A/N – You guys are being so generous with your reviews! I humbly thank each and every one of you for taking the time to leave me your thoughts. Here's chapter 4 for y'all. Happy reading!


Chapter 4

"Is she there?"

Jessica bit her lip in retaliation; the sound of Pam's voice – so awash with pain and regret – was palpable even through the receiver. It flitted through the tiny device like a live thing, reaching into the confines of the redhead's chest only to wrap gnarled fingers around her unbeating heart. It squeezed at the vulnerable muscle, dug sharp nails digging mercilessly into the soft flesh and Jessica couldn't help but flinch slightly in response.

"Jessica?"

"I…" Jessica began but then clamped her mouth shut. What exactly was she supposed to say? Trying to buy herself some time, the redhead stole a sidelong glance at the vampire in question; Tara was ensconced on the couch, her body slightly hunched over, her arms like ebony hued vines as they wrapped themselves tightly around her stomach. Her face a study in trauma, the features of it utterly blank and smooth, her eyes flat and devoid of life. She simply sat on the couch, sitting so preternaturally still that the air around her seemed to quiver and shimmer in response.

"I know she's there, Jess," came Pam's voice again and Jessica's teeth gnashed down harder onto the pillow-y softness of her lower lip when her vampiric hearing caught what sounded suspiciously like a choked sob emanating from the phone.

"Yes, she's here," the redhead finally replied, her own voice sounding strangled. Cornflower blue eyes skidded sideways again, as they took in the frankly heartbreaking sight of Tara sequestered on her couch. Her breath hitched in her throat when a thin line of crimson drew a path down an ebony cheek. "Pam…"

"Put her on, Jess," Pam's voice beseeched, the blonde's naturally husky lilt hoarse with tears and guilt. "Please, little one."

This time Jessica couldn't stop the shaky sob that burst unrepentantly from her throat; in all the years she had known Pam, she had never once heard her so broken. So desolate. That coupled with the fact that the blonde had resorted to wielding her nickname for Jessica as a tool of persuasion resulted in the redhead's eyes blotting over with blood-tears.

"Hang on," Jessica murmured into the phone. She turned and crossed the small distance over to Tara, her eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to stave off tears that were threatening to send crisscross lines of ruby red to track down her pale cheeks. She came to a stop in front of the sitting vampire and bent down so that she was at eye level with her.

"Tara?"

No response.

Jessica gulped at the devastated look in Tara's eyes; she knew her fellow vampire and Pam often fought but never once had a fight gotten so bad or so out of hand that it had rendered Tara to the state she was now in.

Broken. Shattered. Lost.

Jessica worried the inside of her cheek and contemplated telling Pam that Tara wasn't ready to talk but when she caught wind of a slight sniffle from the blonde's end of the line, she sucked in a needless breath, girded her mental loins then timidly held out the phone.

"Tara, it's Pa…"

An ebony arm lashed out, its movements so fast that the appendage was nothing more than a blur in the air. The back of Tara's hand connected with the phone, effectively knocking it out of Jessica's hand and sending it spinning at lethal speeds across the room. It flew at such velocity that the tiny device managed to embed itself into the brick walls of Jessica's Manhattan loft.

Jessica flinched then winced when the phone turned projectile device crackled with static before falling silent. In its place, soft pings of falling brick, mortar and glass could be heard, their sound rather jarring in the otherwise silent apartment.

"I'll replace that," came Tara's voice and her tone was so robotic and flat that Jessica couldn't help but cringe.

"It doesn't matter," the redhead responded, her own voice tremulous. She cursed the break in her voice and fought to project a more soothing inflection but her voice failed her, her mouth simply opening and closing like a gasping fish out of water.

Jessica cinched her jaw and ran a worried hand through her red locks. Her brows furrowed as she tried to corral the chaotic musings in her head. Finally, she simply settled for tactile contact.

It was an instantaneous mistake.

Tara flinched like she'd be scalded and she shirked away from Jessica's outstretched hand as though it were a cobra ready to strike.

Jessica recoiled in response and immediately retracted her hand; her arm flopped uselessly back at her side. "Tara…"

"Don't." Tara forced herself to look into Jessica's anxious and concerned cornflower blue eyes. "Please," she whispered hoarsely, her voice finally betraying her emotional turmoil by cracking slightly. "Just…don't."

