Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
--William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
"What are you?" the tall woman asks, wonder and desire in her voice, her dark curls bound in a loose braid falling onto her shoulder.
"A waitress," the tiny blond responds defiantly.
She thinks about the handsome dead man that asked her this very question not so long ago, and all the not-quite-humans that have asked this of her since then. And she finds herself asking this question of herself, more and more, with every passing day.
But Maryanne will not back down, and Sookie finally gives in.
"Fine. What am I?" she asks, looking up into the crazed eyes of the dark-haired beauty, hoping to find the answer there. Sookie directed the question at Maryanne, but she was also asking herself.
"You're definitely beyond human," Maryanne answers her, but not really. The blue eyes widen with fear and frustration, because she already knew this, but it's the first time she's forced to stare it in the face. And because she still doesn't know what she is.
"I am not interested in Sookie." The tall, blond Viking vampire told this to his maker's second just a few days ago. "And even less in how Bill Compton feels."
Yet now, confronted with her mortality he'd asked for her. Wrapped in a ribbon. He heard himself say it and wondered what she was, to cause this unsettling behavior in him. He looked away quickly, but not before wondering what he himself was becoming.
But it was more than just this infuriating human that made him unsure. It was the absence and loss of his maker, the lack of what had made the blond vampire what he was, for over 1,000 years.
So what was there left to be?
He was grateful to have the excuse of coming to the queen to help the shifter, because it would be too disturbing to have gone on his own, just because his mortal obsession was in danger.
He sees his queen watching him roll the dice from beneath her pale lashes. He wonders how long she will make him stay here, yet knows he can't go until she wills it. So he pretends he's not completely irritated at her mundane philosophical musings.
She drones incessantly about the egalitarian nature of her favorite game, and coyly points to Eric, Hadley and the handsome donor boy as she explains that her social, physical and intellectual inferiors are on equal footing with her. But she makes it clear that it's only in this game, and only until she doesn't find it entertaining any more.
She fails to point out that it's much like when the end of your existence finally arrives. It doesn't matter what material riches, intellectual treasures or comforting beliefs you've accumulated. What you have and what you are in this world does not matter because you can't take it with you. In the end, you are only you, naked and alone.
Maryanne is radiating with life when the sacrifice is finally brought in front of her. She is confident that she knows who she is, and more importantly, what she will become, after the years spent on the long journey to get here. Finally, the moment is here. The crowd behind her sways with the madness of it.
Sookie is shaking and sobbing with her fear -- fear of where they're going, and what they'll all become when they get there.
But the cold, strong arms of the dead man hold her in place, forcing her to accept the inevitable. She doesn't know yet that no one, not even Maryanne, knows where they're headed.
"You're lucky, Sam," Maryann informs him with glee. " It's everyone's wish to have their life mean something. So few ever get to realize it."
The vessel is offered. Will the god come? Maryanne knows he's on his way-- she's shuddering with the anticipated pleasure when Sookie shatters her dream.
Courage is fleeting. It can only hold us up as long as we ignore or forget the danger that our actions will bring upon us. Maryanne's rage is screaming in the souls of the surrounding crowd, threatening to shatter their fragile mortal vessels. Sookie fights for their safety because she's still ignoring the danger to her own fragile form. Fear hasn't caught up to her yet, but now it's rushing at her as Maryanne swiftly turns her anger towards the more-than-human blond with the non-existent sense of self-preservation.
Sookie is running scared now, looking back in terror. But wait, she's been here before. It was a different night, but the same creature was hunting her, the same fear nipping at her heels. Sookie falls, and can see nothing but the sharp claw that the creature is raising above her head, as Maryanne towers above her, waiting to strike.
They both hear the sound at the same time. Maryanne's claw is raised in mid-air when she is frozen by the sound she's been waiting to hear for so long.
Her husband has arrived. Finally.
Her claws retract, the anger smoothed away by the coming of her life's meaning. She moves towards the horned one, whispering to her betrothed. "I'm here my love. We're together at last. Come to me."
The blond one, once again, can only stare in horror as she is pulled into a place, a world, she wants no part of. And she shudders at what she will become when they get there.
Maryanne opens her arms to him, filled with the love and anticipation of what they will become. He thrusts into her so violently that his horn guts her, coming out drenched in blood through her back.
"I am the one to be sacrificed?" she asks, gasping with disbelief and pain and the pain of disbelief. He thrusts again, lifting her in the air with the force of it.
"I am the vessel!" she screams in painful ecstasy, happy to give herself to him, to become what she needs to be, so that they can go where she always wanted to be. "Yes! I'm happy to die!"
He rams further into her, lifting her higher in the air, her blood rippling on his horn. "Ahhh!" she screams in agony and pain and pleasure. She opens herself up even further to him in the ecstasy of her surrender, the release she's waited for all of these years. "Yes, I am yours." She no longer has to worry about what she is, or where she's been, or where she's going. Her god is releasing her from the darkness of her loneliness.
