Hi everyone! Thanks so much for reading - I really appreciate it. I've been sitting on the bits and pieces of this story for ages (YEARS!) and decided that I needed to get out of my writing rut by publishing. This is my first time writing for this fandom. I've read a lot of Eric/Sookie romance fics with no angst, so this might be a little different for you all (in a good way, I hope!). I'm a sucker for character development and some bitter-sweet pain mixed in my love stories. This picks up just after Season Five; it's AU with elements of canon, all from Eric's point of view. Each chapter is titled after it's theme song. I highly recommend listening to the title track while reading!
I hope you enjoy and please review - I'll respond in the next chapter. Thank you!
Disclaimer: None of the following characters belong to me. They are the creations of Charlaine Harris. I make no profit from this work.
You are the string in my bow.
Biblical Mary to Joe.
The North isn't true 'til it's leading me to you.
You are the way that I know.
- Demons, Dry the River
"Where are we goin'?"
I nearly jumped at the sound of her words. It has been two days since she'd spoken to me. Her voice is thin - beaten and worried and tired. Her appearance is much the same - skin sallow and tight, the youthful softness bleeding out hour by hour. She's wilting under all of it, all of this pressure and terror. I can only watch as her petals fold in and give up.
Across from me, our knees a hair's breadth from touching but so carefully not, she sits perfectly still. The tears dried up the night we fled, and now, in a state of perpetual shock, she barely breathes. She's as motionless as one of us.
Sookie's been reduced to a sorry statue of herself.
"Far away," I say, and shake out the New York Times in my hands. "As far away as we can get." I pretend to be reading. In actuality, I'm waiting. Waiting for her.
Missing persons cases flood police stations across the country, all disappearances blamed on vampires
Public stakings increase ten-fold
Lorn Refrand, so-called "vampire king" of Vermont, calls for peace in Montpelier as human-vampire violence intensifies
Chaos reigns at local blood banks as starving vampires break and enter
Such ugly times.
My eyes are drawn up by movement. She blinks for the first time in minutes. She's gazing out the window on her right, but I imagine she doesn't see anything. It's a clear night up in the sky - thousands of winking stars and darkness thick enough to cut. The jet's racing six hundred turbulence-free miles per hour, but inside the cabin, it feels like we haven't flown an inch.
"What're we gonna do?" she asks.
And then I can almost see her as a child; a nervous little thing in a butter-yellow dress, her feet swinging under her chair. She stares at me with those luminous brown eyes. I want nothing more than pull her to me, take her into me, reassure her. But I don't. "We're going to hide... You're going to hide," I correct myself.
"What about -" she starts.
"Do not, Sookie. We can't." I keep my tone flat and strong, reaching back, searching desperately for the warrior I've always been.
"You'll stay with me?" Her plaintive voice - the one she saves only for me. With her sweet backwoods accent and all of her big crocodile tears.
I know the answer is yes. She knows the answer is yes. I won't say it aloud. But it's there, and it hangs between us... this noose of my unfailing loyalty to her.
I'm disgusted with myself.
The arrogant viking, that stalwart prince... he's not there anymore. I've abandoned him. All for a half-breed mortal who has always denied my advances, my protection. Worse, she's denied whatever is left of me that can... feel. I remind myself that I can't be fooled by her again. She's cunning and full of tricks; fae magick and light and sex. She's more dangerous to me than whatever Compton has become. I must keep telling myself this, when she's looking in my eyes, when she's begging.
And yet... I'm here. Taking her back to where I belong, back to the one place in this world I might still call home.
The only safe place left.
Under the weight of belief
You shiver and shake like a leaf.
But death is a force, not a man on a horse:
I'll keep you safe while you sleep.
It's just after sundown when I come back to life. I can feel the last rays of light fleeing to other side of the Earth, leaving this place safe and dark. For a long while, I lie quite still staring up at the upholstered lid of the travel coffin and I imagine the time and the country I'll find myself in when I return to the world. My thoughts drift slowly over all that has happened - the Sanguinists, Compton... Jason Stackhouse. Jason, you poor bastard. And then I remember Sookie.
Will she speak tonight?
Perhaps a more important question is whether she'd even stayed with me once we'd landed.
She had every reason not to.
My mind reaches out. My blood bond with Sookie ran out nearly a year ago, but I search anyway, confident I'll be able to feel something of her. I encounter a breathing source of heat, roughly one hundred degrees, some distance from me. It's the only thing that's alive in this room.
It must be her.
If not Sookie, who then?
I unlatch the lock and listen to hiss of the light-tight seal releasing. A strange... sensation overtakes me. It's something I haven't felt in centuries. Something I don't have a word for anymore. An anticipation of sorts. A kind of desire mixed with a bit of dread.