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Back in Louisiana, Pam's heart dropped into the pit of her stomach upon hearing the dial tone. The sound was shrill to the blonde vampire's acute hearing and it seemed to carry note of mockery, as if it were taunting Pam for her inability to communicate with her progeny.

"FUCK!"

The blonde hurled her cell clear across the room; it hit the full-length mirror with deadly accuracy causing both objects to shatter in unison. Shards of broken glass immediately littered the floor, its reflective surfaces catching the overhead light, causing the pieces to wink and twinkle.

Pam paid the mess no mind, choosing instead to collapse at the foot of the bed. She buried her head in her hands, dry sobs wracking her lithe frame. Dry sobs turned into a torrent of heart wrenching cries and whimpers, followed in quick succession by streams of blood-tears that leeched through the cracks of her fingers in macabre lines of red.

The blonde didn't know just how long she sat there, wallowing in her misery and defeat but when she felt the creep of dawn approach, she stood and moved to the bedside table where an ancient landline phone lay perched.

Picking up the receiver, she proceeded to smudge bloody stains all over the phone and its keypad as she punched in a number with shaking fingers.

It took a ring and a half for the person on the other end of the line to pick up.

"Eric?" Pam's voice broke on the last syllable and fresh tears of rich crimson stroked its way down blood-stained cheeks. "Eric, fader, snälla," she whimpered piteously into the phone, her bottom lip quivering, her shoulders shaking with effort to contain sobs that were clawing at the confines of her throat.

"I need you."

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Eric simply held Pam to his chest, allowing her the physical comfort she so desperately craved. One of the blonde's hands had a tight grip on the front of his shirt, effectively wrinkling the hell out of the material but Eric paid it no mind. Instead, he pulled his progeny tighter to him, cradling her like one would a small child. The tall former Viking pressed soft kisses into her hair, murmuring nonsensical words in Old Swedish.

"Fader," Pam rasped into her maker's shoulder, her naturally husky voice so hoarse from tears that continued to shed that the blonde was barely coherent, even to Eric's vampiric hearing. "Eric, I fucked up."

"I know," came Eric's calm and simple reply. He wasn't going to coddle his progeny, wouldn't sugarcoat the harsh reality that was now Pam's life. As her maker, he owed it to her to deliver the brutal truth. "You were always callous when it came to matters of the heart, mitt barn." He reached up and smoothed a hand down Pam's blonde locks. "Now, you must reap the consequences of your actions."

Pulling back, Eric cupped Pam's blood-stained face in his hands. His thumbs fanned out to catch droplets of blood that clung to alabaster cheeks. "Do you love her?"

Pam nodded, fresh tears already beginning to well in her eyes. "She's everything, fader." A sob escaped from bee-stung lips. "I don't want to live without her."

"Then why are you still here?" Eric inquired, his voice chiding though sympathetic. In all the years he had been acquainted with Pam, never once had he seen her so despondent, so utterly lost. It broke his heart that the reason for his child falling apart at the seams was because of her own careless actions.

"You didn't see the look on her face," Pam intoned in a dull voice. Her entire frame shook as she recalled the look on Tara's face: destroyed. She had destroyed the only thing in the world that mattered to her. The very fact stabbed a stake through the blonde's heart.

"I imagine it was similar to the look you bestowed upon me when I broke our bond, mitt barn," Eric reminded Pam softy, his own heart clenching as he too brought up the image of Pam's devastated face the second he had released her. The image still haunted him and would continue to do so for the rest of eternity.

However, the difference between him and Pam was that Eric had prepared Pam for her release. She may not have been completely willing but had abided to his wishes. Pam, in contrast, had released Tara in the heat of the moment, a careless slip of the tongue that was a result from a fight. Eric was also not Pam's lover when he had released her. Tara on the other hand…

"She looked at me like I had completely wiped out her world," Pam sobbed, clinging harder to Eric who tightened his arms in response. "I swore I would never hurt her like that. I swore it, Eric," Pam continued, her voice rising slightly in pitch as anxiety and guilt drummed a toxic rhythm through her veins. "It was as good as a marital vow. I gave her my word and I…I broke it!"

"Then fix it," Eric replied, his voice firming. He stared hard into Pam's cerulean blue eyes that were bloody with tears that were itching to fall. "The bond only makes up a part of your love, it does not encompass it." Sea blue-green eyes locked onto desolate and pain-riddled azure blue pools. "Go to her, mitt barn. Explain. Apologize. Beg if you have to."

