Disclaimer: I obviously do not own True Blood, Southern Mysteries, or anything else related or pertaining to these characters or settings, although I would very much like to own my own Eric. v-v
Set after the "incidents" surrounding the Magister holding Pam hostage and Eric trying to insert himself into the Mississippi king's good graces. I took some liberties. *shrug*
She was headed home after another long shift at Merlotte's when her phone buzzed in her purse on the seat next to her. Her first thought was that she had forgotten to turn her ringer up when she left work. Her second thought was that if someone was calling her at 1:07 AM it was almost definitely a vampire. Since she was not currently on speaking terms with any of them, she could not imagine why they would be calling, especially given their predilection for just showing up directly in front of whomever they wanted to speak with.
She almost ignored it. She did not want to get caught up in the Soap Opera of the Undead again. So far it had almost gotten her killed more than once and it had cost her her first love. Not a very good track record. It was not in her nature to avoid her problems, though, so she found a safe place to pull over and managed to answer before the call went to voice-mail. She had just enough time to notice the Caller ID said FANGTASIA, curling her stomach into a tight knot of dread, before punching the little green button.
"I've had a long night and I'm exhausted, Eric, and I believe we've said everything that needs to be said."
"Sookie please don't hang up." The trembling voice on the other end was definitely feminine and choked with tears. Sookie had never heard Pam sound that way and it frightened her.
"Pam? What's going on?" She tried to keep the panic out of her voice, but was not entirely successful. Whatever her argument with Eric, Pam was the closest thing she had to a friend in the vampire community for whatever that was worth.
"Please, can you just come to Fangtasia right away? Please?" Pam had just said "please" three times more than Sookie had ever heard her say it without being forced to. That, more than anything, made the decision for her.
"I'm on my way."
She pulled into the driveway at Fangtasia not long after and Chow, Eric's replacement bartender, was at her door practically before the car finished rolling to a stop.
"Chow, what's happening?" He had her door open and was doing his best to hurry her without touching her. Whether that was because he didn't trust himself to touch her or whether he had been told not to was hard to say. Either way, it did not bode well.
"Pam will explain, I was just told to get you inside as quickly as possible without attracting attention."
"Why didn't she just come get me herself?" She did not like diving into all of this practically blind. Pam had definitely sounded distraught on the phone, but vampires are consummate actors. For all she knew she was walking into a trap.
"Pam will explain." She knew that was all she was going to get out of him so, with an exasperated grunt, she made her way through the crowded parking lot ahead of him. She came up short when she got inside the door to the club, realizing she had no idea where exactly she was going.
Chow brushed past her taking her left arm in his hand to steer her through the crowd. The vampire on door-duty barely spared them a glance. Before she knew it, they were standing in a hallway she'd never been down before, Chow was unlocking a heavy steel door.
"I am not taking another step until you tell me where Pam is and why I am here." She knew full well he could easily scoop her up and deposit her on the other side of the closed door before she'd have a chance to scream, but it made her feel better to exert her free will. She didn't have much trust for vampires right then but she did realize that if Pam had wanted to do her harm it would have already happened. Somehow the thought was not comforting.
He opened the door without a word and Pam was standing inside. Her eyes were red and her face was pale. Well, paler than usual. She'd never seen Pam so disheveled and it silenced the words forming on her lips. She stepped inside and Chow closed the door behind her. She heard the deadbolt slide into place ominously.
They were on a small landing and she followed the vampire quietly down a short flight of steps into a small, concrete basement area. If her estimation was correct, they were under one corner of the dance floor, yet she couldn't hear a single thing from the bar above.
"Soundproof huh?" she asked quietly
From behind the other woman she heard a barely whispered, "What's she doing here?" Her eyes grew large as she peeked around the slightly taller woman's shoulder and saw Eric lying on a small table in the center of the room, covered with a white sheet that clearly showed numerous bloody patches.
"What the hell...?" The question hung in the air.
"I don't know what went on between the two of you, nor do I care. Eric said you would not come, that you hated him." Sookie remembered her anger at him when he had betrayed her and her former lover to the King of Mississippi, Russell. So much had happened since then. She'd nearly died at Bill's hands. She'd fought with Eric. She'd rescinded their invitations to her home. She had almost convinced herself she did not care if she never saw either of them again.
She took a step around Pam, trying to process everything she was seeing but something in her brain didn't seem to be working.
"Is he..."
"He's dying." Pam struggled against the tears that came anyway.
"Pam, get her out of here. She owes me nothing. I nearly got her killed. I cannot blame her for hating me." Sookie could barely hear him, though she knew the vampire's exceptional hearing meant that Pam heard him quite clearly. His voice was so raspy, so...broken. Was this a trick? Was he so desperate to get back in her good graces that he would stage this? Pretend to be at death's door to appeal to her compassion?
