My boy.
Overcome with emotion, I hurried over to him and pulled him into a tight embrace.
"Godric, oh my Godric!" I cried tears onto his shoulder for joy. He stayed still.
"Mother," he said in a hollow voice. "Why am I here, why am I alive?"
I sniffed and pulled back to face him. "Because, my boy, I brought you back. Remember when I took a piece of your soul so you could never die? I used that to bring you back."
He looked horrified. "But Dinah, I wish to die. That is why I met the sun."
"You had no right to do that," I said sadly, "You gave up the right to die two thousand years ago when you gave me a ppiece of your soul so I could ensure your immortality. When you promised to live and share your life with me and never abandon me in exchange for immortal life. You still owe so much to me, to Eric, to everyone who knows you and the entirety of vampire kind. It is not your time or your right to choose to die. You bound yourself to me."
He stared at me, horrified. "I have not seen you for three hundred years, how can you claim I am bound to you?"
"Because I never released you!" I protested, not understanding how he could not comprehend this. "Yes, we parted ways because I wanted you to live your life how you wished and live for a time without me by your side. I wanted to give you some freedom, but I never released you! I never severed our connection or our agreement. I never stopped being your mother! Just because I am not with you physically does not mean we are not still connected!"
"You are not my mother." He said angrily, his eyes narrowing. "My mother was named Petronella. She was a human woman."
My heart shattered into a million pieces. "Godric, I am the woman who gave you life, over and over again. I am the woman who made you who you are today. How can you say that I am not your mother. Twice now I have given you life. You have called me mother for two thousand years. You cannot suddenly say someone is not your mother when you have known them as such for two thousand years!"
"A mother would not think she owned me. A mother does not decide when someone can die."
"Oh, and a person should have the right to pick their own death for themselves?" I asked."Godric, I know you are confused and I know things have been hard, but this was the coward's way out and you know it. How could you abandon everyone when the vampire world needs people like you? It is not your time!"
"No," he said, "My time was two thousand years ago lying in a tent in a village in England that was on fire, dying of pneumonia. But you stopped that. Instead you gave me this two thousand year long bout of insanity!"
Tears ran down my face in rivers. "Is that what you think your life was? Insanity? Is that also what you think of me? Of my life? Do you think I should greet the sun as well? That all vampires should? That we should all die just to settle your conscience?"
"It might be a better thing, a solution to all the harm I have caused for me to die. I had to atone for my sins! This isn't about you!"
"You don't atone for sins by dying! You atone by working to make the world a better place. Something you could have done, but you decided to abandon that responsibility instead. Do you think it really means something that you burned to death after all the pain and suffering you've caused in your life? Do you think the world would be any less bad because you died? No, it isn't. You just leave a mess. The only way to fix things is to do good just as you have done bad, to clean up some messes and care for those you love so you can add some positivity to the world instead of just negativity! You can't just check yourself out and expect everything to be okay! You hurt all those who loved and deprived a world that needs you of all you have to offer it. And you have no right to do that, You have no right to do that and you had no right to try and abandon me!"
I felt the weight of two milleniums worth of love come down on me and I cried. I cried for the son who no longer wanted life, who no longer saw me as his mother. Who no longer cared for anything. I cried and cried. I cried so much I did not even realize that Godric had wrapped his arms around me and started to cry with me, moaning apologies in my ear.
When I finally came to, I pulled away and looked at him. "You're… holding me."
He looked at me with a sad smile. "Yes, Mama, I am. I am so sorry. I didn't understand. I was confused. I never should have tried to kill myself. Thank you so much for bringing me back. I will make amends, I promise."
I smiled at him and kissed him. "Of course you will, my child. I know you will."
~-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------~
Two hours later Godric was sitting in the parlor of Eric's estate in some of Eric's black clothes, staring at the empty fireplace. Eric sat to his side, staring at his maker with a mix of wonder and nervousness. I entered the parlor and put my hand on Godric's shoulder. He looked up at me.
"Mother, I will live but… I am not sure how."
"One night at a time, Godric, one night at a time. The three of us must stick together. We need each other more than ever."
"I want to go back to Dallas," my son said, "To see Isabelle and the others. I want to see what has happened in my old area. I miss the city."
"Godric, do you really think that's wise? Everyone there thinks you're dead. Someone might become suspicious of you if you turn up living or something. They might think it's a plot to take back Dalla, possibly even Texas. Everyone knows you could have been king if you had wanted to."
"Why don't we have Isabelle travel to Shreveport to meet you instead?" I suggested. "It might seem less strange if you have a meeting with her before you go to Texas. She can prepare people back in Dallas for you."
Godric nodded at me. "We will do that then. That is, if Eric does not mind playing host to another sheriff for a while."
"Of course not. I will send an invitation to Isabelle tonight."
~----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------~
I sat out on the porch in one of my old navy blue dresses, my ponytail tied with a ribbon. The night was beautiful, but it was a little too hot. I didn't care too much though. The sounds coming from the woods were entertaining and somewhat musical.
I did something I had not done for centuries: I took a breath. It was strange at first, taking in the humid air, but strangely refreshing.
I smelled his scent before he walked behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I placed my hand over his. "I'm glad he's back too."
"He doesn't talk much. He just seems really contemplative." Eric mused. "I'm worried about him."
`"I think you're the only person on the planet who loves him as much as I do," I commented. "He's the only person you'll think of besides yourself."
