Godric watched Eric succumb to death with every ounce of his 2,000-year-old concentration.

He combed his fingers idly through Eric's hair, gazing down at his face as his features slackened. Just when he thought him completely at rest, he jolted, and Godric looked at his hands in puzzlement, seeing his fingers claw at the blankets beneath them as though grasping for something. His last breath left his body in the next instant, in any case, and every sign of tension left him as he slipped away. He looked like death and peace, because one could not exist without the other. One could not have peace without death; one could not have death without peace.

Death - the name Eric had called him by before any other. Barbarian, Tyrant, Comrade, Maker, Godric - those all came later. But Death, Death was first.

Well, Godric had made his peace. He thought he made it much earlier, before he'd offered himself to the anti-vampire church, but he was wrong. Eric deserved a goodbye, and, as unfortunate as the recent turn of events seemed, they had allowed Godric to give him that much, however indirectly. He wanted to make this as painless as possible for everyone involved.

Of course it was going to be difficult for the companion he'd spent the better part of a thousand years with. Godric wasn't so delusional he could deny that. Quite frankly, though, there was nothing he could do to -

Abruptly Godric's body was shot through with deep, cutting aches. His arms, his legs, all of him tensed and throbbed as it had been doing routinely for the past... Week? Two weeks? He wasn't sure. He sat up and rearranged his weeping limbs until the hunger pains eased. As long as he didn't remain in the same position for any extended period of time, it was manageable.

At his age, a sip of blood was all it would take to ward off the spasms, but Godric didn't want it. He took a certain amount of pleasure from his physical suffering, and, anyway, the pain was a welcome distraction from the convoluted workings of his overloaded mind.

He had once heard a doctor say memory was stored in the back of the brain. If that doctor was somehow correct, Godric was sure his memory had filled the back of his head and began pushing forward long ago. He had a sense that the space reserved for his conscious thoughts was shrinking as his past extended. It was almost frighteningly easy to step into another time, another place. He had known so many.

Godric could feel the day's draining effects weakening him. He could not linger any longer. His eternity was, at last, drawing to a close.

He rose with thoughts of the sun burning behind his eyes. The images in his memory of the giant, blazing star that sustained all life were scant and horribly faded. Godric could no longer tell whether they were images he had actually witnessed himself, or if they were sights he'd gathered from photographs and movies over the years.

There were quite a few things like that for him.

Just as he was about to turn in the direction of the door, Godric's eyes fell on the sloppy pile of black garments that Eric had discarded on the floor. The faint glimmer of something unlike the rest struck his eternally puerile curiosity. So few things struck anything in him anymore, he embraced the impulse like something long lost and infinitely precious.

Not a second later, he was kneeling beside the clothes. He lifted the necklace that had captured his attention by the pendent, grasping it inquisitively between his first finger and thumb. A dim shadow of recognition registered within him (dim because that was how everything registered to Godric: dimly, dully, and distantly), and he let the eagle claw slip down to settle in his palm.

The point pressed into his skin. The pale covering a slight inch away from his wrist responded to the pressure like white tissue paper, yielding without any of the resistant bounce one would expect from such an apparently youthful surface.

Godric almost smiled at this minute, tangible proof that his physical self was a lie.

He was still crouched down holding the pendant in his hand when the door opened. In a house full of vampires, in the early hours of a sunlit morning, this was an extremely odd occurrence. He didn't know of any one of his underlings who would be bold enough to burst into his resting place unannounced and uninvited.

Godric looked up into the large, startled eyes of a soldier from the Fellowship of the Sun. He was wearing a utility belt of sorts, equipped with at least a dozen sharp, wooden stakes. They were attached to the belt by thin loops of white elastic, each spaced roughly the width of one large finger apart.

The loop on his right hip was empty. His right hand was not.

He held the freed stake in a fist raised to the same height as his shoulder. He clearly intended to charge into the room and destroy every vampire inside, but he wasn't prepared to find one awake. His eyes widened.

