A/N: Two chapters in two days?! What is this madness?! The next update is probably going to be sometime early next week but I thought I'd throw this up in the mean time.

I decided to semi-summarize, I wrote out both versions and this one just ended up coming out better. It glosses over the semester and the trial and shows bits of the summer and it lacks dialogue it's basically filler to set up for moving to New York. She gets to go be a fighting violet in the next chapter. (legit, that's the mascot. I loooove it! Almost as much as the Berklee Jazz Cats and the Williams Purple Cows awesome, awesome mascots.)

disclaimer: Not mine, put the lawyers away.

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I fought my way through the rest of the semester, it took a huge toll on me but with my excellent grades from the semester before I managed to leave Vanderbilt with a 3.0. A lot of it had to do with the school counselor I started going to twice a week. It was Amelia's idea, one in a string of them actually. The list included every new age remedy you could imagine yoga, crystal healing, meditation even acupuncture. I took to the yoga and followed her advice about seeing a professional therapist, everything else, well, Amelia would always be something of a hippie.

It was a relief to be going home, to Louisiana, to Gran. The first thing I did was find a therapist in Shreveport a half hour away. I needed her because without school to concentrate I spent a lot of time in my own head, I built walls up around my heart and my mind, I promised myself that no one was going to hurt me the way he had. Without Amelia's peaceful presence suggesting passive ways to deal with my emotional strife I gave in to the pure, unadulterated rage I felt.

Bill had taken my control.

I would take it back.

I took self defense classes and kickboxing, the next time someone tried anything like that I would be ready. I would make them pay for what they wanted to do to me.

I spent the first two months of my summer vacation like that, with Jason and my fully justifiable rage as my only companions. I didn't want to see my friends.

Through all of this I waited and waited for a conviction, some news that Bill was going to pay for what he did. The trial was held up for the entire semester by Bill and his lawyers throwing up some bullshit defense. I couldn't wait for him to get time; I wanted him in a state penitentiary where some huge inmate would make Bill his bitch. I had every confidence that Bill's fellow inmates would make him pay for what he'd done.

Then I got the call.

He got nothing.

Oh, he was going to be punished, but a very loose interpretation of the word. It had been determined that Bill was not guilty by reason of insanity, his defense pulled some psychologist out of somewhere and had him say some things that led the jury to reach the conclusion that Bill was in fact, insane. I couldn't understand why it worked out that way, the lawyer explained to me that this was probably for the best. That instead of Bill being locked up for a set amount of time and me having to worry about him being released he would be in a state funded mental institution. An institution he may well never be released from since he had to be declared mentally stable and that was something that came about so rarely that a statistic for it did not exist.

I wasn't happy but I felt safe. The district attorney called me himself to assure me that the security at a hospital for the criminally insane was on par with the kind found in the highest security prison.

In July Eric came back, this time with his sister, Pam. She was… interesting. I'd never meet anyone like her. The girl was like Martha Stewart on crack, she showed up wearing a knee length pink skirt with pale pink pumps, a pastel sweater set and pearls. I'd never seen a 19 year old who dressed like a soccer mom, albeit a very well dressed soccer mom, but as my Gran was constantly saying, it takes all different sorts.

Pam's outward appearance hid what was possibly the snarkiest and most spectacularly bitchy personality I'd ever encountered. I mean that in the best possible way. Watching her cut people, particularly men, down to size was amazing and something I loved to watch her do. I wished I could be like her. The girl was brilliant and a bit of a snob to those around her (as she told me later, "I know I'm a pretentious, stuck up bitch. I like to pretend that being aware of that fact makes it ok." It didn't, but it was funny as hell.) I loved Pam. She was the epitome of fabulous and I got the feeling there would never be a dull night in New York.

Being back with Eric helped to calm me down the rage melted away as I talked to him every night about what had happened. I grew comfortable around men once more. Well, I could be in the same room and converse with them; it would be a long, long time before I would be ok being alone with a man who wasn't Jason or Eric.

The pair of them stayed with us for a month, and I spent most of that time glued to Eric's side. They all knew what I was doing; over the last few months somewhere between all the emails that got immediate responses and late night phone calls that never went unanswered Eric had become the still point of my rapidly turning world. It would be a long time before I would see him again, and I wanted to absorb the comforting calm that seemed to radiate off of him. I needed him so much that it hurt, but I knew he couldn't stay. Eric and Jason left in mid-August to head back to school for football boot camp as they called it. You do not become a game winning, Division I machine without some serious work.

Pam stayed on for an extra week before we both needed to leave for New York. I'd never been so nervous, I had never left the south and now I was uprooting myself to go to the biggest most famous city in the whole world. Pam helped me by spending that week helping me buy all new things for my dorm room and promising that the first thing we'd be doing in when we got to the city would be to get me a heavy winter coat. Southern and northern winter were two completely different beasts. I was shaking in my boots at the prospect of what I was about to do, but it felt good to know that I had a real friend who would be there with me every step of the way. Pam became what Amelia had been to me, it helped more than I would ever admit.

When I went to sleep the evening before we left my stomach was in knots, I tossed and turned all night long. I woke up at 5 am, much earlier than I needed to and walked into my bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror before slapping myself across the face.

"You can do this, you are Sookie Stackhouse and you can do anything!"

I'd taken to giving myself this sort of pep talk when I thought I couldn't face something, getting there was half the battle. I was strong, confident, fabulous and ready to take on the big bad city.

I am Sookie Stackhouse, hear me roar!