This story is based upon characters created by Charlaine Harris. I do not own them, I just love them.

This is a short one-shot that takes place immediately after Club Dead. Consider this a prequel to Love Conquers All.

A note of thanks to Charlotte Clark.

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Love Seeks

What the fuck!

Oh gods the searing pain. The bullets must be silver.

If I had not been so distracted by Sookie's agitation about Compton and her finances I might have picked up on the putrid smell of were. They always use silver bullets.

I must summon my strength and get to Compton. The chest wound was merely a glancing blow since I turned quickly as the door opened. The second shot caught my right leg full on and the cursed bullet was deep within. Searing. Burning. Slowly moving within me to the surface as my body rejected it.

I ran through the cemetery gate, across the lawn and up the stairs. I ran at human speed, all I could muster given the pain and weakness I was fighting.

I hit the door and roared, "Compton!"

Bill shot through the house and grabbed me under my arms, pulling me through his foyer to lay me on the living room couch. He ran to get me True Blood.

I guzzled several bottles and quickly told him about the weres lying in wait at Sookie's. We knew what we had to do, and we were both more than eager to begin the task before us. I could feel the bullet from the chest wound nearing the end of its journey. I felt my right leg healing from the inside out, just behind the torturous pain from the silver. Still, I had regained enough strength to begin. I'm sure my eyes were blazing as I looked at my rival, my short-term partner, and said through my teeth, "Let's go."

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I hadn't laughed so hard in weeks.

My laughter was therapeutic. It felt so good to seize that little bit of control after what I had been through. This rescinding thing was just what I needed at that moment. It was empowering to be able to control my two vampires. Yes, they WERE mine. Wasn't my life bound to theirs now? Their blood ran through me. Their dead hearts were so close to my own. But just getting those two vampires out of my living room, at least for a little while, made me think I could have the strength to rebound from the events of a week ago. Terrible events. I'd been staked, nearly drained, nearly raped, and beaten to within an inch of my life. I was tired of them hovering over me. If I made them go away, maybe I could live out the rest of my life without being beaten up.

Even so, I knew that my life was now inextricably bound to them. I feared it. I fought it. But I think deep down inside, somehow, I wanted it.

There were very few times I allowed myself to think about my new reality. I needed quiet time to do that, and with the pace of my life, I usually didn't have a lot of it. But after being beaten by the weres, I spent a lot of time in bed recovering and, although I finally had the quiet, I realized that I was shielding myself. Much like I raise my shields to block unwelcome voices, I realized I was shielding myself from my own inner thoughts. What was I so afraid of? I didn't know – because I wouldn't allow myself to know.

One morning about a week after the were incident, I woke up feeling for the first time since it had happened like I just might recover and feel like my old Sookie self again. As I laid there in bed I had a thought. You know how sometimes your thoughts have a certain clarity in the wee hours of the morning, or very late at night? Like - sometimes when you're trying to work through a problem, the solution will come to you during these times like a bolt out of the blue. Anyway, I laid there and realized that I'd had this nagging feeling that there was some unfinished business I needed to take care of. Something, some things, were missing and I had to find them.

I pulled on some grey sweats, a Fangtasia t-shirt and some flip flops and headed out the front door. I stood on the porch, thinking. Remembering. I remembered it as if it were a dream – the were had said, "I shot him twice, but he's in the woods. He got away." I flashed to the sight of Eric charging through my door, covered in blood – his chest, his right leg. I started walking toward Bill's.

I knew what I was looking for, and even though it was like a needle in a haystack, I knew I would find it. Them.

One was on the porch step. One was on the gravel path near the gate to the cemetery. The sun helped me.

I walked back to the house, up the porch steps, through the living room, into Gran's/my bedroom. I opened my nightstand drawer and pulled out the small red velvet heart-shaped box.

I dropped the two silver bullets into it. They joined the first one - the one from Dallas.

That's all I could do, for now. I know that inner voice was speaking to me. But I wasn't ready to listen.