Spoilers: through Dead and Gone

Beta: (the awesome) SabaceanBabe

Disclaimer: This is a transformative work, based on the characters and world created by Charlaine Harris. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author's note: Apparently Veteran's Day inspired me to write a quick character study about Eric on battlefields. Just another short piece to continue my writing practice...

Eric turned off the T.V. over the bar with a quick press of a button. Preparations for war were the only news items of the day and he was long past the point of feeling anything about men killing each other for any reason. It was tedious at best. The rhetoric of killing was the same and he'd heard it all. Multiple times ad nauseum. Humans could condemn the killing vampires did all they wanted and Eric did not care. It was true that vampires had killed more often than not. Killing was in their nature and their survival quite often depended on it. But bloodlust was common to both humans and vampires—after all they used to be one and the same—the vampires just learned to be more discreet over time. But humans were a brutal race who conveniently ignored that fact when it suited them. He watched generation after generation of hypocrites come and go killing their youth indiscriminately, and he mourned not a one of them. Humans were just as proficient in killing as vampires after centuries of war, conquests, and petty arguments leading to death, destruction, and devastation. War was as regular as the moon hanging in the sky. And when humans got their bloodlust up, they acted upon it on such a grand scale that Eric was more than happy to sit back and watch it happen. Humans could be so entertaining when they set their minds to it.

When he was still learning vampire ways from his Maker, Appius Livius Ocella, they would seek out and take advantage of local conflict practically for sport. Eric was far more fond of the "glamour pretty women, have sex and feed" routine, but it was just that—routine—and there were lessons to be learned by trying new things. Semi-regular feedings for them lay in the well-populated cities where they could stay for a time undetected, learning the political climates, the rivalries, and who would be the most likely adversary to the ruling classes. If they were lucky, wars and revolution would start on their own, but Ocella was not above giving the occasional nudge in the right direction to get the violence rolling. After several centuries of manipulation he was a master at it and Eric was a quick learner. The most important lesson he took away from his training was that although times may change, human nature did not.

Ocella especially enjoyed going to large towns where there would be a couple of rival wealthy families. It took practically no effort to figure out who they were, what would move them to violence, and make it happen. More often than not, one or the other family would have a beautiful daughter of marrying age or a first-born son training to take over the family business. Depending on the mark, either Eric or Ocella would glamour, abduct, and kill them and leave the body with enough evidence to condemn the rival family. After that, it was a matter of time before the revenge killings started and Eric and Ocella would wait in the wings for a snack or three. Ocella's fondness for toying with humans was born of boredom and an ego as vast as the Roman Empire had once been, but nothing excited him like the prospect of war.

Being a former soldier, Ocella still found it difficult to stay away from combat, and when Ocella was set on going, Eric could not refuse him even if he had wanted to. Besides, following a large army on the move provided so many opportunities for steady meals it was hard to resist. Eric, too, would feel a rush at the thought of the thousands of beating hearts all converging on one place ready to be stopped by spear, sword, bullet, or fang.

Large battles were a feast fit for the Gods and Eric was Odin's own emissary on the battlefield. The Viking in Eric loved a fight—good, bad, dirty, or fair, it didn't matter. His combat skills were exceptional; he was smart, quick, strong, decisive. Being a vampire only enhanced those qualities and on those odd nights where battles raged on into dark, he took immense pleasure in joining the brawl. He took no sides, but he culled the weak. Most often though, he and Ocella would roam the battlefield at night in the guise of medical orderlies or—if they were able to appropriate uniforms—comrades looking for their missing brothers in arms after the day's action was over. They would find the mortally wounded and put them out of their misery. The first few times they did this, it rather galled Eric to be feeding in such a manner. There was little honor in scavenging in his mind and wounded men were just easy pickings and no challenge at all. But there was no denying his hunger or the opportunity.

Eric was reminded of the last soldier he tasted. He had been out among the dead and dying for a short time when he came upon an odd scene. He thought he had seen so much in all his years, but this was something he never expected. Generally Eric stayed away from where the hardest fighting took place. The dead there were no longer fresh and he would not feed on them. Instead, he wandered along the outskirts where the wounded would inch and crawl away from the battle to some sort of safety or cover. Many would spend the nights there bleeding and praying to their deity for salvation but dying all the same.

