Disclaimer and warnings: Please see the first chapter!
Author's Note: Hi again! I thought I should add the second chapter now to give you a better idea of my original character and the story as a whole. So - enjoy!
FYI: I'm planning to update the story about once a week and at this juncture I've outlined twenty-six chapters.
2. O Fortuna – Carmina Burana – Carl Orff
By the time Sookie had finished her story - adding several side notes about living with her disability, as she called it, and her relationship with Bill - it was approaching on six and Liv felt tiredness creep up on her though she refused to give in to it just yet. She had been too shaken earlier and Godric had been distracted with making sure his nest mates had everything they needed for the next few days so that they had barely exchanged a handful of words. Sookie's report had answered at least some of her questions, but she wanted to hear from Godric himself that he was well and unharmed - and make sure that his answer wasn't just a white lie.
There was a knock on the door and upon investigation they found that Bill had come to collect Sookie. Liv wanted to ask when she could expect Godric to return, but Sookie started to pepper her lover with questions before the door was fully open and didn't stop even as Bill shepherded her into their own room just across the hall. After a brief pang of disappointment, it seemed almost better that way. She didn't know Bill, who had remained taciturn and brooding during their earlier visit, but she had gotten the distinct impression that he and Eric did not get along – and Godric trusted Eric's judgement.
She cast a look over her shoulder at the red blinking numbers on the microwave that completed the small but well-stocked minibar and her heart skipped a beat. It was too close to sunrise and Godric… There had been a flicker of a vision stuck in her mind for the last fortnight, an anomaly without context that hadn't made any sense but which had refused to be dismissed, and she felt a dark sense of foreboding rise in her chest again, for the second time that night, as the images slotted into their horrible place.
She started to run. Her bare feet slapped on the cold floor and the too long legs of Godric's pants made her slip once or twice, but she didn't slow down. There was no time; the sun would rise any minute and... She followed the signs and the memory of her vision up to the roof and to the same helicopter landing pad she had seen the last time she had brushed hands with Godric, when he had walked her home after Stan had attacked her the first time.
She had thought, hoped, prayed that it was just a fluke as the vision had swirled away into memories of Godric's first death, more than 2000 years in the past. But now she found the scene set exactly as in that brief glimpse: the smooth concrete of the flat roof, the red circle of the landing pad, the towering skyscrapers all around that would do nothing to shield Godric once the sun peeked over the horizon. Eric was kneeling before his maker and though she couldn't understand the words he said, they were familiar to her, as were the bloody tear tracks painted on his cheeks, the broken cadence of his sobs.
"You should not be here," Godric said when he spotted her. "I don't want you to see this."
"I already saw it," Liv pointed out, surprised at the anger in her own voice.
She normally knew better than to invest any personal feelings in her visions. Over the years, she had developed a system of preventative measures to avoid skin contact, to avoid her curse: she always wore long-sleeved clothes even in the sweltering heat of Texan summers; she eschewed public transportation and crowded spaces in general and she had picked a profession where a refusal to shake hands and an avoidance of touch was generally attributed to overcaution or at worst mysophobia. And if she was still pushed into a vision, she reminded herself that she was not responsible or the cause of what she saw, that she could not prevent it any more than she could prevent the sun from rising in the east.
But now all that went out of the window and she couldn't care less. "Personally, I always thought I'd drown myself, but I understand that isn't really an option for you. Oh well, throwing myself of the roof will do the trick just fine."
"Reverse psychology," Godric noted. "I read about that. As I understand, it is most effective on children. I'm not a child, Liv."
"No, you're just acting like one," she retorted, walking over to the edge of the building and risking a glance downward. "I'll call 9-1-1 beforehand – I don't want to traumatize anyone with the mess."
Godric was suddenly in front of her. "You don't mean that and you won't change my mind."
"If I hadn't interrupted, Eric would have insisted on meeting the sun with you and you would have commanded him to leave," Liv shot back. "He's spent a millennium at your side and you can't even take the time to explain your reasons to him or give him a chance at a proper goodbye. You're being a complete ass right now."
"Godric, please," Eric interjected, slowly getting to his feet as the first wisps of steam started to rise from their skin. "Please."
Liv reached out for the dark haired vampire, carefully resting her hand on his cool cheek and submerging herself in the swirl of her visions. She saw that very rooftop and Godric pulling off his shirt as he slowly walked towards the rising sun, steam rising from his pale skin before his slender figure was engulfed in blue flames. But that vision was interwoven with cruel snapshots of Godric's last moments as a human, his Roman master choking him, beating him, raping him as he slowly drained him of all blood, leaving fang marks all over his young body.
"You're not resolved, Godric," Liv pleaded, her voice softening. "You're hungry and tired and you're not thinking clearly. Please just come inside and let us take care of you. Please don't make me add another person whose death I couldn't prevent."
"I'm hurting you," Godric murmured, brushing the tears from under her eyes, and then looked to Eric. "I never wanted to hurt anyone again. Go inside, Eric."
"Not without you," Eric insisted, taking Godric by the shoulders. "Jag vandrar vid din sida genom världen… genom mörkret. Alltid.(1) Come with me, please."
Liv didn't know what Eric had said to his maker, but she felt the rigidness go out of Godric's posture and when she grasped his hand and started towards the stairwell he allowed himself to be moved. Eric took a hold of Godric's other hand and together they pulled him into the relative safety of the shaded stairwell. The door closed behind them with a muted bang and Liv had to lock her knees and remind herself that she had to be strong a little while longer.
