I own nothing to do with TB or SVM. I just am a fan and am doing this for fun (obviously lol).

Hoping you enjoy this one. As usual, its probably quite silly haha. Thank you so much for your kindness and encouraging reviews! It means a lot to me!

Chapter Four

A week went by without so much as any notable catastrophes.

Sookie seemed to be blending in and adjusting to living with us in Fangtasia quite well; For a couple of days, she was quiet as a mouse and just liked to sit by herself and draw, occasionally talking to me or Pam.

Then, just like that, she started becoming louder and more of a chatterbox with each passing night. I suppose she finally worked out for herself that both Pamela and myself were trustworthy and that we weren't going to become any type of threat to her tinyhood.

Pam and I took it in turns with "babysitting" duty of a night. Pam would go out to the bar while Sookie sat with me in my office while I did paper work and sorted out payslips for the staff. Then next night, it would be Pam's turn while I went out and sat in the bar while the human patrons stared at me.

This evening, it was my turn to do my bit of babysitting duties again. Honestly, I felt uncomfortable and out of my depths the first time I had to do it. I hadn't talked to a child in a very long time, but I learned that I had to dumb-down my vocabulary quite a bit for Sookie. I also had to (as she termed it) "mind my P's and Q's" and the S-word and the F-word were to be avoided at all costs.

It also seemed that Sookie could smell out my inexperience. Because after a moment of sitting with her the first time, she had said, "You don't spend time with children very much, do you?"

When I had asked her if she needed to be changed hourly with her diapers, Sookie had even laughed at me and said with a pointed look, "That's baby stuff. I'm not a baby, silly; I'm ten! I don't got to wear diapers!"

So the first time of babysitting duties was very informative to me...

Now I knew that Sookie didn't require diaper changes and that also, I had to be careful with what I said around her. I suppose all of that should have been common fucking sense, but how was I meant to know that?

Now that the spontaneity of deciding to keep Sookie had waned, I was now starting to think things through more rationally.

I was also reassessing our accommodation issues; We had a two bedroom safe-house in Baton Rouge that we hadn't utilized in quite some time, seeing as we hadn't had to. It took almost four full hours to get there by car, less by flying, and Pam preferred sleeping in Fangtasia because she felt it were easier that way to just wake up and immediately get into the business of running the bar. But that was when it was just the mere two us; Now we had someone else to look after and consider.

Perhaps now was a better time than any to start making good use of the house, considering there was another addition to the family and she would do best in a home environment, rather than in a crowded and noisy bar. No doubt, Sookie would have felt better if she had a bedroom to call her own and, not to mention, an actual bed. Business had been running smoothly for years now, and I had earned enough money by now that I shouldn't be stingy.

I had also contacted two day laborers to revamp the room that was going to be Sookie's new bedroom. They still had a fair amount of work to do, as far as painting the walls a pink salmon color went. Pam suggested the paint color, and once it was finished, she wanted to be put in charge of refurnishing the room. Pam would know more about what girl's liked in their bedrooms anyway.

I also had abstained from feeding and fucking a human all week in what was world record time for me, because no doubt, exposing a child to that kind of imagery was hugely inappropriate. Seeing as she was around me most of the night, I would have to suffer in drinking dull synthetic blood. Once everything was prepared with the house in Baton Rouge, I assumed that would change and everything would return back to as it normally was; Or well, as normal as it could possibly get with a child put into the equation.

But most bizarre- and strangest of all- is that I have this automatic need to protect Sookie and ensure that she is all right. Too many times than I would have liked, I have had to stop straight in the middle of paper work or sitting out at the bar because I was fretting that something was wrong with the little girl.

Hell, during the week I have even found myself unable to stop picturing that same little girl I found outside Fangtasia near the bin, huddled under a cardboard box wet, dirty, and shivering. It would only spur me into stopping what I was doing in order to go check on her and make sure she was all right.

Me, fretting over the well being of a little girl? It was something I hadn't expected to experience.

I suppose that was why I had been prone to overfeeding her. She had fattened up a lot during the past week, and honestly, she looked better for it. At least she no longer complained about her stomach hurting.

Pam sent her in as my turn of babysitting duties, and Sookie automatically helped herself to a place on my couch while I sat at my desk, rifling through pay-sheets and counting hours of shifts. Half the time, it was difficult keeping her preoccupied and busy. She bored easily, I learned very quickly. Three hours of drawing was just not cutting it anymore.

"Did you have fun this morning with Ginger?" I asked her while she pulled her legs up on the couch.

I still didn't know what it was that her and Ginger did in the daylight hours to fill the time, to be honest. But I assumed, with someone like Ginger, that there wasn't much to do.

She started undoing the wrapper on the lollipop Pam had given her. We learned quickly also, that Sookie enjoyed eating lollies.

"It was okay," she said quietly. She made a disgusted face by scrunching up her nose and her forehead. "Kinda gross, though."

"Gross?"

