In Another Life
If should have and would have could make wishes come true I most certainly be a happy woman today.
However the one chance at happiness I had I foolishly let it slip through my fingers when I said goodbye to Eric and let him walk out of my life.
Things only went down hill from there for me. Yeah sure I hooked up with Alcide for a while and I really tried to make it work with him.
But some how something always seemed off with the two of us. Looking back now I realize that something off was me. My heart just wasn't in it. Sadly when I sent Eric away he took my heart with him so how could I give it to another when I no longer owned it?
When the Hep V vamps converged on Bon Temps we all thought it was bad…real bad. But little did we know that was only the beginning of much worse things to come. And come it did in spades.
The good folks of my little ole home town began to turn on each other and I was the first one to feel their anger and miss trust.
No longer was I welcome at the town meetings or the bar. Hell if I ran into some of my neighbors at the grocery store they turned and went the other way to keep from speaking to me.
Alcide tried to help he really did but the harder he tried the more I pushed him away and it wasn't long until even he gave up on me.
Having no one left and feeling empty I turned to the only one left in town who I hoped understood me and the choices I had made…Bill.
The first thing he did was to convince me to take his blood for my own safety and after all this time I found myself right back where I started from all those years ago when he first walked into my life that night in Merlotte's.
I Sookie Stackhouse once again became his personal drinking fountain.
As I watched neighbor kill neighbor and friendships die I felt something inside of me turn and twist until I no longer recognized my self as the innocent girl in the white dress from so long ago.
Along with the feelings of intense self loathing came feelings of disgust and hate to the point I no longer cared about those around me or myself. I was worse than any vampire ever thought of being and my powers were fed by my emotions and now I truly was a danger.
Oh Bill tried to keep me in control but even his manipulations no longer worked. One night when he locked me in a silver lined cell in his basement to keep me from going out at night he realized very quickly that was not going to stop me when with one blast from my hands I destroyed the three inch thick bars that contained me and went out anyway.
It was on one of these same patrols that I ran into Pam. Lets just say she was not happy to see me. When she threatened to drain me that was the last straw apparently for me and before I could contain it light charged in my hands and I knocked her on her ass and she landed about twenty feet from where we were standing.
As she hissed and cursed while trying to get up I recharged my powers getting ready for the second wave of her attack. It was in that moment that she surprised me and said fuck it, you're not worth it, especially smelling like that limp dick Compton. Why am I not surprised to see you did exactly like I knew you would…run back to the faux southern gentleman? There is truth after all in the saying can't take the south out of the girl huh Sookie?
You know Sookie like you I whored myself out in life for many things but at least I had enough fucking sense to recognize a good thing when it came along. Hell the night I met Eric I decided I wanted him to turn me and when he didn't I forced his hand.
You however didn't recognize a good thing dumb bitch when it bit you in the ass. Eric would have willingly given you immortality and anything else your narrow minded heart desired just for the asking.
Me I worked my way up through the ranks one miserable year at a time proving I was worthy of the gift he had given me.
I watched him bed one beauty after another when he no longer desired me. I cleaned up after him without complaint or question time after time. I watched him work for your love while you freely gave it to others and was there to pick up the pieces each time you rejected him.
But not anymore Sookie, I have loved him from the night he made me completely and without reservation. For the last two hundred years he was my home and now he is gone and I have but one last promise to fulfill to him…Willa.
After tonight if our paths ever cross again I will kill you fairy so stay out of my way is that clear enough for you?
Nodding my head in understanding because my vocal cords were too tight with emotion to speak she vamped away before my eyes.
Sitting down on the log at my feet I knew she was right in everything she had said to me. It was all so suddenly clear…he had been the reason she could not stay with her own child, he was why she hated me from almost the moment we first met, he was why she came to this backwater town and submitted herself to public humiliation each night she showed up for work dressed as Elvira when her personal taste reflected just the opposite. She did it all because she loved him…loved him more than her own undead life and yet he chose me time after time as she stood waiting in the wings.
Suddenly it dawned on me. I was never going to find true love and happiness no matter who I was with…my telepathy would not allow me too. I couldn't trust someone without reading their thoughts and their inner monologues were what pushed me away. Vampires on the other hand were quiet but this same quiet created miss trust in me putting a barrier between my heart and theirs.
My parents had been right all along, in the words of my late Momma it would have been better to never have been born. My parents were going to kill me that night out of love. Better dead than the life I would face as an adult but Gran had intervened by contacting Warlow to save me.
She had known about the contract signed by John Stackhouse all along and had kept me safe and pure only to fulfill the family's end of the bargain. The fairy's had taken Grandpa Earl to make sure that she kept up her end of the deal until I was grown.
Bill had been the unknown variable to suddenly appear in my life. Although Gran had appeared to accept him she knew he was not strong enough to be a threat against Warlow taking me for his own. But my purity was a part of the terms of the contract so she implanted doubtful thoughts about love and being a kept woman in my head to sway me into keeping my legs and heart closed to another.
But when she realized I had fell in love with Bill and her plans had not worked out the way she had hoped she confronted Bill with the truth and in his anger he had killed her only to have Eric come along and once again throw a ratchet in his own plans for me. My whole life has been spent being nothing but a pawn between two warring fractions the vampires and the Fae.
Yet Eric protected me from his queen and the Fae without thought or the hopes of gaining anything but my love in return. However I still denied him even unto his final death.
As the anger and sorrow built to uncontainable proportions inside my chest and my magic seeped from my pores all rational thoughts left my mind.
Moving on auto pilot I turned and left the woods. As I approached Bill's palace I released small amounts of power from my hands at the approaching guards. Entering his family home the blasts of light continued to release from my fingers destroying all those around me human and vampire alike.
When Bill stepped out of his study drawn in my direction by the noise from the chaos I only whispered two words in his direction before I watched my ball of light make impact with the center of his chest…I know.
Walking back across the cemetery I released my fairy essence in full force and stood in the middle of my living room and waited patiently.
As my overwhelming sweet scent drew the Hep V infected vamps to my location my power pulsed inside of me enticing them all to surround my once beloved home.
Among the faces of the rabid vamps I saw some familiar ones. Faces of those I had once called friend, Violet, Jess, Pam, Willa, and even the most recent addition James.
With a final push I released my uncontrolled forces and my house exploded around me in a ball of fire taking all those surrounding the outside to the tree line of my property to their final deaths.
As the fiery beams fell from overhead around me and the air became thick with black smoke choking my lungs I sat down amid the destruction and waited for death to take me home.
In those last seconds I wondered about my heaven and Eric's Valhalla. I thought of the assurances I had spoken to Godric on that roof top so long ago and hoped they were true. Eric's whispered words of, "in another life" drifted into my mind and I prayed he was right.
In another life I would love and be loved without question with him by my side. Together we both would find our eternal happiness as my thoughts drifted away he stood before me as beautiful as I remembered and stretched out his hand in my direction silently urging me to join him for eternity.
Placing my hand in his as the raw emotion of love swirled freely in the air around us; my Viking led me home forever in the orbit of his love.