Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE.
Born out of a conversation I had with Thyra10 about how no one should be holding their breath waiting for "the talk" because neither Sookie nor Eric will ever initiate it. Those of you who take Eric at face value should be thankful he doesn't exist - he would have eaten you gullible creatures long ago. There are those of us who, like Sookie, favour the idea of suppression.
"I have to go to work, Eric," I said into the phone.
Then he uttered the ominous phrase, "We'll talk about this later."
"Bye Eric." I hung up and got ready to leave.
Not if I have anything to say about it, I thought with finality. Eric can go jump in a lake.
I have a long history of not wanting to talk about things. Talking won't change a thing. If there's one thing a telepath can appreciate, it's silence. Silence is calming and relaxing, and holds no hurts to be rehashed. Silence truly is golden.
.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.
Maybe I never would have been a talkative person. Maybe without telepathy I never would have been the type to hash it all out. But telepathy and all its trials made sure I never was.
I learnt the lesson early on that I shouldn't talk about personal things, of course, that I'd gleaned from the brains of others. But it went deeper than that. My parents didn't want to discuss the dread secret of what I could do. Nor did any of my family. Comfort was offered in a roundabout way, but what could anyone really do for me? They couldn't take it away, they couldn't fix it, and they couldn't make it not happen. They couldn't assure me that it would somehow get better. The truth is that until I met my first vampire, I never had hope that I could ever relax in the company of others.
At heart, no one feels relaxed around a telepath, not when they know that there's a possibility that they can be overheard. It was the biggest issue in my life, and no one wanted to talk about it. The only people who wanted to talk about it were therapists, and they wanted to believe with all their hearts that it wasn't what it was. They couldn't ever reveal the simple truth to themselves, and the lesson I took away is that even therapists want to avoid really thorny issues they can't change.
The best way to cope with speaking to me, being around me, was to make out like it didn't happen. Even when my father used it to find out if a man who wanted to go into the auto parts business with him was an honest man, he didn't want to talk about what I could do. I remember he didn't even want to look at my face when he asked me if the man was telling me the truth.
Until I met Bill, no one wanted to talk about my telepathy. They'd find something else to call it – craziness, astute abilities to read body language, learning disability, anything but what it was, and the simple truth. Even if they wanted to use it, like Daddy in his business, or Jason and the murders he was accused of committing, they certainly didn't want to talk about it. They could accept the fruit, but never the tree.
Of course, the vampires were similar, but far greedier for the fruit than the tree. They coveted my telepathy for what it gave them, but only Bill ever spoke directly about my telepathy itself. Of course, he had his own purposes in doing that, so that's no indication that I should want to do anything. The only reason he wanted to talk about it was to find out the extent and range, and to hone it for vampire use.
Of course, my time with Bill reinforced the message that talking didn't solve anything, and sometimes, it was the opposite of helpful. Talking about my telepathy got me involved in the world of the vampires, never to be released once they realised what I could do, or more specifically, what I could do for them.
If I thought I had someone to talk to in Bill, I was quickly disabused of that notion. One night, reminiscing about our childhoods, the conversation stumbled onto my 'funny uncle'.
One might think that I would relish talking about that, letting yet another secret out. But the truth is that I didn't. Again, what is to be changed by talking about it, but to relive it again? What magical words would make it better? I could think of no way in which to 'solve' the problem, or what had happened.
Of course, I could discuss each incident, talk about it in fine detail, but just generalities of the situation had me crying and seizing up in Bill's bed, my body wanting to hide, go stiff from what had happened to me. I didn't believe that the way to get through that was to talk about it over and over in therapy I couldn't afford until I stopped reacting that way.
How long would it take anyway until I was "okay" with what had happened? Ten years of chatting about it until it became casual to talk about? It wasn't casual, and it could never be casual. I'd just stop reacting. I wouldn't be made whole, and I couldn't scoop out those memories and be a normal Sookie who hadn't had an uncle like him. Until then, I'd have to live with all those memories, stirring them up and up until I stopped reacting. I'd spent enough time in fear, and my Gran had stopped it. Did I really want to go back to that place so that I could continue to go back to that place over and over?
Not only did talking about it bring the inevitable reaction to what my Uncle Bartlett had done, but also Bill went for the obvious solution to a vampire, and had him killed. Of course, I didn't regret his death, didn't mourn him, but that brought home to me that talking about things that had happened in the past lead others to act on them with some twisted sense of authority to make decisions for me. His death didn't make anything better, because he didn't take that part of my childhood with him. He'd taken my childhood years before, and nothing I could do would get it back. He'd killed it.
