I do not own any of the creative material of Charlaine Harris or Alan Ball.

I'm really grateful to Nyah for being my beta (and also for writing some of my favorite stories on this site). ;)

ooo

The last time I hold her as a human she's already dead.

Her lips are pale and chalky, her eyes not yet closed, and I find myself aching with a hurt I'd hardly imagined I would feel, given the circumstances. She looks more fragile than she's ever seemed before and that is quite an accomplishment. She was always mortal and foolhardy and absorbed by her loyalty to a damning fault. It doesn't escape me that she's beyond fragility now.

I'd felt her die, but I was chained, and so was Pam. It was Bill who freed us after he somehow discovered what had happened. With no way to contact Niall except through me, he'd reluctantly come to Fangtasia and threatened to burn the whole place down if Victor didn't release me. He was disappointed when it worked, I'm sure.

I called Niall. He took me to that shack and we killed them and tore their bodies to pieces. They hadn't had time to do the same to her, and that was the only consolation I was going to get.

Now I stand over her, fists clenched, and my heart is a flame in my chest that aches too much to be borne; it moves with a pulsing beat of pain like a heartbeat, leaving me alive in agony. I want to claw it out of myself and light it on fire. But instead I lift her from the chair and lay her on the dusty floor away from the heavy spatters of her own congealed blood, and I brush her hair back from her face and close her eyes because I cannot bear to see her unanswered questions.

I smell Niall before I see him and I'm almost grateful for his tall shadow at my shoulder. He smells like Sookie. That alone is enough to make me incline my head just a fraction in respect.

The presence at my side shifts forward into the light, and I can just barely see his profile from where I stand. The only thought I can find to voice is the obvious. "She is gone," I manage, feeling like I'm speaking through gravel. I'm shocked to see him smiling.

"Not yet." He steps forward fully this time and kneels in the dust by her side, and then he presses an elegant hand coiffed with lace to her chest; a halo of golden light flows from his fingers into her until he's bent over her as if he's in great pain. He stands at last, a little shaky, and I meet his bright tireless eyes without remorse. "I have done all I can for her, vampire," he says heavily. "Now it is your turn."

Now it is your turn. I've imagined this many times, but never in all those times did I imagine I would be an accomplice with this man, not over this. It isn't that I don't want to keep her. It isn't that at all. Even in its stillness her blood sings to me. "I gave her my word," I growl.

Niall holds my gaze, eyes unyielding. "I did not." He steps toward me. "Are you willing to join her?" He draws a long thin sword from a scabbard on his back, the pale light glinting off its silver blade like water. His implication is unmistakable.

I laugh and let him come up to me and press the blade to my neck where it bites effortlessly and burns my flesh into smoke. "You are blackmailing me into turning your great-granddaughter."

"Yes." More pressure, more charring flesh. I do not flinch away from the pain. "You have failed her. I am within my rights."

I echo him; "yes," I say; he is within his rights, and I almost wish he would. And, in my weakened state, I do not doubt that he could.

There is a moment where we both wait, perhaps thinking of cards we could play or outcomes we prefer. I speak first. "She will hate me. If she ever learns of your involvement she will hate you."

Niall regards me and his eyes settle into a solid impassiveness. "It is no less than you deserve. And as for me, it is a price I am willing to pay." With a shock, I realise he is growing older even as he stands next to me, and suddenly I understand what he has done. He has tied her here with his own life, perhaps with his soul, and soon he will have to make a choice.

It is enough to make me look at her, something I've been avoiding. I'm softened to see that his presence in her has healed her terrible wounds.

"I would not stop you from killing me," I say at last. "I would die for her, as you are dying for her." He nods slightly in acknowledgment. "But... I will not die so that she may die also."

He lowers the sword and lets me past so I can fold myself to my knees by her graceful limp neck. "What will this do to you?" I ask him without lifting my gaze from her.

"I will live," he answers simply. "I will release her when you are done, and I will remain outside."