How Godric envied the purpose and determination simmering behind the human's every twisted feature. Even the hatred, ugly as it was, sang out to him. Looking such energy in the face felt so bizarre to him now. It was nearly impossible to believe he'd ever known its urgency. To want, need, crave, care, feel.

Godric pulled unneeded air into his lungs and donated it to a soft sigh. He let the necklace that had captured his interest fall back onto Eric's clothes. When he rose to his feet, the human in the doorway backed a few steps into the hall, his actions much more instinctual than deliberate.

"You are here for my nestmates," Godric said plainly. He followed the human's retreat out of the room and shut the door behind them.

The human man kept the point of the stake trained on Godric's chest, even though his hand was shaking. His eyes twitched with the desire to escape the vampire's stare, but they were unable to break away. The rhythm of his pulse became more pronounced.

Just when it seemed fear would give way to panic, Godric was reminded faith truly was a powerful thing. This man was a warrior on a mission for his leader and their cause to cleanse the planet. If he died, he would die for a reason. His God, his Jesus, would protect and save him. And so all at once his demeanor transformed with conviction.

And Godric envied him again.

"I'm here to send 'em back to hell. Where they belong."

"Hell…" Godric muttered, his thoughts jumping tracks for the moment. "Where is hell, do you think?"

"I don't know. Why don't you tell me when you get there?"

Having no interest in humoring Godric's trivial musings, the servant of His Holy Light made to charge forward and attack.

Godric moved to meet him. Before the man could travel even a step, his wrist was immobilized with as much ease as a baseball thrown into a catcher's ready glove. "I can't allow you to do that. This nest is under my protection. And that is not a responsibility I take lightly."

"Yeah, well, my responsibility is to take you out. And I don't take it lightly either."

The soldier spit on Godric. The saliva was slimy and warm on his cheek, and he paid it little mind. Maybe he would wipe it off later. Maybe it would dry. Maybe he would die soon, and it would parish with him. That seemed oddly fitting - to die with spit on his face.

"If I give you my life, do I have your word you will only harm me and no one else?"

If he were smart, he would have lied. If he were wise, he would have seen the offer for the gift it was and accepted. As it turned out, the Soldier of the Sun was neither of these things.

"Fuck you!"

Godric placed one hand around the man's jaw. He disarmed him with the other, then lifted it to the base of the skull. His hold was tight and strategic, practiced and sure.

"I admire your bravery," he said, and then he twisted the neck swiftly to one side and snapped it.

The body went limp. He dropped it, listening to the faint thud as it hit the carpeted floor. The killing was fast and efficient, which was preferable to Godric, and the Soldier of the Sun's brief interruption was filed away with the thousands of others who had died at his hands and almost, always almost, forgotten.

For a moment, he let the images of his victims flash at him. The dead, the drained, and the tortured all converged together as if they were pages in a scrapbook of atrocity. One on a piano, another on a bed, twenty by the mouth of a cave, an entire army... Somewhere along the line Godric lost count. Oh, well. The numbers were far too high to mean anything anyway.

Godric tucked the images away to find the body of the fallen soldier much closer than he remembered it being before. He looked down at himself and realized his legs were no longer supporting him. His body rested on the floor, tangled and useless. He tried to evaluate his physical state objectively, finding himself dizzy and unable to summon the strength to stand. He attributed it to the time of day in combination with the lack of blood in his system.

He permitted his head to loll to the side, his eyes downcast. What he wouldn't give for a window. Just one tiny pane of glass through which the sun could reach him. His end would be slow, excruciating, and wonderful in the muted rays… What would the others think when night fell again and they found him slumped against this wall…?

The body beside him could explain his peculiar position easily enough. But they would surely cry out for vengeance then. He'd already coaxed peace from them once. They would not concede to it again without some sort of struggle. Godric could not hold them off… forever.