He thought he was hearing wrong at first. Eric could have sworn he heard a woman crying, but there were no women in this army's entourage. Sometimes wives would travel with their men to tend to them, and sometimes the officers would bring whores who doubled as washer women or cooks, but not here. Not this time—he would have known. Women were just drawn to him. Ocella liked to tease Eric that attracting women was his special vampire talent. Still...He was sure it was a woman's sobs breaking through the moans and delirious cries of pain scattered over the blood-soaked field. He let the sound guide him to a small rise partially concealed by a fallen tree. It was there that he found two soldiers lying on the ground. One obviously dead--he was missing part of his leg and had blood covering his midsection from a deep gash in his side. The other soldier, half pinned by the dead soldier, was a woman. Eric could smell the difference in her immediately.

She was badly wounded; Eric could see that by her limp arm covered in blood from the bicep down and she had a bloody crease on the side of her head. With her good hand she was gripping the front of the dead man's uniform, her knuckles white with the effort. Tears streaked through the dirt and gore covering her plain face, and her dark, cropped hair was wild. She saw Eric and her breath hitched mid-sob.

"Please," she said in a broken voice. "Please..."

Eric knelt down next to her, the sound of her heart thrumming in his ears and the smell of her blood beginning to force his fangs down. It took most of his will to retract them so he could figure this puzzle out without interruption.

"You are a woman," Eric said in mild amazement.

She looked panicked, her eyes wide. "How can you tell?"

"It doesn't matter. What are you doing here dressed as a soldier?" Eric asked quietly, tracing her jaw with his finger.

She shifted, winced, and gripped the body on top of her even tighter. "This is my husband. We have been soldiers together for many campaigns now. I couldn't leave him. I wouldn't leave him."

"Foolish woman," Eric said.

"He's dead, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Please kill me, too. I won't live without him." The woman's voice was confident and surprisingly strong in that moment.

"Your wounds are not mortal. You could go on to live and be happy one day. Why would you ask such a thing?"

For a moment Eric considered turning her. She was obviously strong and loyal. But this death wish over another was more than he could comprehend. Her situation smacked of the culmination of habitual bad judgment and that would obviously be the death of her and someday Eric if she stayed with him.

She was quiet for a moment. "He was all I ever wanted. My family thinks I'm dead already. It is what I want."

"Very well."

Eric shifted the husband off her body and gathered the woman to him. She continued to grip the cold dead hand of the man she fought alongside while Eric commanded her gaze. He could feel her pulse slow as he reached into her mind and eased her worries. This would be the first time he glamoured anyone for their own benefit and not his own.

He spoke softly. "You will no longer hurt."

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Now go be with your mate," Eric said right before he sank his fangs into her neck.

When he finished with her, he felt strong and sated. He arranged the couple near each other, still touching, but not giving away her relationship to the man either. No one would take the time to look at the bite marks he left. She was just another dead soldier after all. He still thought her rather silly to follow the man at all, never mind into death. He had mourned his own wife, whom he did love, but he would never consider throwing himself on her pyre, nor would he want her to do that if he had ever died while she lived. This woman, this soldier, bewildered him, and now she lived on in Eric.

A few decades later, Eric fought against the Fae and lost any taste he had for full-scale combat. Humans were indeed brutal, but they weren't nearly as creative as the Fae and it had tested all his skills to stay alive. But he had. And for quite a long time even. Long enough to decide that he would have to pick another human vice to exploit for the foreseeable future because he needed a break. He had almost forgotten the soldier woman.

Centuries later he thought of her again. Sookie Stackhouse entered his bar and then wound her way into his life and one day he began to have an inkling as to what drove the warrior woman to follow her husband into death. She had fought well to protect him and Eric did not doubt the soldier had done the same for her until his end. They fought because they wanted to live, and it wasn't bad judgment that lead them to death.

It was love.