A/N: Here's the next chapter. It's a bit short, but I wanted to let Sookie and Pam have their "awww how cute" bonding moment before the fur starts flying. Also I'm ridiculously proud of myself for having worked in Pam's brilliant speech from the season finale. So, I wholeheartedly admit that the part you recognize is blatantly plagerized. But really, I would never presume to think I could say it better than Pam!

Thanks to everyone who's been reading, reviewing, alerting and favoriting! Y'all rock my socks and to my brilliant, wonderful beta Sheknitsnicely who's just amazing in every way!

Disclaimer: I don't own them, Alan Ball does. However the judge in this case extended Eric and Sookie's stay in foster care for the duration of this trial when witnesses for the defense: Bill Compton and Lorena Krasiki were declared unfit to testify on Mr. Ball's behalf and may in fact be charged as accessories to the crime!

The first thing I notice is the feeling of something small and cold tapping me over and over again. It's insistent and constant and won't let me be. Then there's the realization that I'm wet: wet, cold and achy all over.

Groaning, I try to open my eyes, but everything feels like it's happening in slow motion and even the slightest movement makes my head hurt as though someone's driving an ice pick through my temple.

I just want to go back to sleep. Maybe if I sleep long enough I'll wake up warm in my soft bed and my pretty floral sheets that Eric made me promise never to tell anyone he's agreed to sleep in, with my Vampire naked and wrapped around me.

As the cold thing taps me though, I realize that sleeping isn't a possibility anymore and groan in pain as I finally force myself to open my eyes. The sight that greets me is about as frightening as it could possibly be, but it's not unexpected given everything that's happened tonight.

I find myself sitting on a cold stone floor, my hands chained above my head and a steel band, attached to the wall circling my waist. The small, cold thing tapping me is smelly, scummy, little drops of water falling from a cracked pipe in the ceiling and hitting me in the face every second or so and across from me, also chained in the same way, is Pam.

"Pam," I croak out, my voice rough from whatever shit our kidnappers made me breathe in, "are you awake?" I ask, thanking God that Vampires have such acute hearing, because what's coming out sounds a great deal more like the croaking of an asthmatic frog than the voice of a Human. Pam looks at me, and I can see that even though her face and neck are still badly burned, she's apparently healed enough to see again.

"I'm fine." She drawls out, her voice sounding pissed and disgusted at our current situation. "How bout you?" She asks after a second, probably realizing that it's customary to ask the question back.

"My head is killing me and I still feel a little woozy, but otherwise I'm alright. As long as they don't drug me again I think I'll be okay." I say, rambling on because I don't know what else to do. Despite this not being my first time chained in someone's filthy torture basement, I'm still not so used to it that it feels 'old hat'.

Before I can say anything too stupid though, there's a creaking sound from somewhere above us and then a square of bright light at what looks like the top of a pair of stairs. Two figures stand silhouetted in the light and one of them begins to chuckle as though he just opened his Christmas present.

"Oh good, Ms. Stackhouse, you're awake. I was so hoping that I wouldn't have to wait too much longer." Even with the light behind him, masking his form in shadow, the whiskey smooth southern drawl of Russell Edgington is unmistakable.

Without waiting for a reply, Russell flicks a light switch at the top of the stairs and the basement is flooded with harsh, bright florescent light. At first it's blinding and I have to scrunch my eyes closed, causing my head to pound even more, so that my eyes can adjust. By the time I open them again, Russell is standing in the large space between Pam and I, Debbie standing by his side.

"Thank you dear. Go on upstairs and make sure the others are doing their jobs." Russell says, dismissing Debbie, who sneers openly at me before turning and running back upstairs. Once the door is closed behind her Russell snorts. "Dumb as a box a nails, all of them, but good for cannon fodder, and prolific breeders. You can just keep throwing them at your problem and you'll never run out." He says conversationally as he turns to me.

My mind is still woozy, but pretty much no amount of drugs could make Russell's appearance palatable. Whether he hasn't fed much since he busted out or it's just gonna take him a really, really long time to heal I don't know, but he doesn't look much different than the last time I saw him, covered in black, crispy looking skin and missing both his fangs.

