. He did not allow himself to think of her often, and it was only within the last year that he could think of her without breaking something, or someone. Tonight was a different sort of a night, though. He would allow himself to embrace the memories; the memories of her and the memories of his life before the Nevada takeover.

Still, even though tonight was a night to revel in the past, he would allow himself no more than five minutes alone in his former office. Any longer than that and he would risk running into Pam. He loved his Child, but he had no desire to speak with her on this night, of all nights. She would remember what this night meant to him, and would purposefully try to talk about other things. The conversation would be forced, and it would remind him of all he had lost, of all he had given up.

Eric could feel the blackness sliding into his thoughts. The fault lay with him, really. It was his fault for thinking of her that way: The painful way, as if she were something he had held in the palm of his hand that he had let slip away. It was his fault that he was unable to rid himself of the memories of her silken hair under his fingers, or her smooth soft skin caressing his. It was his fault that he viewed her like some treasure lost at sea on a sunken ship.

He sighed. He was supposed to focus on the happiness of it all. He was supposed to revel in the fact that he had come within a fingertip's reach of having a soul mate, someone who belonged to him and him alone. It was amazing to him that after one thousand years on this Earth, the one time he finds actual love, it comes in the form of a stubborn and fragile human woman. He could not believe this was the one package that could entice and elude him like a mirage in an otherwise barren desert.

He nearly laughed out loud at his piteous pining. And he an indomitable Viking warrior.

As if his mind knew it needed a distraction—to think about anything other than Sookie Stackhouse—it forced his eyes to wander; looking around the familiar room a little more closely. It had not changed at all. He wondered if it really was Clancy, rather than his child, running the show now. He was certain that Pam would have changed many things in his absence; she considered his tastes bawdy and unrefined. He considered hers dull and pedestrian.

Another five minutes of silence passed while Eric looked back on the last five years of his life. If he thought about them in the context of his whole, long life, then they were not unlike the rest. They were filled with varying amounts of interest and intrigue, profit and losses, vampire politics and survival maneuvering. Each day was as the last and also the next. No, there was nothing unusual about the last five years when viewed in the context of his whole life.

It was when he viewed them in the context of the last decade of his life that these recent five years seemed out of place. So many things had happened in his world, and the vampire world in general, in the last decade that all of the other years seemed dull and monotonous in comparison. The commonality shared by the monotonous years . . . decades . . . centuries . . . was that they all were years void of her presence.

For a moment he was awash with memories of those few days they spent together. He could recall with intimate detail every curve of her body, mole on her skin, and strand of her hair. In his mind he pictured the way her mouth would fall open as he drove her to ecstasy, and the way she fought to keep her eyes focused as he instructed her to look at him. He remembered with perfect clarity her warmth and silky wetness the first time he'd thrust into her. It was an act he'd completed many times, and with many women, but being inside of her was special. It was exhilarating and excruciating, comforting yet terrifying. It was unlike anything he had experienced in this excessively long life.

He was so lost in his memories of his time with her that he didn't hear Pam's footsteps, or catch her scent until too late. "Master," her voice held a hint of surprise.

"Pam," Eric replied as he rose to greet his beloved child.

He had not seen her in some months, and she was cautious in her approach. She walked toward him, stopping just short of hugging him. He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, and then nodded in greeting. "How have thing been in my absence?"

"Oh, much the same, of course," she gestured toward the mounds of papers accumulating on the corner of the desk. "I'm leaving all of the truly mundane tasks to Clancy. He seems to rather enjoy them."

He chuckled in response. The conversation was headed exactly where he'd anticipated . . . into avoidance. He would time his exit so that he could leave within the next five minutes, and appear to have a reason for doing so. He opened his mouth to explain to Pam that he had important business to attend, but she beat him to it:

"So, this is the day, is it not?" She was staring purposefully at the pile on the desk, avoiding any direct eye contact. He knew she did not care to see any of the emotions she expected to appear there. "Should we go to the cemetery to pay our respects and keep up appearances?"

It was an odd question, one that he had not anticipated. He took a moment to answer. "I think that would not be a bad idea." He surprised both Pam and himself. Her head whipped up, and she looked him in the eyes. Her expression was questioning and uncertain; it was as if she refused to believe he'd consented . . . or she thought he had totally lost his mind.

He laughed. It was his real laugh, his roaring laugh that Sookie had loved so much. He placed his hand on his child's shoulders. "It is fine, Child. I am perfectly willing and able to go and . . . pay my respects, as you so eloquently put it."

"Do we need to . . . ?"

"No," he replied. "I've already taken care of the arrangements. The bouquet should have been placed on her plot around four hours ago."

Pam's eyebrows arched in response.

"Pam, do you honestly think that you are the only one who thinks of these things?" He chuckled again as he took her by the elbow and led her through the office door. He had been wrong about seeing Pam. It had improved his mood considerably, and he was actually looking forward to, rather than dreading, the task of visiting his former lover's grave. It was doubtful that he even could have gone without Pam by his side.

. . . .

Less than an hour later, Eric and Pam were standing in silent watch over the simple and elegant headstone that was adorned with five or six different bouquets of flowers. He caught the scent of human, shifter, Were, fae, and vampire. He noticed the lone long-stemmed rose and wanted to rip it right off the grave, shred it into a thousand tiny pieces, and then shove the pieces down Compton's throat.

He couldn't believe the audacity of the man; placing a solitary red rose by the grave of his former lover. His former lover, no less; the lover whom Compton had betrayed, been unfaithful to, and dishonest with. He imagined shoving his petal-filled fist all the way down Compton's throat until it reached the bowels of his non-functioning stomach. That would teach him to lay flowers on the grave of his bonded and former lover.

"Master," a voice of reason parted his dark clouds of rage, "it is important that we all keep up appearances. It is the only way that she will remain safe."

Eric let out a long breath. He did not require air to breathe, but the action of breathing out in one long breath felt therapeutic. He released all of his tension and rage into the ether. She was right, of course. He must allow Compton to continue his ruse of mourning, just as they continued theirs.

Finally, after a moment of reflection, he kneeled to the ground and wept. His tears were silent, but free-flowing and genuine. It did not matter to him that she was not really deceased, or that she was happily living out her mortal life somewhere. No, the fact that she still existed was of little to no comfort to him, when all he wanted was for her to be by his side.

It had been five years since they'd helped her to deceive their own King, his minions, and myriad other supernatural creatures. It had taken much work and planning. It had taken even more patience and bravery on Sookie's part. He had since spent much of his time traveling between Louisiana and Nevada. In the intervening years, regardless of the seriousness of his tasks, no more than five minutes at a time would pass without a thought of her.

He rose to face his Child, who he could see also silently (and genuinely) wept. He thought she might miss Sookie more than she let on. He placed his head on Pam's shoulder—yet another ruse—and whispered into her ear. He was so close to her, and his voice was so soft that he doubted even a vampire with very advanced hearing would decipher it. "I need to find her Pam."

TBC . . .

A/N: Okay, this was partially an experiment in Eric POV. I love Eric but he doesn't "speak" to me as freely as Pam and Sookie. So, it may take some adjusting in later chapters to make it more "Eric."

Anyhow, it also was partially a nod to all of my fellow Eric lovers. I thought that my collection of stories wouldn't be complete without at least one other E/S story. Hopefully you all are able to enjoy this despite the lack of "the talk," and some of the other more spiritual/blood bond based aspects of the E/S pairing as that's not really the focus here.