Not if…

Didn't want… mutiny…

Temporary death, or something equally mind-numbing, claimed Godric then. But the nothingness was not long lasting. He opened his eyes in a daze, discovering that he had slid further down the wall. He could feel the fibers of the carpet leaving an impression in his cheek and considered attempting to right himself, but had no desire to move, had no desire for anything at all.

He glanced up at the silver chains still gleaming beside him. They were wrapped around the dead soldier's chest in an awkward crisscrossing fashion, obviously strung together hastily in preparation for infiltrating the nest. Godric reached out with a heavy, unwilling arm and pressed his fingertips against the caustic metal.

In the dead silence, he could hear the soft sizzling sound as it burned through his skin and into his flesh. He waited a beat before pulling a slight distance away. His fingers remained connected to the chain by thin, bloody strings of melted tissue.

Godric stared, bemused.

It was really rather beautiful.

A vague itching sensation on the roof of his mouth was the only sign his fangs wished to emerge. For most, it was considered impossible to keep them retracted when coming in contact with silver. Like many things generally considered facts in the vampire community, this no longer held true where Godric was… concerned.

At times… it all became so...

…another night, another hour…

…unendurable.

"Godric?"

He was too far out of it to decide whether he'd actually heard the woman's voice calling to him, or if its quiet twang was an echo from long ago, resounding back from someplace beyond the brink of his sanity. His mind was made up for him as she came into view (had his eyes been open all this time?) moving toward him down the hall. Her pace was brisk, her face anxious as she took in his position on the floor.

It was a familiar face, he knew. It was nice to know. It was nice to be certain that their meeting had happened and settled somewhere inside his cluttered brain. Or did she merely resemble someone else he'd come in contact with over the years?

Human beings held fast to the idea that they were individuals, each of them distinct and separate from the other, and no two could ever be alike. Over 2,000 years of living among them had taught Godric differently. A pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth… It all blurred together after awhile.

Could she, then, be a dream? He seldom dreamed anymore, but he was sleeping in such an unusual position… No, not sleeping. Dead. He was dead. How, then, could Godric have ever had a dream? Did the dead dream? But, no, he wasn't dead. He was - He was -

Godric's head began to spin in circles, careening out of control into complete pandemonium. Words - trillions of words, all in varying dialects from everywhere in the past and present combined - rushed through his depleted mind like a herd of wild horses on a path so beaten it could hardly be discerned as a path at all anymore.

His expression contorted into a grimace, but he was beyond noticing.

Stop, stop, stop. Please. Please stop. Oh, I'm tired, so tired… Please…

Focus. Focus. Focus on something, anything. The woman, the woman, pay attention to the woman.

She was hurrying to get to him, but the concern that propelled her forward evaporated when her gaze fell on the corpse at his side. She halted, her eyes enlarged, and she swallowed laboriously. Her face was an exact replica of the one she had been wearing after she watched him kill Gabe in the basement of the church.

Oh, yes. So that was where they'd met.

He could tell the exact moment when the stakes and silver chains decorating the body changed her mind again. She raced to Godric, giving the fallen Solider of the Sun an unnecessarily harsh kick when his body obstructed her path.

"What did he do to you?" Her hands twittered uncertainly over his immobile form. "Are you hurt?"

Godric stared at the blood drying on his recently healed fingertips. Had there really been that much? Perhaps it was the bleeds. "No."

He made an effort to sit up. The effort was successful, but he was assaulted with a powerful wave of dizziness upon rising and bobbled drunkenly. The woman grabbed hold of his arm to steady him. It was strange to be so weak, even a bit refreshing.

"Come on. It's light out. We need to find you a place to rest."

She looped his arm securely around her slender shoulders, and he did his best to help her heft him to his feet. They trudged slowly in some direction or other, her steps made sluggish by his. By the time it occurred to Godric that they had been a mere foot away from his sleeping quarters, they were long since past it.

He paid more careful attention to their progress after that, waiting until he spotted a door he was sure led to an empty bed. "Stop here."