"Well, now that you're both here and awake I don't think there's any more time to waste." Russell chuckles to himself before walking up to me. Bending over, he reaches into my jeans. I try to kick him away but I'm still too disoriented to do much more than flail my foot out. "Now, now Ms. Stackhouse, calm yourself." Russell says, pulling my cell phone out of my pocket. "I assure you, I'm no threat to you…at least not that way!" Russell laughs at his own joke as he scrolls through the menus on my phone.

A moment later he puts it to his ear and I can hear the faint sound of ringing. After only two rings, the person he's calling picks up and I faintly hear the sound of my Viking desperately saying my name on the other end.

"No, no Eric. It's not Sookie, but she is here with me, as is your child." Russell barely has his sentence finished before I hear the sounds of Eric screaming on the other end.

"Watch your language boy! Is that any way to speak to your elder?" Russell bites back sharply, sliding from amused ease to scary threats with the versatility only a bona fide nut job can possess. "Now, I am sorry I had to cut our amusing little game of hide and seek short tonight, but honestly at my age, you understand that things tend to get old quite fast.

I must thank you though, I did think it would take a few more nights of playing around before you left both of your lovely women all but alone in the same place. But then it appears you've put your year to good use. I hadn't expected to find that you'd secured the lovely Ms. Stackhouse for your own so quickly. Ah, Compton was such a whiney little bitch, I suppose it wasn't that hard." Russell pauses, doing what could once probably have been described as raising an enquiring eyebrow, but now looks more like a bunch of hard skin, lumping up and cracking together and I hear something faintly on the other end. Whatever it is it makes Russell absolutely belly laugh.

"Oh wonderful, Bill is there too! Do say hello for me! You know Eric, now that I have you here on the phone, I'm wondering if you won't let me pick your brain a little? You don't mind, do you? You see, one of the burdens of getting as old as I am is that you start to think about the road not taken and all. And while I was enjoying all that free time you so generously saw fit to give me, I started to think about all those decisions that seem so tiny and insignificant at the time, but end up making a huge impact on the future. You see, I'm at one of those crossroads right now, and I thought I might ask for your advice. I just can't decide if I shouldn't get a pack of toothpicks and play a game of darts using your progeny as the board, or rip the head off your little fairy and drink her like a slushy? Do you have any preference?" The shiver that runs up my spine at Russell's casually spoken threat is almost enough to terrify me sober. I don't hear Eric's response, but Russell just laughs at it.

"Well Eric, since you're not going to be of any help, I think I'll just have to hang up now and decide for myself. As both of your lovely, lovely ladies are awake, I expect I'll be seeing you quite soon. I truly can't wait." Russell hisses the last before throwing my phone against the far wall, hard enough to smash it into a million tiny pieces.

"Well, now that's done, I think I'll have a little drink before the last of my guests arrive… wouldn't want to be peckish when all the fun starts." Russell walks over to me and, for one horrible moment, I think he's going to bite me, but then he seems to think better of it and steps back. "No, I think I'll save you for dessert. I'm sure you'll taste even better with your precious Viking watching on helplessly." He says, turning around and walking up the stairs, seemingly distracted by his plans for when Eric gets here. Once the door shuts, Pam sits up a little straighter and pins me with a desperate look.

"Sookie, we have to get out of here. I can feel Eric; he's nearly insane with rage right now and, if we don't find a way to get free and help him, he might very well do something stupid." She says, talking to me really slowly and simply, as though I'm a particularly stupid kid.

"Oh." Is my brilliant response, but the truth is that I'm still so drugged up right now that things are not entirely coherent. Much better than a few minutes ago but far, far from one hundred percent. Pam's words make me realize that the Weres who took us must have given me something extremely strong because I can't actually feel Eric at all right now and I'm having a hard time even concentrating enough to focus in on the hum of his life.

"Yeah, oh!" Pam retorts, exasperatedly. "Can you hit my chains with your light?" Pam asks, dropping the bitchy for a second and actually looking hopeful. I nod my head and try to summon my light, but after a few minutes of trying as hard as I can to focus nothing happens. I'm just too damn drugged still.