Her mouth hung open in disbelief as her eyes roamed his prone form. He could barely open his eyes, the dark circles underneath standing in startling contrast to the ghostly white of his skin and making his face appear bruised. His head was turned slightly to his left so she could see the clean line of muscles in his right shoulder and neck. The sheet was pulled up to his collarbones and the left half of his neck was in shadows. Had he been bitten? He was bleeding from a dozen or more places, but that wasn't right. Vampires healed quickly. What could have happened to him to keep him from healing his wounds?
"You did what you had to do to save me Eric. I will not let you die simply because Miss Goody-Two-Shoes here cannot see the bigger picture." Pam hissed.
"Bigger picture?" Sookie practically shrieked, her voice finally returning to her. "Bigger picture? He turned his back on us in Mississippi, left us to the not-so-tender mercies of their crazy-ass King! Bill and I both almost died!" Her shock was melting away before the fires of her self-righteous fury.
"Yes, I know, I heard, Bill nearly killed you when he came around and found himself starving with a willing blood-bag nearby." Pam's voice dripped with venom. "And Eric could not have been there to help you anyway because you were so bent on saving your precious two-timing, lying ex-boyfriend you could not be bothered to think that others might have problems as well. Or are you really that stupid that you do not realize how much Eric cares for you? That he would never actually let anything bad happen to you if he could help it? It's always all about Sookie with you."
"What do you want me to do Pam?" Sookie screamed, losing control of her anger for a moment. Her feelings were inexplicably hurt by the thought of Pam turning against her too. "What can I possibly do? And why would I want to?"
"He has been bled nearly to death, Sookie. That's why he cannot heal himself, why he continues to lie there and bleed though he's almost dry. He did what he did in Mississippi because I was here, chained to a table with silver, being tortured by what passes for vampire law! He did what he did to save my life and I refuse to stand here and just watch him die because of it."
"That was weeks ago, you mean to tell me someone has had him ever since then? Been torturing him this whole time?" Now she knew they were lying. There is no way someone could have had Eric captive that long without someone knowing it. Was there?
"No you twit," Pam was out of patience, she stepped in close to Sookie and spoke nearly nose to nose, enunciating every word carefully as if her self-control depended on it, "the bastard who had been torturing me in Eric's place was killed in the fight to free me. The loss did not go unnoticed and an interrogator was dispatched to learn what he knew. If he told what happened, we both would have been put to death immediately. Since he did not, they tortured him to the point of death anyway, a lose-lose situation as you humans say, except that he once again kept me safe. He needs your blood or he will die."
Fear crashed through Sookie so suddenly, it was like a physical blow. The last time she'd let a drained vampire feed from her it had been her ex-lover Bill. He had almost sucked her dry before he came to himself and realized what he was doing. The memory was so fresh, so overwhelming, the thought of so much as a paper-cut right now made her feel faint. She realized she was shaking her head vigourously back and forth. No way. She could not do it, not again, not so soon, maybe not ever. She was so done with all this vampire shit.
He was lying so still under that bloody sheet, though, and she could not imagine after a thousand years that he could soon be gone. She remembered his smile, the way he would tease Bill about stealing her away, the times he had saved her life, his devastation when he lost his Maker, the wrenching sobs that had torn him apart. She pictured how his pale blue eyes would sparkle when he was up to mischief. He had protected her when he could. She tried to imagine her world without the massive, beautiful Viking. Would it have been different if he had not stood against them in Mississippi? Or would they all have been killed? And if he had been killed there, what would have become of Pam? Would Gran say she was being selfish, or was it that cut and dried? She could not fight her way past that memory though, what if Eric couldn't stop himself once he got started?
"Why my blood? Why not any one of the willing fang-bangers up there? Because my blood is "special" and "delicious"?" She asked in a small voice, though she knew the answer already.
"Sookie,you didn't have another vampire with you and Bill. I can keep him from drinking too deeply. I..." Pam's knees buckled as she spoke. She caught herself on the edge of the table, momentarily frozen. Her face a mix of pain and fear she began to shake her head, "No-no-no-no-no." She began to sob as she threw herself upright, her hands fluttering over Eric's body as if she were afraid to touch him. Sookie flashed back to Eric on the roof in Dallas, begging Godric not to leave him and her own sense of loss as those closest to her had died around her.
Sookie gave herself a shake, clearing her head. She could not hear the vampire's thoughts, but she had other tools in her arsenal. She held herself very still and called to mind how Eric felt to her, his confident energy and the ancient will inside that gorgeous body. The strength and determination of whatever it was that now animated him seemed to hum along his skin, always. He may not be truly a living thing, but he still had an energy all his own. She felt for that, reached out with whatever it was inside her that allowed her to hear thoughts and she could feel his life as though it had a voice of its own – flickering, but still there.
