A/N. I'm not really sure what this is, to be honest. I just finished reading book 9, and was trying to muddle through Niall's words to Sookie. Spoilers for DaG. Your thoughts are appreciated, if you feel like leaving them. (Also, I can't spell. Sorry.)

The vampire is not a bad man, and he loves you.

I'd been bouncing that sentence around my head for two weeks, wondering just who Niall had meant. I was sure it was.... Well, it was either Bill or Eric, that much I knew, and at different moments, which never seemed to settle but kept chasing each other round and round, I was equally certain that it was one, and then the other.

It wast too bad that my great-grandfather had closed off the fairy world for good.

Not that it really mattered who he meant.

Except that it did. For some reason, though I'd only known him a few months, I trusted Niall more in his judgment than I could trust my own, and I found that I really did want to know exactly which vampire he'd meant.

It became my default setting: wondering. I wondered while I showered. I wondered while I ate. I wondered while I worked. I even wondered while I slept, which was a new one on me – and wasn't entirely appreciated; I'd always found respite from my own brain in my sleep. I wondered myself nearly into unemployment.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore; I needed to figure it out.

I showed up on Eric's front door step just as the last ray of sun left the sky.

Pam, after much wheeling and dealing had finally conceded; she'd made me promise to wear a wire – an honest to goodness wire – but she'd agreed to tell me where he lived. I was willing to do anything, so tucking a tape recorder into my jacket didn't phase me in the least. Especially after the week that I – that we'd all – had.

Tray Dawson was dead.

Clancy, though I hadn't been his biggest fan, and vise versa, was dead.

Bill still wavered, stepping closer to Death's doorstep, only to pull away at another infusion of blood.

Eric had been injured. Though it had only taken him a couple of hours to heal.

I was still healing.

I wasn't sure if I would ever be done.

I guess I thought if I could get down to the bottom of Niall's cryptic parting message that I would have a better chance: a better chance at healing, a better chance at being who I was before his fae brethren had hunted me down like a dog. I would even gladly accept the healing to only be a physical one.

I was clinging to Niall's words like my only tether to life, I knew, but it was all that I had left.

Everything hinged on discerning his meaning.

It didn't matter who he meant, it just mattered that I figure it out. Soon. If I left it to fester, not only would I take that final step in loosing whatever sanity I still possessed, but I was pretty sure I would crumble until there was only a Sookie sized whole left in a world that really didn't want me; starting with my heart.

Figure out Niall's riddle, and I wouldn't slowly drive myself mad; figure out Niall's riddle, and I was still Sookie Stackhouse, crazy barmaid, brother to Jason, friend to Amelia. Figure out Niall's riddle, and all would be right with the world again.

I hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge that I actually thought that figuring out who Niall was talking about – and the more I thought about it, the crazier it became; though that didn't stop me – would be like a magical quick fix, a ripple of electricity as the world righted itself.

But then Eric came to the door.

He was wearing only the jeans of his jeans-and-tee combo that he wore so often that I'd secretly begun to think of it as his uniform.

It was so surreal to see him standing there, doing something so human, something that I'd never seen him do before, that somehow it was all wrong.

The house and the lawn and its little garden gnomes were just wrong. His feet were bare. Wrong. His hair wasn't loose. Wrong. His expression lacked the very Eric quality that I'd almost never seen him without, his blue eyes were somehow less blue, his shoulders almost slumped. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I turned around and walked away.

He let me.

WRONG.

But I did it anyway.