"Let's get the two of you into bed," she said, clutching Godric a little tighter both to keep herself upright and to keep him from turning back around. "Eric, I need you to stay awake, please. You're too heavy for me to move by myself if you drop dead now."
Eric obediently jerked his head up again, making an effort to look slightly more alert, and the three of them trudged with moderate haste back to Eric's rooms, through the sitting area to the bedroom. Liv pushed Godric down on the bed and knelt in front of him to take off his shoes. She folded back the bedcovers, adjusted the pillows and carefully maneuvered him into bed, cradling Godric's head to her chest and carding her fingers slowly through his short hair.
"You don't have to keep holding me. I know it hurts you to touch me," Godric protested weakly.
"What hurts me is that you think you have to bear all this pain alone. You don't, and I will gladly hold you all day if that makes you feel even slightly better," Liv explained, leaning over him to press a small kiss to his forehead. "Now hush, I'm not leaving and you both need rest."
The bed jostled slightly as Eric got in on the other side. She glanced up briefly and found that Eric had quickly washed the blood from his face and undressed down to a pair of black boxer shorts. If the situation had been different, she might have been a bit more self-conscious of sharing a bed with such a fine exemplar of the male anatomy, but as it was she barely startled as Eric reached over her and pulled them both against his chest, arranging Godric into the curve of his body with centuries' of practice and not letting Liv's presence discomfit him in any way.
"Promise me you will still be here when I wake," Eric demanded and Godric gave the tiniest nod. "I promise."
Liv closed her eyes. With the constant skin contact her curse was in overdrive and buried her in a rush of jarring and disconcerting visions that seemed to pull her into every which direction. Seeing with her eyes only added to the sense of displacement and made her feel dizzy and light-headed on top of everything else. She absently played with Godric's soft hair and allowed her hands to glide along the lean muscles of his back, up and down, up and down, in what she hoped was a soothing motion, while she tried to remind herself that what she was seeing was a long time in the past, that Godric had survived, revenged, prospered and forgiven. She still wanted to punch Godric's asshole of a maker in the face.
Then she was suddenly looking at the back of her eyelids as Godric died for the day. Liv remained still for a moment, concentrated on her breathing and tried to master her nausea. When that didn't work, she rolled away from the two vampires, lurched out of bed and stumbled towards the bathroom, banging her hipbone into the door frame. She hardly noticed the brief instant of pain as she lost the contents of her stomach into the toilet and then dissolved into a mess of sobs and dry heaves, stricken by Godric's almost suicide and the horrid impressions she had received of his past.
"Liv?" Eric questioned, startling her horribly as his voice suddenly sounded from behind. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Just don't touch me," she whispered, flushing the toilet and then resting her forehead against the cool porcelain of the seat. "You should go to sleep. I'm fine – I'm going to be fine."
"You're shaking," Eric pointed out gently, but in the small bathroom and to Liv's already frayed nerves his presence was too overwhelming.
"Please go to sleep, Eric," she pleaded. "I just need quiet right now."
"All right," the tall vampire agreed, still in that same uncharacteristically soft voice. "But wake me if you need anything."
"Thanks," Liv whispered, closing her eyes again as Eric shut the bathroom door from the outside with a soft click.
She was too exhausted and in too much pain to feel relieved, exactly, but with Eric gone she could go back to her breathing exercises and try to rebuild her barriers. An indefinite while later, she was at least confident enough to leave the immediate vicinity of the toilet, wash her face and brush her teeth with one of the complimentary tooth brushes.
Feeling slightly more human, she peeked in on the sleeping vampires, finding that Eric had once again wrapped himself around his maker and that both of them were thankfully still and finally dead to the world. They looked peaceful and if you didn't pay too close attention to the way their chests didn't move you might think they were just lost to a deep and dreamless sleep. Liv hoped their rest was as close to that as was possible for vampires.
She was getting a bit tired herself, but at the same time she felt raw, as if the open wounds of her soul had been turned to the outside and were exposed with not even a veil of protection. Everything, real and imagined, chafed. She pulled off her borrowed clothes and turned on every faucet in the bathroom, at the sinks, the bidet and at the bathtub/shower combination. Water made her think of her mother and though those memories were not exactly positive, they always helped her to remember who she was and who she wanted to be. She needed that right now.
After a few minutes she twisted her hair into a high bun and secured it with a scrunchie, then turned off the water at the sink and the bidet and stepped into the shower, allowing the warm water to cascade over her back and shoulders. She took her time soaping up and made sure to thoroughly scrub her feet after her bare-footed excursion through the hotel.
Freshly showered and dressed once more in the clothes Godric had lent her, she put the bathroom back to order and then took a few extra moments to clean the bite mark on her neck and cover it with one of the complimentary band-aids from the medicine cabinet. With any luck, it wouldn't scar.
Once back in the bedroom, she considered the tableau for a moment, wondering if she should camp out on the sofa instead. But the idea of leaving Godric's side, even if he was fast asleep and had Eric to keep him company, didn't sit well with her and so she reclaimed her earlier spot, sandwiching the dark-haired vampire between Eric and herself. Tucked in close and wrapped in the bedcovers to counter the unnatural coolness of her bedmates, she drifted off to sleep without further ado.
(1) I walk with you through the world… through the darkness. Always.