"He's not dead." She moved quickly to his head, making the decision before fear could cloud her mind again. She held her wrist out to Pam, who was still trying to compose herself and not quite believing what she had felt so strongly was not his death. The sensation of loss had been so strong, she was sure he was dead. "Pam! Snap out of it! He's not dead, bite my wrist quick before I change my mind!" She held her left wrist in front of the vampire's mouth, Pam reached out blindingly fast and with a painful crunch Sookie was bleeding freely.
She held her wrist down to Eric's mouth and there was no response. Not so much as a flinch. Her blood was raining down on his face and he never moved. "Dammit Eric, DRINK!" she begged as her own tears began to cloud her vision. She had lost Bill to his duplicity and concealed ferocity, but Eric had been trying to do the right thing and had never hidden who he was. She could not lose him. She loved him.
She reached down with her other hand and gently turned his head to face her still bleeding wrist. He lay very still for a moment that seemed to last for an eternity, suddenly his face registered his pain and he began to drink. Two long pulls at her wrist then he moaned and tried to pull his mouth from her arm, struggling against his instincts to feed. His body convulsed and then slammed back down to the table with a painful thump. He cried out in pain, breaking the seal of his lips from her wrist. His eyes opened, unfocused and glassy. Sookie held her wrist in reach of his mouth and tenderly stroked his hair and face with her other hand.
He squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them, seemed more focused but still very weak. He looked up into her face and if he'd had any blood in his body to spare she would have bet there would be bloody tears in his eyes. "I cannot," he whispered, her blood making an odd rattle in his throat, "after what I did to you, -"
She leaned down and kissed his forehead as she pressed her wrist to his mouth gently. "I won't let you die Eric. Not when I can save you."
He stared up at her, his eyes filled with pain and regret. He locked his lips onto her wrist so carefully she wondered if he would get any blood at all or if it would leak out around the seal. Despite his struggle to stay conscious he drank one careful draw at a time, always reminding himself who he was drinking from so as not to lose control. When he stopped again it was not quite the struggle it had been the first time, but it was still an effort she could tell.
"Eric, you nearly bled out, that can't be nearly enough."
"It is enough that I am not looking to the skies for the Valkyries. Not that one such as me could hope for them. Your face is pale, you have given more than you think and I will not endanger you again."
"But Eric, if she is willing - " Pam had been silently watching events unfold. Sookie wondered if she had been praying to whatever god she had worshiped when she was alive, and then realized that was a little presumptuous of her. For all she knew, Pam had been an atheist in life.
"No Pam. I will not. At this very second, all three of us are alive and I find that nothing short of miraculous, don't you? I am sure Sookie could use a bandage and a True Blood though." His eyes were sliding closed as he spoke and Sookie was touched that he thought of her given his current state of near-unconsciousness.
Pam looked at Sookie and she could not read the vampire's expression. "Will you stay with him while I go?" Sookie nodded and stepped around to the side of the table, still rubbing Eric's head soothingly. The adrenaline was starting to fade and as their "nurse" went off for supplies her legs began to shake.
His eyelids fluttered open with an effort as a barely-suppressed pain noise escaped his lips and his eyes sought her out. "Are you okay?" he asked, his voice still quiet and breathy. She nodded, not trusting her own voice. "Would you be mad at me if I asked you to lie alongside me so I can hold you in my arms?"
There was such sadness in his eyes, that was the only excuse she could find for what came out of her mouth next. "Sometimes I wish I could hear what you were thinking. I will lie alongside you and let you hold me if you tell me why you look so sad just now."
"I was thinking - " he squeezed his eyes closed and bit his bottom lip, for a moment she feared he was overcome by pain. His eyes opened enough to meet her concerned stare and a tear of blood coursed out the corner of each eye, "I was thinking how empty my life was before you came along, and how cold it will be if you throw me out of your life forever now that I have known life with you in it. ."
She laid a finger on his lips and said, "Sshh, don't cry, I don't think I have enough left in my veins to fill you up again. Not without a sippy cup anyway if last time was any indication." She motioned to her blood that had pooled alongside his head while she tried to get him to drink. He laughed weakly and she could not help but think that his smile was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
She climbed up onto the table carefully, unsure of whether any of his wounds had healed she feared causing him pain, and laid her head in the crook of his shoulder. Her arms were far too short to go around him, so she laid her hand on his stomach and she felt his big arm wrap up and around her body. He gave her a delicate squeeze and they both drifted off just as Pam was returning from her mission of mercy.
The last thing Sookie heard before she went completely under was Pam saying, "Oh, that's just great."