"She makes me weird things to eat half the time. Like cucumber and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pickles with chocolate sauce. It all tastes funny. And she keeps going on in her mind voice about you, how she thinks your the S-word and that she wishes to have your babies." Sookie had spoken about that mind voice thing all week. Pam and I still wasn't sure what she meant by that.

"Oh? So you don't like the food Ginger makes you?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "It's okay. Just tastes funny. It's not like how my Granny used to make things."

During the week, Sookie hadn't mentioned hardly anything about her human relatives. Now that I discovered that my glamour hadn't worked on her, I didn't know how else to get it out from her.

"And how did Granny make things?"

"She used to make almond slice pie, my favorite." She smiled halfheartedly at the memory. "And she'd make nice dinners like mashed potato and fried chicken with special sauce. Stuff like that."

Pam and I had no experience with cooking, and neither did Ginger evidently. There wasn't much we could do about that. But I got the sense that she was already missing her human relatives, particularly this grandmother of hers with her up to par culinary skills.

"Do you miss your grandmother, Sookie?" I asked her while trying to make my tone gentle. "Do you wish to be back home with her now?"

I was almost dreading her answer as I stared at her patiently. Pam definitely enjoyed having her around. As for myself, I was slowly getting there.

"No," she said, with a little shudder. "I don't ever want to go back there." She lifted her gaze to mine, her eyes hard and her expression stubborn. "Never, ever again. Not when she said I was a bad girl and that I was fibbing, that liars go to hell. Not if she thinks that about me, when I was only telling her the truth..."

She had been saying cryptic statements like that all week. I wasn't completely certain what had happened to cause her to run away from her home, but whatever that reason was, I had assumed it was grave.

"Telling her the truth? Telling her the truth about what?"

Just as usual, she found a way of getting out of answering by shoving her lollipop in her mouth so she couldn't talk any longer, clicking it around her teeth. She started sucking in a loud, slurping way that was quickly becoming fucking irritating.

"What's a mind voice?" I asked her, the only thing I could think of off the top of my head to stop her from making all that grating noise. It seemed to work; She popped the lollipop out of her mouth, thank fuck. "Pam and I hear you mention that all the time, but frankly, we do not understand?"

"You know, mind voice..." She stared down at her lollipop, turning it over and over on the stick. "You and Mrs Pam don't got mind voices though, and neither does that man at the bar."

What? So us vampires didn't have mind voices?

"And is that why you didn't like going out into the bar with Pam yesterday? Or was it simply due to the music being too loud?" Pam had tried unsuccessfully to bring Sookie out into the bar so she could do door duties, only Sookie hadn't wanted that.

It was bizarre; She had almost seemed distressed and on the verge of crying when Pam had tried to yank her out by the hand with her. I could hear Sookie saying over and over something about it being too loud. It was as if Sookie wanted to avoid the bar area like the plague, though perhaps she just knew that a bar was anything but an appropriate place for a child to be, particularly seeing as alcohol would be served in that area? Not to mention, the dancers we had employed.

"It's not just the music that makes it really, really loud," she admitted after a moment. "It's the mind voices, too. The S-word and bad things that are said in their mind voices."

"So when you say mind voices, do you mean... thoughts?" I still wasn't comprehending what she was trying to say.

She stared at her lollipop thoughtfully for a moment before finally nodding, "Kinda."

"Do you mean to tell me that you can hear human's thoughts? That you are..." What was it? "...A telepath? Is that it, Sookie?"

Her eyes darted upwards to me again and she nodded vigorously, her face lit up in recognition. "Yes! Yes, that's what its called! Granny said that once, only I couldn't remember what it was called!"

Her mind voices were the thoughts of the human patrons that she could hear. And Ginger's, also. Finally, it all seemed to make some sort of reasonable sense. Holy fuck. While I had sensed there had to be something different about Sookie- particularly considering her scent- I hadn't once suspected that was it; That she was a telepath, that she had that valuable gift. How beneficial would she be... How advantageous she would prove to be... I was having difficulty in keeping my fangs retracted, I was that excited by the news!

No need to get too excited now... It is better to hone it in.

"So you are a telepath, Sookie?" I had to work at keeping my voice one-level, to not let any of that excitement seep through. "When you said mind voice all those times, you were... referring to your ability to hear thoughts?"

"Yes!"

"And so is that why you ran away from home? Because Granny didn't... believe you about your valuable gift?" The closeness of at last finally fully learning how she came to be out on the street and her difficult home life was so sweet I could almost taste it.

But then it was like stabbing a pin into a balloon. Her face deflated, and her eyes flew back down to her lollipop in her hand again. "No, it... it wasn't about that. Granny did believe me about that."

I could see she still wasn't comfortable talking about that, so I switched it around slightly. "Whereabouts did you live with your grandmother?"

"In Bon Temps."

Bon Temps? I knew of Bon Temps well, as it was part of my area that other vampires were required to report to me. It was not in any way a special town; It was small, with only a few convenience stores. It was also quite the distance from here, in Shreveport. Too far a distance for a little girl to walk to.

