A/N: I started my grad school apps! Fingers very very crossed.
Eric had fulfilled his promise—Paris was everything Vera dreamed and more. The boulevards were wider and the gardens more regal than they were in Prague. She felt as though the world had expanded. From the cramped upper room in the labyrinthine Jewish Quarter and the first nights in Eric's dank cellar, she had somehow found herself on the terrace of a café overlooking the glittering Seine, breathing in the sweet, bright air of early spring.
Their trip across Germany had been unusual, but Vera had never traveled far from home and hardly noticed their peculiar accommodations. It seemed Eric knew several of his kind along the route. One in particular struck Vera, especially in the devoted, deferent way Eric treated him. He was small, stoic, and spoke to Eric in their own old language. He occupied a medieval castle in Hesse, surrounded by a retinue of ghostly servants. When Vera asked about him, Eric was evasive at first.
"He is of special importance to me," he replied. "I would not be what I am now without him."
She pressed the matter further.
Eric finally answered, "He is, you could say, my father."
Accepting that, Vera observed their interactions with fascination. With no one else had she seen Eric so quietly subdue the passion and power that defined his existence. He almost seemed human and Vera loved him more at the sight of such tenderness.
She thought of her own father and his abrupt abandonment of her. She believed it was an irreversible act. Yet, here two undying beings displayed care and concern for each other as though no time had passed, no errors were made, and no offenses given. She wondered if she would find that reconciliation and peace in the life Eric offered. Or would her sadness and anger only deepen as all but she left the world? God would judge them, though she never could.
Vera's intensifying attachment to Eric still had not swayed her in that question of death or life. Instead, she held out without making a choice, drinking every moment dry, avoiding his urgent whispers of an eternity of love, an eternity of his body.
She was glad, at least, upon reaching Paris, that she retained her humanity to see the stained glass of Notre-Dame in the blazing sun. Within the cool shade of those stone walls, with the heady scent of wax and incense wafting in the air, Vera watched the colors splay across the floor like a painting.
She hoped that they would stay in the city long enough for her to see the rose gardens in bloom outside the cathedral. Eric had not said how long they would be there or where they would go next. They had left little of their life behind in Prague. It seemed that Eric was through with that city and she did not protest. It calmed Vera to think of the fresh start they were making. He said that she was his wife; he would keep her with him always. There was to be no more painful solitude, no more dark rooms. Wherever they went would be better than where she had been before. Vera put all her faith in him.
"When you were a child," Eric asked one night, "what did you wish for? For your future?"
Vera sighed.
"My sister, Kamila. It was an impossible wish."
"How?"
Vera gave him a puzzled look.
"She had died," she answered plainly.
Eric's face softened as though he realized something.
"You wanted her to come back?"
Tears welled in her eyes.
"Forgive me," he said. "I have forgotten how much that hurts. I have not. . .lost anyone. In a long time."
Eric brushed a tear from her cheek.
"And yet, what did you dream of for yourself?" he continued. "A nice house? Lots of children?"
Vera blushed.
"What?" Eric asked, smiling at her bashfulness. "You can tell me."
"I wanted to live in the palace."
"In Prague?"
He laughed.
"Queen of Bohemia," he teased. "Empress Vera."
"Stop."
"There is a room in the palace that you would love," Eric said. "Lots of mirrors."
"How do you know?"
"I ransacked it."
Vera looked up at him in surprise.
"You—but that was—"
"Two hundred years ago? Yes. 1648 to be exact. That is how I came from Sweden."
"And now you are in Paris," she said, still marveling at his age. "With me."
Eric kissed her.
"Which is better?" she whispered hastily, boldly.
Eric took her face in his hands.
"You. My darling fairy, you."
He kissed her more deeply. She pulled away just for an instant to ask, "If you had been in Prague for so long, why were you living in that cellar?"
Eric's face darkened.
"I had made a few mistakes."
She waited for him to explain.
With resistance, he said, "I chose the wrong people. Created a mess."
"Oh."
Vera tried to picture it. All she could see was too much blood and bodies lying limp.
"I would have left, started new somewhere else," Eric went on. "It was humiliating to be so abased. But I was determined to regain a position of authority. My pride demanded it. There is no point to my life otherwise. There is no point to being so superior if I cannot enjoy the fruits of power."
"Power is all you crave?"
"Is there something more noble?"
"Compassion and love for others," Vera replied meekly.
"Is that what you seek in life?" he challenged. "You, who are enamored of your loneliness and infatuated with death."
He looked at her more sharply than he had intended.
She ripped herself from his arms.
"It is only because of what is missing in my life," she said pitifully.
"What do you lack? What could possibly be withheld from you? You have me."
"What does that mean?"
Eric harshly answered, " You have the opportunity to glut yourself on an infinite existence of inhuman strength and passion. And what? You wish to throw away your own life because a few mortals are no longer with you? Wake up, Vera! I will always be with you."
Eric took hold of her shoulders.
"Does that not mean anything to you?"
Vera refused to meet his gaze.
"Look at me," he demanded.
"Please," he added more softly.
She peered up at him, growing weaker in his grasp.
"Do you love me?" she asked.
"I want you," Eric replied.
"You said you would love me. Do you love me?" Vera persisted.
She began to cry silently as he hesitated.
"I want you for eternity. Understand?" he finally said.
"So you will desire me and need me. And when you meet someone else, what then? You may still want me, but only love would keep you faithful, only love would be enough for me. Why should I want to hear you say these same words to some other woman, over and over, year after year?"
"What other women? You are the only one!" he argued.
"Now I am, yes. But forever? In my heart I know that that all my love will only ever belong to you. What is in your heart?"
"Your blood! You! You are," Eric shouted.
"And in a century?" Vera asked, trembling.
"Why must you do this?" he replied despondently. "You say your love is mine, but you refuse me. I offer to be with you in a way that no human could and you reject me. You love me, you say. But you do not want me. Not like I want you. You are afraid of what I offer. And you hide behind love and your petty human reverence for it. What makes it so righteous?"
Vera collapsed on the floor.
"Hysterical woman," Eric hissed.
He was about to reach down to comfort her, but he stopped short, as though his pride prevented him.
"I am going out," he said.
"No, please. I am sorry," she sobbed.
He slipped his arms through his coat, took one last look at her, and left.
"I love you, I love you," Vera moaned again and again until, exhausted and hoarse, she faded into sleep.
She vaguely heard Eric's entry in a few hours time, but not enough to notice the second pair of footsteps.
Had to look up some Thirty Years' War history for this one. Battle of Prague 1648. Swedes looted the castle. Also, I've been compulsively avoiding contractions in this story. Does it sound weird?