.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.
It was the same when I found my Gran dead. I didn't talk about it with anyone. I couldn't find it in me to express the sheer horror of finding her dead on the kitchen floor. All of her blood was all over where she'd served me breakfast, where she'd cared for me. In fact, she was killed in my place.
How could I spell out how I felt about my Gran being killed in my place, and in such a brutal way? I didn't want to talk about how it looked; I didn't want to re-envision it. One time was bad enough. I didn't want to go over and over it. My only remaining mother figure, the woman who cared about me deeply, was gone, and I was alone, and it was partly my fault. Oh, I know it wasn't my fault rationally, but there was some small part of me that agreed with Jason and his slap to my face. I'd have gladly taken on her pain if it meant to save her.
Of course, her killer was caught, but what could I in turn say to him? Ask him if he was sorry that he'd done it? Clearly, he wasn't sorry at all. He was sorry that he got caught, sorry that he didn't get to finish what he was doing, but my Gran, she didn't mean a thing to him. I didn't want to be in a room with the man who had killed her.
I didn't talk about it with anyone else either. No words of comfort can be offered to a telepath – not by humans. Vampires had dealt out enough bloody ends themselves that anything they had to say on the subject would be a little hollow. It had to be enough that people were sorry that she died, and that a lot of people didn't want her to go, but to talk about it wouldn't change the pain that my Gran was killed.
.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.
Then of course, there was the fateful trip to Mississippi, the ending of my relationship with Bill and advent of more traumas. Not to say that I was trauma-free before that time, but they were run of the mill traumas in the daily life of a telepath involved in the world of vampires. That meant condemnation from the humans, contempt from the vampires, and in between some serious injury.
Then it happened. My worst fear realised. I'd felt that fear crash over me, before Eric took me to the orgy, that a cog would slip and I would be a victim again. What do you know, but a cog slipped, and I was a victim again.
Those few minutes in the trunk of that Lincoln were terrifying, and life threatening, and threatened to bring my whole world crashing down. If I let myself acknowledge that yet again someone else got to do what they wanted to do with the most intimate part of me, the part far more scarred than my physical body, I would crash completely. My worst fears came true, and it had happened with a man who loved me.
In the end, I treated it like the stake in the side. It was stopped, the physical injury healed, but the terrible memory would always be there unless I allowed a vampire to tinker round in my head to make it not happen. The scars were still there, but I didn't want to relive the moments, or think about it.
Alcide tried to talk to me about it, and I was thankful it was only once. I didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to categorise myself into that group I never wanted to enter. I didn't want to talk about what had happened, relive that pain, and relive the desperation to get away, to have it not be happening.
In truth, what could be said that would make that better? Did it matter that Bill was starved, tortured and out of his mind? Did it matter that he was sorry, and that he would not have wished to do that? I told myself it was all about urges being tied together, and I would never ask Bill or confront him, because a small part of me feared that he might actually say it was intentional. I'd heard the words "mine" often enough to think that maybe there was a small part of him who believed I was a possession to be used. I preferred my rationalisation, and would rather it wasn't shattered.
Anyway, I didn't want to discuss it with Bill because it wasn't about what Bill had done. It wasn't about the remorse that he felt, or any of the other myriads of things that he felt. In a very literal sense, Bill had done what he wanted with me, and I didn't feel like volunteering to be in that circumstance again. What had happened had exposed me, and showing that to Bill in any way – through anger or through wanting an apology would just do that again. It was about what I felt, and truly I didn't like the idea of picking through those feelings.
In order to pick through my feelings about the whole thing, I would be required to endure those awful moments again, stretching them out over time, while I tried to deal with what had happened. Let me tell you, those minutes seemed like hours during, I could not fathom why I would want to bring them into my ordinary life, which wasn't the trunk of the Lincoln.
I've read the pamphlets for survivors of sexual abuse, and for rape survivors. I've seen into their heads, and some women have talked to me about it. It doesn't go away, it doesn't stop existing, but merely becomes a state of being. It becomes all about surviving, and defining yourself by those moments, letting it into your every day life. I couldn't bear the moments I'd endured while they were going on, without making them part of my routine, a topic to consider.
I could survive far better without having the rehash, confrontation, or what anyone else thought I should do with my body. Isn't that the whole issue with rape in the first place? The fact that it's someone else doing something you don't want? What was the point in giving ownership over to someone else who thought they knew best? If my body is my own, if my mind is my own, then I have a right to do with it what I wish, no matter how stupid someone else thinks I am. They're not me. They just don't get a say.
