Disclaimer: Some strange and wonderful mixture of Alan Ball and Charlaine Harris's. So not mine.
Note: Fits in around the time of the final two episodes of season 2. And before you ask, I can't really think of a good reason for the title. Thanks to nycsnowbird for keeping my grammar in line.
Symbiosis
"Still think about her sometimes though."
You smile up at the vampire, sweet as pie. He thinks you don't know.
All of them think they're so subtle. They think you could be just anybody. They think you might as well be blind, deaf, and mute. And maybe you'll never be as fast, or strong, or smart as the weakest of them but that don't mean you've got no eyes in your head.
You've learned to read them (daddy only ever wanted you to read your Bible. He never could seem to decide if it was a text book or a bedtime story. But when he couldn't hear, mama said Darwin and Jesus would've gotten along just fine. You sure didn't turn out to be the kind of woman your mama must have dreamed you'd be, but you never forgot the secret stories of evolution). In some ways, you're Darwin's poster child. You've always been good at adapting, especially when the other option is death, and how many of them can say that?
There's something like shame on this vampire's face.
Gran's dead. At least that's where you'd put your money and Lord knows you're a betting woman.
##
"Hadley, your grandmother is dead," says Sophie-Anne. Like everything she says, you hear her voice first, and the words second, so you've got a smile on your face.
Sophie-Anne doesn't care that Gran made your first communion dress, or that she taught you to drive when mama was too sick and daddy was too busy. She also doesn't care that you spent Gran's money on powder and syringes. She's nothing at all like the men that helped you ruin your life. But your life might still be ruined anyway.
"You know," says Sophie-Anne, and she's circling you now. She walks like a dream, like a spell. You wonder what she means to turn you into next. "The female line is strong. Human males are lazy, even as infants. They don't get all spermy until puberty. But females ... you're born with all your ova intact." She laughs like an angel drunk on hallelujahs. Just that sound, and you can feel your blood rush for the spot she last bit. A laugh like that could get an angel kicked out, for sure.
"I didn't know that," you say, because she hates an inattentive audience, and you know that it's your attention she wants. For now.
"Well I'm about to blow your mind, darling." Your toes curl whenever she calls you that. Even though sometimes you know she forgets who she's talking to. "When a woman is pregnant with her daughter, the infant has all her ova intact. So she's pregnant with her grandchildren too!"
The spell worked, your mind is blown. Like too many young women in Bon Temps, you'd always known it was truly Adele Stackhouse who'd carried you, even if she'd also held mama's hand in the birthing room.
"Remarkable, isn't it?" Sophie-Anne asks, and then, with just as much delight, she adds, "And disgusting!"
Because she's talking to you and laughing, your shattered angel girl, you're smiling while you cry.
"Oh, what a sad clown," Sophie-Anne says, and her face has gone predatory. It's a look you know well. She finds tears a refreshing change from blood.
Sophie-Anne kneels before you and licks at the tear trails on your face. One of her favorite games is to pretend to have self-control.
The queen loves her games and her secrets. But you have a secret too and it's this: she thinks you don't know, but you do. You heard what she said to that sheriff about your cousin Sookie's blood. Pretty, crazy Sookie.
"Don't ever taste her," she'd warned him. And, "The female line is strong," she might have warned herself.
A few hours ago, you thought you could be anybody. To them. To her. But Sophie-Anne lingers with you in the day room until dawn, red lips whispering darling.
The female line is strong. You're Hadley Adele Hale, and, for the first time, you bet that means something.