"Bon Temps is quite far away from here in Shreveport. How did you come to be here? Even if you... walked, it would have taken you quite some time, wouldn't it?"

"I walked and then I caught a bus. Then I walked some more."

I suppose that explained it, if she caught a bus. But why did she decide to sleep here outside the back entrance and rubbish area of Fangtasia?

"So why did you choose to sleep outside here?"

"Because it was the quickest thing I saw. There was a cardboard box outside so I could sleep underneath that, too."

"For an entire week?" I was assuming she had been sleeping outside Fangtasia for over a week, seeing as Pam and I had been hearing something making crying noises for that long.

"I didn't got nowhere else to go. Besides the lights were on outside most of the night. It wasn't as... scary like other places where it was left dark."

We were definitely making headway. Neither Pam nor I had had this much progress all week in getting her to open up to us. Now I understood what she meant when she said mind voices, that she was a telepath. She was a telepath, and she was immune to a vampires glamour. That made Sookie a very special and unique little girl. But also, that she had gotten to Shreveport by bus, that she hadn't completely walked the entire way on her small feet. Pam would be envious that I had won at making Sookie open up, best of all.

"But weren't you frightened?" I asked her in confusion. "We had quite a lot of vampire patrons that come inside here. What if one of them so happened to notice you sleeping outside? Weren't you scared that they would thrive at the chance of attacking a small little girl?"

"I... I was at first. But then I decided it wouldn't be half as bad as what I left back at home with Gran."

"And so what happened at home with your Gran?" I was nearly leaning off the edge of my chair, closer to her, waiting for the precise moment I won and she enlightened me. "What was so bad that you felt you had to run away as a last resort?"

To my disappointment, Sookie still didn't take the bait. She shifted slightly on the couch so that she wasn't facing me head-on, and before I knew it, I heard her sniffling.

I knew what she was doing the instance she made that sound; She was crying. I had caused her to cry, yet how? When I leaned back in my chair at an angle to catch a glimpse of her face, surely enough, tears were streaming down her cheeks and her nose was red. How the fuck had I managed to do that?

I had made humans cry a lot over the years, especially when torturing them. At the time, it had only served to inflate my ego and make me feel good. Making humans cry had felt, to me, like the biggest endorphin rush.

Yet with Sookie, I found it was different. I didn't feel any semblance of glee over managing to make her cry. No, I just felt like an asshole. Pam was going to kill me when she found out about this, about making Sookie's eyes leak.

For the first time in a very long time, I felt extremely hopeless and useless. I just sat there, watching her, while she used her hand to wipe her tears away with her fingers hurriedly, her chin wobbling.

What was I meant to do? Go over and pat her on the head? Say 'There there, little girl'. Or did I say 'Stop crying, please. It's fucking annoying, even if you are a little girl that is supposed to cry.'

"Uh, please." The words croaked out desperately like a plea before I could so much as even stop myself. "Please don't... uh, do that, Sookie. I... I don't know how to deal with that, so don't, uh..."

She made another sniffling noise as she looked my way again.

"Pam?" I muttered urgently around the office. She'd know what to do about this predicament more than I ever would. "Ah, Pam. Sookie's... uh, crying? What... what do I do about this?"

When no answer came, it occurred to me that I was out on my own. No one else could help me. I certainly was not expecting looking after a human girl to make me feel so frighteningly... human.

With her eyes all watery and her nose red, it made me feel disturbingly... sad for her. And paternal; Like I wanted to rush right over to the couch and take her in my arms. Scary. Then I realized that was probably exactly what she needed; Her eyes were pleading for me to hug her or do... something.

When I reached the couch to where she was sitting, I knelt down, and that was when she started crying softly again. I backtracked, moving away from her quickly. Maybe I had misread the signals? She was crying again because she wanted me nowhere near her; she didn't need me to comfort her. Then she shook her head back and forth when she noticed I'd moved away, and then when I knelt back down over her, it took a lot of courage to bring myself to brush her hair back gently with my hand.

"What's wrong, Sookie? Did I... say something to make you upset?"

She made a grunting noise of frustration while wiping her eyes again. "Cheese and rice, and all things nice! You really do know nothing about how to look after a kid, do you?"

I had to laugh, I couldn't help it. Not at her, of course. But at how apt she was at gauging the situation. Her words were really an understatement. "That's very true," I admitted, not without some shame. "Usually I avoid little children at all costs, both me and Pam. Sorry." I astounded myself by how quickly I chose to apologize to her; I definitely never did that very often either. "I am... deeply sorry that I am so terrible at knowing how to look after a little girl such as yourself. But I'll get better," I added brightly under my breath.

Even if it was the last thing I ever did, I would get better. Yes, I most certainly would.

Hope this one was okay? Sorry if its extremely silly. Things will speed up and become more eventful next update. Suggestions on the story and what you would like to happen are most welcome, too. :)