Could it be hope? Hope.
What would a creature who has lived over a thousand years possibly hope for?
I push the lid up, peeking just over the edge of the coffin in the direction of all that heat.
It is her.
She's watching me. Her jaw clenches and her chest rises with each breath; the rest of her though, is perfectly still. Exactly as I left her on the flight. She doesn't speak; just stares at me... through me with those haunted dark eyes. I see she hasn't changed clothes, hasn't showered. I wonder if she's moved at all.
Is she immobile out of fear, maybe? The belief that he could follow us, even here, to Sweden, in daylight?
Something ancient and human tells me to comfort her. It should be so easy: I'm sorry you lost another family member to the greed and violence of my kind... and yours, dear heart. I've stolen you away, to keep you safe. I'll meet the true death defending you. I'll care for you while you grieve.
Or it could be as simple as It will be okay, Sookie.
But those words won't come. Nothing will come. The wounds we've inflicted on each other over these years still bleed. I'm muzzled by the past - by the angry rejections and the proclamations of hate and the threats we've both made. It's shameful. I sit up, and look away, scratching my head until my hair falls in my face. I can hear her shift in her seat - her muscles stiff and painful, having waited so patiently for me to wake.
We sit like this for an eternity, my back to her, her unblinking eyes on me, the horrible silence between us.
As instructed, the flight crew delivered us to a resort just outside of Gothenburg for the remainder of the day. It's a luxurious room, by human standards. The walls are a garnet so deep and rich one might fall in and the lighting is strategically moody, glittering in the reflection of a few conspicuously-placed mirrors. The four-poster bed, draped with ridiculous million-or-so-count Egyptian sheets and piled high with goose-down pillows, is romantic, I'm sure. And the double sinks, with their artfully exposed pipes and pounded-metal bowls, reveal the nature of this room.
A honeymoon suite.
This is hardly a honeymoon.
I make a noise as if to clear my throat, though I haven't needed to do so for lifetimes. "We're going to my farm on Öland. It's an island that runs north to south... just off the coast... We'll be... secluded there for the most part..." I trail off. My voice is awkward and unnecessary.
She doesn't respond. She's a wall.
I get up and shower.
Everything moves in slow-motion.
"Bill! Please!" Her screams echo. The truck's diesel engine growls. "Please!"
She throws her hands out, her fingers spread, her arms rigid with desperation. But it doesn't matter.
It's too late and nothing will come.
No light. No power.
She'd tapped out the well of her magic days before in a childish fit of resentment.
Jason closes his eyes.
He's dead before he hits the ground.
I know she wishes more than anything that it had been her.
I know that feeling so well.
I dislike the silence. I can hear all of her body's inner workings in this suffocating quietness. I can hear her stomach, empty and eating itself over her grief. I can hear her heart murmur and her sad lungs and the way one of her smallest ribs cracks when she breathes too deeply. I can hear everything.
It's enough to drive me insane. I want her to speak, to acknowledge me... to anything. Anything but this. If she would just talk, even incessantly, like she usually does... I would give anything to listen to her prattle on about the idiocies of human life, about Bill Compton, about something.
But she doesn't. She's a little doll. Stuffed and silent and stiff.
I don't believe Sookie Stackhouse has ever been so dead as she is right now.
The car rumbles over gravel and grass; the roads near my home have grown rocky with disuse. I fight a pang of regret. This is my birthplace, my motherland, and it's been decades since my last visit... perhaps more. I think of my parents then - soaking in a pool of their own blood. I think of the time and the emotions, now all distant and dull - other than the flames of vengeance, which still burn in me.
I think of how she must feel - alone now, with no one in the world.
I look up at her. She blinks slowly.
It's the longest car ride of my life.
She stands in the entryway and stares. Her eyes touch the loft above us, the stairs, the empty kitchen. She swallows, and says nothing.
The driver carries in my bags and her one belonging - a jacket. He leaves it all there, next to her - Sookie the Mannequin. He quietly shuts the front door behind him and then it's only us.
I shrug off my overshirt and toss it to a chair.
"I'm sure you're hungry... I don't think Elsa leaves food here...," I say, if only to fill the silence. I haven't had to request human needs of my servants for centuries. There's the issue of sustenance, and warmth... and waste. Do I even have a toilet on the premises? I can't recall. There was no time for preparation; we had to leave immediately.
Having a mortal so close, so needy, will be a challenge.
"I can call on my governess..." I stop to correct myself, realizing how long it's been since something alive was in my care. "I can call my... housekeeper, if you'd like... Although it is -" I check my watch. "Three in the morning."