"And if she doesn't want me back?"

The utter anguish in Pam's voice sliced a piece from Eric's heart and a crimson tear traced a lazy path down the Viking's cheek in response. He turned sad eyes onto his child, knowing the next words out of his mouth would ruin her.

"Then you'll have to live with it."

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Pam raised a hand to the closed door, her arm trembling so hard that the muscles protested. Gritting her teeth, she rapped on the door three times in quick succession before dropping her shaking arm back down her side.

The door opened almost immediately and Pam was unprepared for the vicious slap that followed.

She staggered back as the force of a palm meeting her cheek with furious intent sent her face snapping sideways.

"How could you?" Jessica hissed venomously as she stalked forward, forcing Pam to backpedal. The redhead kept moving forward until Pam was backed up against the hallway wall. Then she jabbed a finger into the blonde's face. "How could you do that to her, Pam?" she repeated, her voice one octave shy of a growl. "I thought you loved her!"

"I do love her!" Pam cried. She refused to defend herself against Jessica's angry spiel, knowing that it was well deserved. "Please, Jess. Let me talk to her," she pleaded, her glacial blue eyes pleading with the redhead. "Let me apologize."

Jessica scoffed and backed up until she was leaning against the frame of her front door. "You're too late," she stated coldly, folding her arms across her chest.

A frisson of fear rippled through Pam. "W-what do you mean?"

"She's gone," Jessica responded, her tone arctic. Cornflower blue eyes were steely with rage as they locked with pools of desperate cerulean blue.

"Tara's gone."

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Pam awoke, gasping for needless breaths of air. Her right palm was pressed firmly on the spot above her heart, a gesture she often woke up to. And as always, the lack of that slight hum that was the maker/progeny bond resulted in her face crumbling. Tears choked the corners of her eyes, welling and blurring her vision before gravity pulled them down, drawing lines of rich ruby red down Pam's pale cheeks.

The blonde scrambled to right her mental equilibrium even as tears meandered down her face and her body quivered under the force of her near silent sobs. Tendrils of the horrific set of memories still clung to her conscious and Pam was thrown between bouts of heartache, panic, loss and fear.

Inhaling methodically through her mouth, she forced herself to calm down and took stock of her surroundings. She noted that the light-tight shutters were still drawn, surmised that London was still in the throes of daylight.

Then the realization of the events that occurred the night before struck her.

Pam whirled around so fast that she almost gave herself whiplash.

There was Tara, curled up in an almost fetal position on the other side of the bed. Pam noted the great abyss between their bodies and a pang of sadness trilled through her. Space was something that Pam neither wanted nor needed at that very moment but there was something about the way Tara angled her body away from Pam's that raised warning flags in the back of her head.

Pam sat up and drew her knees to her chest. Propping her chin on her knees, she stared at her former lover forlornly. Already, she could feel the heavy clap of exhaustion brought on from daytime weighing heavily on her body but Pam refused to surrender to the siren of sleep.

As Pam sat there and watched Tara sleep, blood began weeping from various orifices, blood that Pam frankly couldn't afford to shed. She paid her bleeding ears and weeping nose no mind, however as she stared longingly at Tara, internally debating with herself on whether to wake the slumbering vampire up.

Her body betrayed her by subconsciously inching slowly towards the dark-skinned vampire. Again, that clang of caution rang loud and long in her ears but Pam, so riddled with exhaustion and laden with such turbulent emotions that she gave in and threw caution to the wind.

An alabaster hand snaked out, intending to descend onto an ebony hued shoulder but before it could make contact, Tara was suddenly animate. The younger vampire grabbed the extended limb, clamped fingers down onto the wrist, then spun around only to throw Pam onto her back. Wild obsidian eyes were filled with feral intensity as they looked coldly down at the blonde. One knee was at Pam's throat, the blonde's wrist still enclosed within Tara's grip, which was one squeeze shy of breaking the bones.

Tara didn't seem to realize where she was or who she was holding down as she snarled at the prone vampire, her fangs elongated over her lips.

"Tara," Pam called out, her voice shaking with trepidation. The look in Tara's eyes was something she had never seen in her progeny before; they were cold, hard, cruel. In that very moment, Pam didn't recognize the woman who held her down. There was no trace of the Tara she knew; in her place was something…soulless.

The sight broke Pam's heart.