Coward. I watch him make his way to the door, past the ashes, and I almost envy him. I feel her pulse - his pulse - and it's pity and awe that I feel, both. So I'm not the only one who doesn't know how to let go; it's not a reassuring thought.

I bend down to her, breathe her borrowed breaths. Kissing a corpse doesn't remain so strange when you're dead yourself. The pulse is strong: I move to her neck, and I bite.

ooo

I bury her by her grandmother.

Bill comes by the second night. He's so enraged I'm surprised he doesn't kill me, or try to kill me, as the case would be.

"You are a monster." He spits it out like he's spitting shards of his heart.

"I am," I say calmly. "And so are you." I look at the upturned ground at my feet. "And so is she."

ooo

I am there when she awakes, already digging away the soft dirt as I have done before for another. Pam is there too. She stands in silence in the shadows of the trees and gives me distance. I know she wants to be here, and not just for me.

Sookie is all anger and hunger and hate, and a sadness that rips at me worse than any words, but I bring the blood to her lips and cradle her neck as she drinks. It's bagged blood from a hospital, the best I can do for her; she deserves that much at least.

I see a shape in the trees to Pam's right and I'm truly surprised when I recognise the tall girlish form of Jessica. She's timid but she doesn't stop when she knows I see her. Her red hair is a halo in the moonlight, swinging with each step she takes.

When Sookie starts to weep out all of the blood I've put into her, Jessica is there. She wraps her arms around Sookie, ignoring the filth of dirt and the lingering scent of death, and holds her as she cries, her voice rising in a lullaby.

Pam unobtrusively twines her fingers through mine as she stands at my side. I wonder if she feels my helplessness. She squeezes my hand once and doesn't let go.

ooo

Her verandah swing creaks as I perch on it next to her. I was always so sure of myself around her before, but now, with forever, I tread so lightly sometimes I think I'm protecting her from myself.

Night wheels past us in the same tempo as the stars overhead; the constellations are a song racing toward the fiery death of morning. I wonder if she feels time like I learned to feel it when I was young and empty and looking for a new heartbeat to tell the world by.

Sookie turns toward me just a little so she can tuck her legs beneath her. The swing rocks gently beneath us. There's an awkwardness to her movements that was never there before, and I find myself thinking this is not the way it usually goes.

She knows about Niall. There's no way I could have explained away her healed wounds, and why I would want to try is beyond me. He deserves to carry the weight of what we have done just as I deserve it.

There's no such thing as restitution, there's no way to right the wrongs of hijacking a life even if I believed in trying; and yet, with her, I find myself wishing I could fill that ache.

I pull my touch phone from my pocket and fiddle with it for a few moments. Sookie pointedly looks away with a slight air of annoyance that doesn't escape me, and her confusion when I hand her the phone makes me smile.

I watch her face as she realizes what's on the screen. "You filmed the sunrise from my bedroom," she says numbly.

"Not personally," I say, because they're the easiest words I have.

Pam thinks it's unwise to give Sookie things like this, a slice of a life she can never have, but I know Sookie: I know her heart is in the sunlight. It's no longer a matter of hurts I can take away, but perhaps there are still things I can give.

I reach over and fold her hands around the phone. "It's yours," I tell her. She needs a reliable cell; it's easiest to get her to accept things like this when they're wrapped in something she really wants. Maybe she'll realize that later.

Half an hour passes, eaten slowly by the silence between us. Sookie stares out into the night and clutches the phone in her hands.

"I was dead, Eric," she says at last. It's a little too tired to be an accusation but that's part of it too. Mostly it's just a statement of the facts.

"You were," I acknowledge. I wonder if I'm making some kind of concession.

"I'm not dead now," she says. She says it like she's surprised. "Not quite, anyway."

I smile but I keep myself from looking at her. "Not quite," I agree. It feels like the world is in those words, and maybe, for her, it is.

FIN