Sookie turns her head, listens to me over her shoulder. She doesn't reply, and I don't know whether she's truly heard me. Perhaps she doesn't hear anything over the grief in her mind.
I can see her clearly here, in the in-between light of the moon. Her clothes are stained and soiled with dirt and blood. Her hair, pulled back from her face at the crown, falls in waves to her shoulders. It's unkempt and tangled, the color of straw.
"Would you like to shower?" I'm certain I have a shower. Perhaps not a toilet, but definitely a shower. What to do if there's not a toilet? I think that maybe there is a toilet - there must be. I left renovation oversight to a human. Surely a human would think to include a toilet, or a bidet... even an outhouse in the plans.
And then she collapses to the floor.
She comes around slowly in my arms. I feel it in her legs first - the muscles twitching delightfully, fitfully... like a puppy, fast asleep. And then her head lolls to the left, to the right, her pretty brow furrowing. Soon after, her breathing hitches... and eventually, she snorts herself awake in my hands. If Sookie wasn't in such a sorry state, I might have smiled, perhaps even laughed.
I walk slowly down the path, away from the cottage, in the light of a thousand cold stars. The branches of green trees shade us, the moon dappling her face, reflecting in her wide dark eyes, like a little fawn. I look down at her and she relaxes, the grip she has on me easing.
For the first time in our true history... she trusts me. Total, unquestioning faith in a being that might decide the taste of her is worth more than her life.
It almost aches.
I'll watch over you while you grieve.
I take her to the only place I know that might bring her back - the deep hot springs of my island. The lithia water here bubbles up eternally; I could smell it the minute we arrived on Öland. Salts and sulfur and earth. It's the scent of home. It's the scent of peace.
There's a ledge, from which I once dove as boy, before the death of my parents, before the wars, before the voyage to America. The rocks here have been worn smooth by centuries spent in the lazy run of the warm, potent water. I bring Sookie to the edge of the pool, pulling my shirt up over my head, letting my jeans fall to my feet.
She glances at my nakedness and then away. I ease into the spring, feeling the roil of it up my legs, over my thighs. I reach for her. Carefully, I untie her tennis shoes, one at a time, and work them off her delicate feet. She lets me unzip her dirty sweatshirt and push it from her shoulders. I move slowly to the fly of her pants. She doesn't stop me.
I muse, somewhat somberly, on how a few days earlier, this would have been a conquest of unparalleled proportions. I feel guilty about it now. Guilt makes me uncomfortable, as I suppose it should. It's a rare and fleeting emotion and it cuts through me, shocks me.
Sookie doesn't help me as I undress her. She's still and soft in my hands, not an ounce of fight left in her, like she's not the real Sookie... her insides gutted, her body a just shell. Her bra - a simple black thing - unclasps in the front. My hands tremble and I curse the willfulness of my cock. I slip careful fingers under the straps and help them down her arms until the garment lays with the rest of her clothes.
I can't sure how long my self-control will hold up, and so I decide to leave the panties, barely daring to even look at the cut of them.
My fangs descend of their own accord as I carry her into the water. I feel her stiffen.
"I won't," I whisper.
She stares at me - guileless and sorrowful. I'm struck then, by the weight of everything she's endured, even at my hands. I look away, the points of my fangs pricking the inside of my lip.
Her feet disappear first into the shadowy pool and then the rest of her, up to her creamy throat. I pull her across my lap, hold her tightly against my chest. She closes her eyes and lets me be with her this way.
We bathe there, under the ledge I loved as a boy.
She exists somewhere between life and sleep in my arms. I watch her and feel the spring healing us both.
Only the moon knows where we hide.
She stands in my kitchen with her bare feet and her wet hair, a heavy blanket around her shoulders. She shivers and doesn't speak.
I've shown her the bedroom up in the loft. And we discovered the bathroom does indeed have a toilet.
But she doesn't lie down on the bed; she follows me back out to the parlor and waits. Silent.
I roll up the old Turkish rug, push it to the farthest wall.
The trap door creaks when I lift it - just as I remember.
There's nothing to really speak of beneath - no king-sized bed, no motion-sensor track lighting, no floating staircase. It's nothing like my room back in Bon Temps.
It's only a furrow in the dirt - shallow and small, like a rabbit's nest.
It's home.
She curls up, her back to my chest. I listen to her breathe and smell the earth. She's warm and her heat sinks deep into me - all the way to my bones.
I have never prayed to a single god before. I haven't prayed to anything in centuries. But I pray on this morning... that she'll return from where ever she is.
I take Sookie to ground with me and hope she'll come back to life.
We fight those demons day in and day out,
Day in and day out, day in and day out
And fight those demons day in and day out
Day in and day out, day in and day out