Disclaimer: I do not own anything you may recognise from True Blood or its source material.
I slammed the plates down hard, and moved away before Lafeyette could make a sound. He was annoying me tonight. So unconcerned about anything that might be happening outside the happy little bubble he built around him. There were only so many booty touches a person could stand to witness, when their mind was elsewhere. My eyes flashed to Sam who was hunkered down behind the bar, fixing a clogged pipe on one of the beer taps. Yet another person who was annoying me today. Beavering away at his tasks, completely unaware of the world that I had been slung into, and which he had not done enough to keep me away from. Oh sure – he had postured a bit and thrown his weight around. "Damn it Sook!" I imitated under my breath. Much good that had done.
A burst of laughter sounded from one of the tables and I spun away to skulk at the other end of the bar, busying myself by checking over empty booths to see if anything had been left behind.
It had been three days since I had found out I was part of some cosmic hiccup in time and I had not heard a peep out of anyone since that night; Nothing, nada, zilch. I attacked a stain on one of the tables with my apron, viciously, hand moving in brisk circles as I rubbed at it. Three days. My eyes narrowed as I spun the events over in my head again, flipping them over quickly, like pages in a book. I had been playing this game ever since I had walked into the house, smiled sweetly at Gran, and lied through my goddamn teeth.
Another thing I could blame them for – the traitorous trio, the duplicitous doubles – I thought with satisfaction, as I slammed the salt and pepper shakers back against the wall. They had no right. No right to just waltz in, and promptly tear away all these apparently flawed conceptions I had. Like the one where I was Sookie Stackhouse, the one and only telepath. Oh yeah - and that time moved in a straight line, although I still wasn't sure we were talking time travel here. I sighed. I could really only abide time travel when it was old, shaky episodes of Dr Who. Somehow it always pissed me off when it was a plot on another sci-fi show. I was even more pissed to discover it was more annoying when you were involved in the plot personally.
Mirror Universe? The only other half-way likely explanation. One that was even more annoying. I snorted, working away harder at the stain. Someone was going to pay for forcing me to participate in what was the most terrifying and bizarre night of my life, leaving me weeping one moment and then rocked to my core with inappropriate laughter the next. Or at least, inane repressed giggling. I had flown through the goddamn air! Like Superman!
And then I had come down to the ground with a resounding thump, which I still felt in my ankles if I was too quick getting up. And I was so pissed that this was all I had left to show for it, just that jarring occasional ache, and my memories that I had picked over and reassembled in so many different ways. I used to store up the promise of good things, exciting things to lift me out of the hum-drum, but suddenly that wasn't cutting it anymore. I wanted answers. I didn't want to be stuck in the same po' dunk town doing the first job that had came easy and going through the motions of life like this was really living – I cut off the thought suddenly. I took in a breath, and then another one. This was not wise. What if I didn't hear from them again? What if I turned my life inside out and upside down with these thoughts, and all I had left was the knowledge this wasn't enough. It had to be enough. It had always been enough.
Three goddamn days.
"Is that all? Oh honey, I don't mean to be a bitch but you've really got to learn to just be patient when it comes to vamps", a voice murmured in my mind. "Now I just want to let you know so you don't freak out on him – but you're going to get a visitor."
I pressed my lips together in shock and looked worriedly at Sam from out of the corner of my eyes. Could he hear? I twisted around, facing outwards to the door willing Sookie to appear to give me answers. That would really give the people in the bar something new to talk about for once.
"No of course he can't hear us – you know any other telepaths?" she asked amused.
"Of course I don't", I flashed back at her defensively, "Do you?" Honestly, it was like having your older sister's much cooler friends show up at your house to make fun of you while they tried on make up in front of the mirror. Only the mirror was your head and everything you were was being reflected back at them.
"Loads" came the voice cheerily, "well only two humans ones I guess – " she cut off suddenly as my last thought took root.
"Honey, I'm sorry", her voice had lost its edge. "This is all new to me as well. We will get to talk real soon I hope."
"You hope?" I moved my head back and forth slowly, wondering if this would give me more of an idea where she was holed up. I saw a table of diners watch me rotate my head from side to side, eyes flickering dangerously under my lowered eyelids, muttering random words indignantly. Crazy Sookie, at it again. I fixed them with my most winning 'I'm totally not a telepath' smile and turned back to the wall.