But he cruelly retreats before she reaches her release, and he rips her heart out of her chest with a very human hand. He stands with her beating heart in his grip. She looks at him with fear, because for the first time tonight, she's not so sure.
She gasps for breath, her body reeling from the disorientation of not knowing what it is. What anything is. Where it was. Where it is going. The questions and doubts are flitting across her eyes and pouring out of the hole in her chest.
"Was there no god?" she asks in a strangled voice, grasping for the assurance of the knowledge that's slipping away. She chokes and withers, consumed with the darkness and the pain that in the end, you are only your own. There's no one there to make you whole.
"Holy fuck" Jason's exclamation shocks Sookie back to the now. "We got her?"
Her brother is standing over the withering corpse bride, next to Tara. She looks dizzy, like she just got off a merry-go-round and the ground doesn't yet feel solid under her.
Sookie nods, at once answering her brother, and trying to reassure her best friend. But she stays close to her saviour.
Eggs has blood on his hands. He wishes he could remember how it got there, how he got here.
Andy wishes that everyone could remember how they got here, and who they had become on the way.
Jason assures him that they should be proud of what they'd become – they were heroes. But Andy isn't quite as satisfied as Jason with how things turned out. Yes, they saved the town, but no one knows that they did.
Does what you do really matter if there's no one there to see you?
But Eggs wants to know what he did. He needs to know.
He begs Sookie to give him the answers she can't give herself. I don't know who I am, he pleads, I don't know what I am. He looks up into her eyes, begging.
He staggers back. The knowledge of the memories doesn't fill the black hole around his heart – it only makes it harder to breathe.
He knew it all along, he just couldn't bring himself to stare at it in the face.
"It wasn't you," she insists. "You had no free will."
But he can't look away from it anymore, not after he finally let himself see it.
Eggs knows, though, that it was his hands that had done all those things, no one else's.
In the end, you are on your own, and everything you do, everything you are, is yours alone.
The pain of knowing what he had become was too much.
He didn't know where he was going, but he didn't want to stay here.
Maybe things would be alright again, the tiny more-than-human blond tries to convince herself, as she sits across the table from her undead hero.
But then Bill forces her to reexamine the comforting beliefs she had just tentatively wrapped around herself.
He slides the box across the table, not able to keep the expectant smile off his face. She stares into his eyes in disbelief, and gasps when she opens the box and sees what's in it, even though she already knew what it would be.
"Miss Stackhouse," he says. "Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"
She can't hide the fear and uncertainty in her face very well.
"That is assuming that last night didn't scare you off weddings for good?" He attempts to lighten the mood, pasting a brave smile on his face. His smile disappears as she remains silent, looking down with embarrassment at the awkwardness of the moment.
"Sookie? Say something," he prods gently, the uncertainty of the heavy silence is sinking him.
She wants to relieve his uneasiness, but the fear is crashing over her.
"I can't even think straight," she answers him, swallowing hard against the drowning waves of fear. "My life's inside out. With all that's happened... I'm not sure about anything. I don't even know if I'm human."
"What?"
"Maybe I am some kind of freak. And what happens... when I grow old... and weak... and you're still the same – what then?" she trails off, sobbing.
"I don't care about any of that. I want you just as you are," he insists.
"But I'm not even sure what I am!" she answers, pleading for him to tell her the answer.
But he doesn't realize what she's asking from him. It's too much, so she runs away to try to find the answer herself.
She leans against the wall, catching her breath, catching up to herself.
She doesn't know what she is, who she is, and she lets the fear and the void of that finally wash over her. She stands with just herself in front of the mirror, and cries at the painful loneliness of it.
But then she looks at the ring he gave her, and latches on to her dead hero. She puts it on, sees it on her hand in the mirror – and she is no longer alone with her lonely and terrifying non-humanity.
Yes, she manages to convince herself, everything will be alright.
She might not be what she always thought she was, she might not know what she is, but now, at least, she knows where she is going.
Until she walks back into the world, and finally realizes, that she is on her own.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars,
But in ourselves…
-- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
A/N: Paul Gaugin considered "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" his greatest and most meaningful masterpiece. He is famous for telling the story that this painting was inspired by a failed suicide attempt, a story he seems to have concocted, perhaps because he thought it would imbue the painting with more significance. I've always thought it was so interesting that he felt like he had to come up with such a story, for a painting that deals with the very questions of learning to face our true nature. Was Maryanne right? Is it every (wo)man's greatest dream to find that their life has purpose? And our greatest fear to wake up one day and realize that we're fooling ourselves? Gah! I end my art appreciation 101 lecture/philosophy rant here:)
And, my apologies to all my fellow Viking lovers – I know this didn't make you feel any better:)
Thank you, once again, to the amazing VampLover1 for betaing.
Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to the Sookie Stackhouse Series or the HBO series True Blood