Part of me had been flayed in that incident, laid bare and vulnerable. To open up to that again filled me with dread. I didn't want to be vulnerable like that again, in fear like that again. I didn't want to talk about it, dwell on it in hopes of making a terrible situation better by bringing into the light and really inspecting how awful it had been.
.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.
If l learnt the value of not talking things out again, it was with the death of Debbie Pelt, by my own hand. That was one of the first times that I felt I had killed a human, as if it was a natural thing. Of course, I'd killed a vampire before, but this was messy. The corpse didn't disappear, but sat there bloody and disgusting, in the same room where I had found another corpse of someone that I loved.
Eric offered me some words of comfort right after it happened, but that didn't make the problem go away. I cried over Debbie, and the fact that I had killed her so messily in my kitchen without a thought. It didn't make it better that I'd killed her in self defence, or that she'd tried to kill me. I had actively taken a life. This wasn't a vampire who had accidentally fallen on my stake, or a witch who'd pushed forward onto the knife I was holding. I got out a shotgun and I deliberately killed her, without a thought.
It said something fundamental about me, and on top of the other entire trauma of that night, it was a lot. To then know that there was nothing I could do but to hide the body, clean it up, and wipe down the surfaces I ate off, and accept that I'd killed a woman. I tormented myself, and cried tears over that death.
Eventually, Eric had wheedled it out of me – what I'd done to Debbie – what he'd done with her. It didn't make it better. It didn't make Debbie alive again and off my conscience. Of course, Alcide surmised what happened, and both of them had their own version of leverage over me. Something they could pull out at any time and use over my head, dangling the whip like a carrot to get me to do what they wanted.
I finally confessed it all up to Debbie's family, and other assorted supes who happened to surround the circus that is my life nowadays. While I'd cried it all out, it didn't alleviate the guilt, and it didn't make me feel better. All I got was to be left alone, and to listen to the reasons why my story made sense from the people I'd robbed her from.
.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.
Then of course, there's the violence I've endured in last couple of years. Top of that list for most traumatic has to be The Incident wherein I was tortured for the longest couple of hours of my life. Vampire blood had healed me from a great deal of the trauma I'd gone under – both recently and before that. I'd had numerous injuries, and some of them were repaired by vampire blood. Few marks and some scars, but nothing too major had stayed with me – at least not in comparison to how it would have been without vampire blood. Without vampire blood I'd currently resemble mincemeat.
As to the emotional effects of the violence, there was just nothing to be done. You can't take away the feeling of helplessness by talking it out. You can't help but feel vulnerable. If someone were to try to reassure me that I would be okay, that nothing bad would happen to me, then that would just make them a liar.
As far as I know, there is no solution to people trying to hurt you. You have to be able to control other people to do that, and I wasn't yet able to control other people. My telepathy gave me both a hint of something coming, and a reason to be hurt. Northern Louisiana had been casually engaging in the game of "pin the tail on the telepath" for a while now. So if there was no solution, then talking really offered no benefit as such.
How many human women had been beaten as often and severely as I was? I knew that Tara had sustained a substantial beating from Mickey, but I don't see what good it would do to talk about it. There was no way to resolve the power that was taken from you, and that feeling that you are mortal and vulnerable. I was way too acclimated to that feeling already. The feeling that you are easily broken, easily used, easily killed.
And of course, there lies the rub. I could imagine supe women who'd taken beatings like I had, but they had the added benefits of accelerated healing – not because some supe had deigned to give them help, but just of their very nature. They didn't feel mortal and vulnerable – not in the same way that I did. Sam's mother had healed enough of her gunshot wound to get around after a couple of days, but I wasn't so lucky.
There was no way to avoid being hurt if other people wished it and few ways to avoid violent supes. Talking about the feelings of powerlessness and the pain wouldn't make the next time it happened go away. It was bad enough to feel defeated when it happened, let alone anticipating that feeling or remembering that it happened. Suppression was best with all of those memories, because if I managed to work it out, by the time I got through my issues with violence committed against me, I'd have a whole rash of new ones to deal with.
.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.
Of course, there are always the instances where some would suggest I talk to Eric about our relationship – the undefined relationship that we had. I can't really see the point in doing that until I make decisions about what I want to do. We've both been there during our interactions, so rehashing that was no good. Now that Eric remembers his time at my house, there's nothing I know that he doesn't.