"I'm sorry Pam." I say, defeated. I'm utterly humiliated when I realize that my face isn't just wet from the goddamn annoying water that keeps hitting my face anymore, but from my own frustrated, hopeless tears. What are we going to do? Eric is going to come in here, irrational, enraged and thinking about as clearly as a rabbit with his paw in a trap and Russell will kill Pam and me slowly while he watches and then he'll kill Eric. Oh God!

"You're sorry? You're fucking sorry!" Pam starts to spit at me and I see her eyes go crazy pissed. "ARG! I am so fucking OVER you Sookie! I'm so fucking over you and your unbelievably stupid name and your oh so precious, good for fucking nothing Fairy vagina, that MY Eric has his face so far in he can't see reason or common fucking sense!" I flinch at Pam's horrible words. I knew she disliked me, but I never thought she hated me this much. "FUCK YOU, SOOKIE!" She keeps on ranting. "I've been with Eric over a hundred years! I've watched him fuck supermodels and princesses and spit their bones out when he was finished! How can he lose his fucking mind and end up getting us both killed over some hick waitress from Bum Fuck's Asshole Louisiana named Sookie?" Pam's words might have been meant to scare me or make me feel worthless and guilty but they don't. They just make me angry. How dare she?

"Shut the fuck up you bitter, burnt up cunt!" I scream back at her. Without realizing it, my anger sort of wells up in me at that point, my rage seeming to focus and melt the drunk feeling that was clinging to me and, out of nowhere, my light bursts out of my hands and hits Pam over and over again. I scream in shock when I realize what I'm doing and stop, but not before Pam actually falls over. The silver chains that held her crack into pieces as her body weight takes their remains with her down the wall and to the floor. "Shit! Pam?" I say, after a long moment in which Pam lays perfectly still, looking as though she's unconscious again.

Slowly, slowly Pam picks herself up off the floor and stalks over to me. At first I'm terrified that she's going to physically hurt me and I can feel my hands getting itchy and hot again, but instead of touching me she crouches down in front of me and pins me with a piercing laser like gaze. We just stay like that, frozen in time, as I wait for her to drop her fangs and tear out my throat or maybe pull back her fist and put it through my sternum and then she just smiles at me. Not a malevolent 'I'm going to use your finger bones for toothpicks' kind of smile, but a real, genuine, happy smile.

"You done good, Fairy Princess." She says, before reaching up with still shaky hands and cracking the shackles around my wrists into pieces. As my hands come down, limp and a little numb, Pam takes a hold of the big bar around my waist. "I never, ever thought I would see Eric fall in love, I never thought he had it in him. But if he had to, if it had to be anyone…I'm glad it's you. I won't lie, when you were with Compton I thought you were an annoying, bratty little breather who never knew when to shut her mouth in front of her betters. But you took Eric in when you didn't have to and kept him safe, you broke a witches curse and overcame her possession to save him from burning to death and you chose him over anybody else and along the way you proved that you're a fierce, loyal, mouthy bitch: four qualities I happen to admire greatly. As long as you fight for him and fight beside him Sookie, I'll fight for and beside you." With that, Pam breaks the binding around my waist and helps me stand up.

We just kind of stare at each other again for a moment and I suddenly realize that she didn't mean any of what she said before. Well, maybe she did, a little, once, but she doesn't anymore. She was just trying to make me angry cause by now we all know that's the quickest way to get 'Fairy Sookie' to wake up and come on out to play. Without even thinking about it I throw my arms around Pam and give her a huge bear hug. At first she stands there, shocked, still as stone, clearly stunned that I'm daring to touch her, but then I feel her tentatively put her arms around me too, patting my back lightly. Pulling away after a second I look up at her and blush a little.

"Thanks, Pam." I say, meaning both for the kick in the pants and for the acceptance. Pam just nods, but then at the last second she pins me with a raised eyebrow.

"Don't mention it. Oh and Sookie, you really should lighten up and grow a funny bone, since you're a part of this little family now." She says, finally stepping back and surveying the mess we're in. "Now pull your shit together, Princess. We need to find a way out of here!" With that Pam starts pulling boxes away from the walls, looking for some way out of our little prison.