"Yeah well – We're trying to be careful here. Vamp's can be surprisingly cautious for a species that has to adjust to living down the ages. It's not good when they get rattled. Brings out their nesting instincts" her voice sounding a little subdued now.
"You ok?" I asked automatically.
"Oh yeah – just tired of being stashed in a coffin with Eric, all the live long day", and I gasped as she showed me an image of his face, unmistakeably dead, pillowed on velvet next to her own. "Don't worry" she reassured me. "That's how they look in the day – dead."
"Are you and he, are we – in the future or whatever the fuck this is – like dating?" I asked, unable to stop myself. There was a silence then, and I felt a pang go through me. I didn't want to have this slip away as well, even more easily than last time, and for that to have been my last question.
"There isn't enough time in both our lifetimes to answer that" she answered drily. "Look, I just needed to let you know about your visitor tonight. You'll have to ask him in."
"Well of course" I thought mystified. How else would we able to visit? Oh, she meant – which must mean. She had said him so the Pams and her were off the table. Bill had already been invited to my home and his invitation had never been rescinded. Her Eric probably already had an invitation if the velvet cushions were anything to go by, although I'm not sure if it worked that way. Which still made the most likely contender for my mystery visitor tonight – Eric, the first Eric, my Eric.
"So look, stock up on some True Blood if you don't have it", came her voice again, "he likes A neg if you can get it at the store. I can't remember if they stocked it back when – Well, when I was you I guess".
That could be a problem. Earlier that day after waiting late the night before to see if the whole gang would show up for the second act of the little melodrama we'd started, I'd emptied any True Bloods in the house down the sink. I'd felt empowered for the length of time I'd taken to do it. I wasn't sure whether the Bon Temps store would carry much in the way of speciality items.
'"Oh", said her voice and then not much else for a while. The soft sounds in my mind was her laughing, I realised with a sense of delight. It was ticklish. "It's just – Its something I would do" came her voice again.
This time her voice was a little sharper, "It won't be a – a bad time, will it? She won't be there or anything? I picked tonight because it was her night at the meeting as well, I thought it might hard to explain – "
Probably not as hard as her having a second – but identical – granddaughter covered in blood and screaming like a banshee, but yeah. "No she'll be venerating the dead, well away from the walking, talking dead man in her living room", I answered.
"That's a relief", she said, and it sounded tense. "How is she?" with so much longing in her voice, it dragged my stomach up into my mouth before plummeting it back down again. This was how it was for her – being cut off from Gran by that, longing with that intense drive to see her, to hear her voice again – and now she could. Except something still stopped her, held her apart. A quiver raced down from the crown of my head to my toes: What could possibly be that compelling, that it would keep me from seeing Gran again?
My breath caught. I couldn't let it happen. Not the way I had glimpsed at least; That sight even more terrible than her body, of my hands washing away the blood from the floor. Eradicating her presence from the house, her essence, what remained behind, when everything was said and done. It was so final, and I couldn't accept that.
"I don't know if we have that choice", whispered my older and maybe wiser self, "we all die".
"Not like that" I replied, wanting to reply more vehemently but the simple truth in her words took some of the sting out of my self-righteousness. This woman had actually cleaned the blood off the floor and answered the door to neighbours with an etched smile and accepted the pies baked with so much malice, it was surprising they didn't bleed when a knife cut them. I had only watched it, glimpsed it through the eyes of someone I was yet to become.
"Might not become either, if we keep at this" I heard her edging away, with some resignation. I could her becoming thoughtful now; pulling her mind away to a place I couldn't reach.
"What do you mean?" I plunged after her, desperate to keep her talking just a little longer. Out of the corner of my eye, a hand waved, insistently. Uh oh. Sam. How long had I been standing here, having a conversation with myself – in my mind – while tables went untended?
Her touch on my mind is brief and welcome, but distant. She's elsewhere, I can feel it, probably carrying on a conversation verbally while she teases me with not very enlightening information. It's like a distracted owner placating a needy dog with a head pat. I growl internally.
"Sook" Sam calls as he walks towards me now. Shit.
"Later" she breezes at me, and with that is gone.
"Something you need to tell me?" he asks, coming to stand beside me.
Please let me know your thoughts :)