Some people would have told me all about how I should have handled the situation with his memory loss differently. But I honestly don't know what I would have said, and what good it would have done. You can't tell someone "Hey, while you were gone from your true self, we had something close to love, so let's start where we left off – particularly the bits that happened you don't remember" because it didn't work like that. Eric didn't see me on the road like that, and fall for me instantly. What we had was built up over the days we were alone together, and without that, it all came to nothing.
It would take a more reckless woman than me to lay it all out and have Eric give her the cold stare, or laugh, or use it against her. Since I'd had enough recklessness, I didn't do that. When I did tell him he'd offered to give up everything, he questioned whether he should kill me or have sex with me. It certainly made my decision not to lay it out all the more sensible. Describing every minute detail didn't solve anything either – it was definitely one of those "you had to be there" times – and he wasn't. Eric would be no more than an observer, over something that had touched me deeply.
What I did tell him was the bare bones, and the important things that he needed to know. The essence of what happened, without revealing to him anything about myself. Eric expected me to give it all up to him, but didn't once reciprocate with his own thoughts on the matter – other than the threat to kill me. Ironically, a small part of me wished that he would tell me he felt no different, and I would throw myself into his arms, and we'd be back to how we were. Of course, Eric didn't do that - he didn't even tell me how he felt, what he thought. If he ever asked me why I didn't tell him more clearly, I would sure have a few words about his similar lack of communication.
Eric sure had a nerve though. After informing me that when things get difficult, I walked away, what did he show me? The same darn treatment. Things were difficult between us after that, and what did Eric do? He stopped talking to me, stopped coming to see me, and when he did see me, he'd just stare at me. If he needed me, he had Pam summon me, or he'd have as little contact as possible. The amount of times he did a really quick "melting into the darkness" move, or just was there one minute gone the next was high. Reflections in thy waters, Mr. Northman.
For him, it was a period of delicate balance. He had to relentlessly pursue me, but also avoid me. Eric during that time ran hot and cold so badly. A passionate, toe curling kiss on Dracula Night, to getting Pam to summon me so as to avoid all contact with me. Mr. High and Mighty tried to get me, while avoiding me at the same time. I'm sure if he mentions my tendency to walk away when things get difficult, then I will give him the longest, most penetrating, ironic stare and smirk at him until he looks away in shame. See how he likes the Eric Northman approach, huh?
I don't have a problem talking about problems I think might have a solution. Recently, I'd chatted with Tara about how I felt about Eric – but I was looking for a solution – some advice about what I should do. I didn't tell her my feelings so that she could acknowledge that they were good little feelings and I could put them back in their box. But if there's no solution, I just can't bring myself to let it all out. I default to holding it all inside, plastering a smile on my face, rather than letting forth on the torrent. When I talk, it's so that I can find a pragmatic solution.
.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.
Eric was absolutely full of it anyway. I've heard him intimate how he wants to talk about something later. That's really Eric's code for "You will tell me what I want to know". Eric doesn't want to talk about what he doesn't want to talk about. Usually what he wanted to talk about was what I thought, or how I felt, or what I was going to do. It didn't involve Eric spilling his guts.
Every time he'd wanted to talk about something later, it always involved me telling him what he wanted to know. He wanted to hear all the details about how I'd killed Lorena, for his own amusement, I suppose. Pam had asked me, and he hadn't mentioned it again. I think he found out everything he wanted to know.
When we were in Dallas he'd said those ominous words too – "We'll talk about this later" but what the talk had consisted of is Eric asking me if I knew that I walked away when things became difficult and all about my relationship with Bill. Oh, and the future possibility of having a relationship with me, what with the mention of his "future lover". He didn't want to chat about what he wanted from me, or how he felt. The only thing he said on the subject was that he didn't like having feelings and that I was spoiled for humans. All the information went one way with Eric and he certainly didn't want to talk about what he thought or felt. I had wanted him to talk to me about anything, but Eric kept silent.
Then he wanted to talk about his time at my house. That didn't involve telling me about what he thought, knew or gleaned on the subject. It involved me telling him what happened. Judging by his statements the night I told him, he would have been happy for a re-enactment. But when I told him we needed to talk about something, he just ignored me and went for action. He even taunted me with using "heart's desire" in the conversation – undoubtedly to see if I reacted and knew about it. Eric wasn't going to give me information just for nothing. Not about how he felt, not about what he thought, not about what he knew. For a vampire who mentioned talking all the time, he certainly seemed to do little of his own.