She did as he said. "Here?"

He nodded.

She twisted the knob, but nothing came of it. She tried again. Still nothing. "Do you have a key? It's locked."

He replaced her feeble grip with his own, though it felt feeble too when compared to his usual strength. Still, it was no trouble to twist the mechanism hard enough to snap the pins preventing it from turning.

"I guess that'll do it." She pushed the door aside without pausing, her experience with his kind apparent.

He let her guide him inside, feeling something near relief, until he noticed that the bed he needed was already occupied. There was a man slumped over on the edge of the mattress. They stopped in front of him, the floor squeaked beneath their feet, and he started and jerked upright. Godric recognized this face without too much struggle. It was Isabel's human, the one who had revealed himself to be a traitor.

The woman's voice went sour. "What are you doin' here?"

"What am I doing? Sookie, what are you - " Hugo's eyes moved rapidly between her and Godric. He squeezed them shut and ground the heel of his hand into his crinkled lids. "Okay," he said, as if coming to some sort of agreement with himself. "Okay."

In that moment, Godric could almost relate to him. "Did Isabel place you here?"

"Yeah." He stood up and looked at him. "Yes. She did. She told me to wait. That whatever happens to me is your decision."

In spite of his best efforts to remain both upright and focused, Godric began to sway from side to side, his legs threatening to give way. The woman took note of this a second after he did and tightened her hold on him accordingly.

Hugo watched, his resolve shaken. "Are you… alright?"

"Of course he's not alright!" The woman snapped before Godric could formulate a response. "It's the middle of the day, and you're smack dab in the way of his bed. I'm sure the last thing he wants to do right now is figure out what to do with you."

Godric let the woman (Sookie, was it?) pull him toward the bed, but he stopped just short of reaching it.

"Come on," she encouraged, assuming he was giving up. "Almost there."

Calling upon the impenetrable willpower that had seen him through 2,000 years of existence, he straightened and ducked out from under her hold. "The day would be the safest time for you to leave," he said, facing Hugo. He could hold the exhaustion at bay for a few moments longer. He could think clearly enough to give instructions that would preserve a life in place of the soldier's he had just taken away. "Go now, get as far from here as you can. I will send someone I trust to check after you when darkness falls again."

Hugo was still at first. He began to nod, slowly at first, resigned, and then his head shot up. "Really? I can go? I can - Thank you!" He raced to the door. "Thank you!"

The instant Hugo disappeared from view, Godric collapsed on the bed.

"Are you gonna be okay?" a soft voice asked from somewhere above him.

"Soon," he replied, remembering the woman. "Thank you."

"Oh, not at all. I mean, it's the least I could do after…" she struggled for words, "what you did for me." Her mouth pulled up into a tense grin that made absolutely no sense when they both knew she was referring to her own near-rape.

There was a beat of silence.

"Goodnight," she said, and then stumbled when she realized it was the wrong sentiment. "Er - good… day, I guess."

She closed the door behind her, encasing Godric in a dungeon of black he knew better than his reflection.

As he waited for death to claim him, he thought about the reality he would return to when he opened his eyes again. Though he had planned otherwise, he would have to withstand another night of existing. He wasn't angered by the idea, or even saddened. There was no remorse or relief. There was no… anything.

He thought of Isabel, and Stan, and all of the other vampires in his nest. He thought of how much they relied on him, how often they turned to him for guidance when they were lost. He thought of the vow he'd made to himself once upon a time to survive, no matter the cost.

He thought of Eric.

Godric tried with every ounce of his weary concentration to wade through the sea of numbness that had materialized around him like insulation from the world. He tried to reach above the black, empty submergence to grasp at some shadow of feeling. He wanted so badly at that moment to find something beyond indifference.

He wanted it for his nest, for his past self, for Eric.

But all he could pick up on was an obscure tingling of bitter, jaded disappointment. Like a human limb that had been twisted the wrong way for far too long.