Eric ignored the remark. "Do you think he will try to greet the sun again?"
"No. I've convinced him that it would be a cowardly act. I think I've persuaded him to live again, I just need to find a way to get him to enjoy it." I said grimly. "He used to love life so much. He used to love being a vampire."
"He has changed," Eric admitted. "He's become… merciful. He's so afraid of spilling any blood. He's so passive. When the Fellowship took him, well, when he volunteered himself, his rationale was that they were going to take someone and they treated him well. He didn't even seem to care that they had violated his rights and spread hate about him and his kind and were trying to kill him. He only did something when humans were threatened. He forgave a traitor, and just gave up his post as sheriff when Nan Flanagan got on his ass. He put up no resistance. He does not even eat. I offered him an AB Negative human and all he can say is 'I'm not hungry.' It's like he hates what he is."
"That's not good. He can hate what he's done, but not what he is." I said. "Like a lot of other people, he doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between the two. You'd think after two thousand years he wouldn't have this problem."
"What are we going to do?"
"Delay Isabelle's invitation. We need to have him around humans. Are there any humans he knows or trusts?"
"There's one. She lives in this area, actually. She's not completely normal, though. She's a telepath. But she helped us find and retrieve Godric from the Fellowship. She's in a relationship with one of the vampires in my area."
There was something in the way he said that last sentence that caught my attention. "Are you interested in this human?"
"I have a minor sexual interest. I tricked her into sucking my blood, so she's not that thrilled with me."
I grunted. "Fantastic. Well then, Godric and I will have to approach her alone. How do I contact her?"
"She works at this redneck bar and grill in Bon Temps as a waitress. The place is called Merlotte's."
"We'll go see her tomorrow night. What's her name?"
"Sookie Stackhouse. She's the blonde with the gap between her teeth and the big brown eyes. Really sweet, but she can get a bit feisty if you piss her off."
"I'll try not to. How does she feel about Godric?"
"He saved her from a rapist and saved her life in the same night. She was the one who was with him when he died."
"Then we can trust her."
"She has proved to be a courageous and loyal friend of our kind and to me."
Eric and I looked over toward the door where Godric had appeared.
"Darling!" I said, getting up and hugging him. "Are you feeling okay?"
"I am fine. I'm sorry to have worried the two of you."
"Don't think about it. You just try and feel better. We were thinking of having you see one of your human friends!"
Godric gave me a steady look. "Dinah, I am not a child, please stop treating me like one. I do not need you to arrange play dates for me."
I blushed. "Sorry. I'm just trying to…"
"I know," he said, cutting me off. "But it's going to take some getting used to. I may see Sookie now that I'm in the area, but I don't want to have you holding my hand the entire time. This is me you're dealing with, don't forget that."
I smiled. "How could I?"
I was overcome with guilt. My boy was suffering, and I didn't know how to help him. I could not help but think that if I had been there, if I had not gone three hundred years without seeing him, I could have kept this from happening. I did not want him to see any joy in death. I wanted him to love his life, and he had lost that.
I had had a similar crisis of faith a few millennia prior to this. But what kept me going was seeing the constant brutality humans inflicted on each other. I lost the shame I felt in eating when I saw how humans could and would do much worse to their own kind. I went through a period where I only killed evil doers, but in a world of prejudice, ignorance and oppression there were very few humans that did not fit the bill. Everyone seemed to be a child abuser, or a slave owner, or a thief, or a corrupt exploiter of the masses, or a fountain of intolerance, or a rapist. You couldn't find many people who did commit act of evil.
But I saw hope as the world changed, and now the world was becoming brighter than ever. More acceptance, more understanding, so much though that even our kind could reveal ourselves to the world. I could not understand how Godric would not want to be alive at this point in history, when he could be such an important player in the coming events!
He asked me not to forget who he was, but I felt like he was forgetting himself.
I looked him up and down, not sure what to make of him. He had cut his hair short, which emphasized the roundness of his faith. His blue eyes were deep set and held a weight that let you know that he had seen more than his cherubic face would lead you to believe. Peeking out from the black tank top Eric had loaned him was the black fringe tattoo that circled his shoulders. He was such a mixture of innocence and guilt. He was haunted in a way only a vampire could be. I wanted so badly to reach out and pull him into my arms and never, ever let him go.
As I watched him, I tried to picture him when we had parted ways. We had been in Berlin and he had devilish smile on his face constantly, especially as he drank from a servant girl named Freida who had fallen in love with him. But I didn't see that person anymore. I had to wonder, when did he change? When did he decide that in addition to being merciful and good he should hate himself at the same time.
"Come sit with us, Sweetheart," I said, patting one of the chairs. Godric sat and looked up at the crescent moon.
"So beautiful," he commented, "But I have seen it so many times. When I… Went out, it was the first time I had seen the sun in two thousand years. I had forgotten how beautiful it was. I was so filled with joy…"
"You can be happy again, Godric, for you to find happiness in death is just madness." Eric said.
"But I have been dead for two thousand years."
"No, you have not," I snapped. "You merely have been in another phase of life. None of us are dead. We living in the physical world, we cause things to happen and interact with things and beings around us. A dead person cannot do that."
He looked at me. "Our hearts don't beat. We don't breathe. We don't process food. Those are the things living things do as well."
"We are not any less alive just because our mechanics work differently." I argued. "It's just a different miracle."
"I love you, Mother. And I will see Sookie Stackhouse tomorrow."