Eric wasn't forthcoming with much tactical information either. He didn't tell me that Lorena was Bill's maker, or any information about Mickey. He just told me to stay away from Mickey and no matter that I asked for information to help my friend or know what I was up against. Eric didn't want to talk about that. He didn't give me more than one hour's warning of a takeover and then it was reluctant and coded – not straight out information. Always when it was later did he want to give me information – begrudgingly letting me have the barest minimum of what I needed to know. Oh, he loved to talk about me, and he loved to give me information on things that directly pertained to me, or things I'd asked about, but he didn't readily share information about himself.
Eric had recently opened up a little more – and let me know that he was finally ready to give me his cell phone number, his address and some scant details about his human life. He was a veritable deluge of information in comparison to what he had been in the past, but that wasn't honest and open disclosure such as he wanted from me. Eric knew lots of things about my life, and I knew very little about his. He talked when he was ready, and not before. Any talking we did was always on his terms - what he wanted to know, what he wanted to reveal, and no more. I was surely going to take the same courtesy.
Sometimes he didn't even give me information about my own life. Eric had let me know that he'd been in negotiations with Niall, my great-grandfather quite some time after he'd started his talks. When he decided it was time for us to meet, and that it was safe for me, he let me know that someone had asked after me. Eric didn't tell me about it, and I wonder if I ever would have known about it if Eric didn't deem Niall worthy of mention.
Everything he'd kept from me had to do with my life, or things that would affect my life. From Lorena's personal stake in my relationship with Bill to the fact that a hostile takeover by the Las Vegas vampires should show up at my house in a couple of hours. He was standing right there, silently looking out my windows, and he didn't even deign to tell me I could die (or be abducted) when they arrived. Those things I kept from him didn't threaten his life, but they made my life a lot easier. I wasn't going to be telling him I sometimes heard his thoughts - no siree Bob, and I wouldn't be telling him about Hunter if it could be avoided. After all, Eric might be able to be trusted, but he could be tortured or compelled to tell someone. In my worst moments, I think about how the information could be useful to him, and his pragmatic ways. That just wasn't a choice I was willing to hand over - his death or some information to be bartered. It didn't threaten his existence, and Hunter was my family, not his. It was just none of his beeswax.
When it came to the pledging, he told me that he'd tell me the rules when I wasn't upset and tired. What that really meant is that he didn't want me to punch him in the face. Eric wanted me to be calm so that I wouldn't be too angry. After all, if he thought I needed to know the rules, he could have written them down in a letter or given me a fact sheet to peruse at a later date. He didn't do that. If Eric could avoid me getting angry about something, he'd be sure to do that.
Eric often rapidly diffused our arguments in the same manner as I did – just by changing track, rather than really sitting down and talking it out – unless I had information he wanted. When we came home from Dallas, he didn't want me to sit down and talk about my money problems and then work on a solution. He just stopped me yelling at him when I was angry by asking me what I'd done with the money for Dallas. He never brought it up again. Eric paid to re-gravel my driveway and left it at that. Eric was solution oriented like me, and I just can't see him having endless chats hashing it out.
When I had refused to talk about the time he spent at my house, we didn't spend hours screaming at each other, or stating our points over and over. I'd had fights with Bill that went on for far longer. Eric could siphon off my anger and fury just by talking calmly or changing the subject. He did just that when he went too far outside Merlotte's and drew a parallel between how much I knew Bill and how well I knew Quinn. Once he'd struck a nerve and made his point, he didn't continue though.
.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.
Even if I wanted to talk, even if I was the type of person to constantly want to talk about my feelings and shine some light on my problems, I wasn't sucked in by Eric's insistence that we should talk about things. He wasn't any better than me. I'd seen his writing – he knew how to write English. All those things he may have been desperate for me to know, he could have written down at any time. Then he could give me the information, let it weigh on my mind until I stopped running from it. But that idea is laughable. All information came from him in dribs, drabs and tiny morsels. Not a great soliloquy of what he thought on everything, how he felt, what he knew. I have no doubt his thousand years plus had something to do with that - I don't think he spent his nights with Appius talking about these things, or his nights with Pam, or any other vampire. Bill had shared a few things that touched him deeply, like finding that there were descendants of the Compton line, but talking about his kids was something he avoided. Vampires, by and large, aren't big emotional sharers. Which is great, because nor am I. What was expressed was expressed eloquently, without delving too deep into old wounds, and told with a fair amount of detachment.
Vampires liked the idea of suppression just as much as I did. In order to keep going when things were tough, they didn't break down and talk about it, endlessly go over it and go to therapist. They didn't go to bed for weeks and weep, or have circles where they talked out their problems. The world of supernatural violence didn't slow down for them to adjust, so they powered through. They suppressed and avoided too much upset, just like I did.
So Eric can go fly a kite. I'm not talking.