"Tara?'" Pam tried again, her voice deliberately low and soothing. She fought hard not to flinch as Tara growled menacingly down at her, fully cognizant that the younger vampire was operating on primal instinct.

"Tara, it's Pam." Pain licked at sensitive nerves that were rapidly fraying e as Tara applied pressure to her throat with her knee. "Tara, please," she whimpered as she felt the bones in her wrist begin to splinter. "Let me go."

Tara looked down at the blonde, trying in vain to shake the red haze of bloodlust from her mind. When she finally registered the absolutely petrified and pained look in Pam's winter-blue eyes, her entire body froze.

"Fuck!"

Letting Pam go, she vamp sped until she was back on the other side of the bed. She leapt off the bed and stood on shaky legs. "Shit, Pam, I'm sorry," she apologized, raking agitated fingers through her mused hair. The frightened look in Pam's eyes flashed through her mind's eye and she flinched in response. Never in her life did she ever think Pam would look at her that way. The thought sent a wave of disgust rolling through her veins and it was potent enough for her to want to throw up.

"It's okay," Pam mumbled, though her voice was still shaking slightly. She kept her eyes trained on Tara as she propped herself up to a sitting position, her movements sluggish and wary. She winced slightly as her bruised throat began throbbing and couldn't stop the slight gasp of pain when she tried to use the wrist Tara almost broke to better position herself against the headboard.

In an instant Tara was at her side. "Let me see," she demanded, holding out her hand. When Pam recoiled slightly from her close proximity, another wave of self-disgust washed down Tara's veins. She retreated a little, allowing the blonde some space. She watched, remorse and guilt alight in her dark eyes as Pam cradled her impressively bruised wrist to her chest.

"I'm sorry, Pamela," Tara whispered, her voice contrite. Regret was a sharp note in her apology.

"You're different," Pam murmured as she turned to look at Tara. Long, pale fingers absentmindedly stroked at the myriad of purple, blue and green blotches that adorned the circle of her wrist. "You're…" Many adjectives immediately flew to the forefront of her mind but she didn't dare voice them aloud for fear of offending the standing vampire.

"I know what I am," Tara couldn't help but snap. Self-loathing was the dark-skinned vampire's only companion these days, a constant reminder of the atrocities she had committed over a fifty-year span. She didn't need Pam to remind her that she was currently a shell of what she once was.

Pam shrank back as she observed the cold mask that dropped over Tara's face. The dead, empty look in the younger vampire's eyes made the hairs at the back of her neck stand and every instinct in Pam told her to get up and run.

But she didn't.

Silence lorded over the room as both vampires observed the other from their respective perches.

Tara was afraid to approach Pam, lest she add to the trauma the blonde sustained from last night. She had also noted the scared look in Pam's eyes; Pam was scared of her. The very thought made her sick and Tara had to fight tooth and nail not to just get up and leave.

Pam was still reeling from the emptiness she glimpsed in Tara's eyes; one thing she had always loved about Tara was the younger vampire's ability to retain her humanity. Today, Pam saw none of that compassion and liveliness that usually abounded in Tara's dark gaze and it shook her to the core.

Tara felt a wetness on her upper lip and realized that she was in the midst of The Bleeds. Sweeping a critical gaze down Pam's, she realized that the blonde was also bleeding heavily. Swiping away the small trickle of blood, she wrestled with her temper and tried to tame it back to a low simmer. "It's early, Pamela." Dark eyes betrayed nothing as they bore into hesitant and slightly apprehensive cobalt blue ones. "Let's just go back to sleep."

The dark-skinned vampire made her way back to her side of the bed and was about to clamber back on it when she caught sight of Pam watching her with uneasy eyes. Tara gritted her teeth, hating that she had put such skittishness in her maker's gaze.

"I'll sleep on the floor," Tara offered quietly, reaching over to snag the afghan on the foot of the bed.

Pam said nothing as she watched Tara toss the pillow over the edge of the bed. Their eyes met momentarily as Tara conveyed her shame and remorse to Pam before she disappeared from view.

A lone tear trickled down Pam's cheek as she slid back into bed. Last night, after she had successfully managed to prevent Tara from leaving, the blonde thought that they were finally getting somewhere.

Now, she realized that she hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of the dire consequences of their estrangement.

Her last coherent thought before sleep took her under was that that she didn't know who the woman who now slept on the floor was.

TBC