*turns on the flashlight* So here we go, another chapter! Thanks so much for taking the time to read this...It's been fun, stretching my paranormal legs a bit! Anyway, keep the feedback coming, and let me know what you think is going on! I'm dying to know what you think!

Thanks to Missus T and Ethehunter!

Sookie

I slept late the next morning, and when I pulled myself out of bed Eric was gone, but he'd left me a sweet note and a plate of waffles warming in the oven. I pulled on a pair of his boxers and a tanktop and took my breakfast out on my deck and ate it quietly. It was one of those perfect solitary moments, the kind people rarely took the time to appreciate.

With all the noise in my life, I appreciated them.

Although I'd done it last night, the idea of a threesome with Eric's dead ex wife every night was unappealing. It felt like putting on a show. I mean, I loved sleeping with him, I did. God, did I ever, but this had to stop.

I tried to piece together what the trigger was for her appearance, and the only thing I could come up with was Bill. It had all started when I had my panic attack, when Bill came to town.

But Pam and Bill had nothing in common besides being our exes. They didn't know each other, well, as far as I knew, and I'd known Bill for years, since high school. I figured either Eric or I would have known if there was a connection there.

We hadn't exactly travelled in similar circles, geographically or otherwise.

There was always an answer though, for everything. The universe wasn't terribly random, no matter what your thoughts on higher powers were. A reason for everything, all things in their places, and all of that.

I drifted off to sleep out there, the sun warm on my legs.

And then I was somewhere else. A place I'd never been. I looked around, and the first thing I noticed was the dust. It was everywhere, covering every surface.

No one had been here in a long time, I thought to myself, tracing my finger over a dresser, drawing a shiny line on the dull surface.

"He hurt you." I knew the accusing voice in the next room. Eric. I quickly walked out of the room I was in, down a narrow hall, and found myself standing in a doorway to another room, this one cleaner, and brighter.

"It's not the first time." A girl on the bed looked up at a boy not much older.

Eric. But not my Eric. A younger version, with the same troubled eyes I'd been seeing recently.

"What did he do?" he asked gently, wiping the tears away from her eyes, kneeling in front of her while she pulled her knees up to her chest and looked down at him.

She took a deep breath, and I could sense her fear, her revulsion, her concern about the impact of her words. Still, she spoke with determination, "He does what you do, but I don't want him to."

I stood back, away from the door unnoticed, as he stood to his full height and punched the wall, leaving an indent. I could sense his revulsion, but then something stronger. Anger.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "I'll kill him."

She wrestled with his words for a few seconds, before curling up on the bed and pulling the covers around her. "I can't go back," she whispered.

"You'll stay here. My parents won't even notice."

"He'll notice."

"He won't touch you again," he swore, his hands still balled up in fists. "And you won't go back there."

I jumped, as I felt a familiar hand on my knee. "You fell asleep, Lover. You're looking a bit crispy."

I glanced up at my Eric, hot and sweaty, with his t-shirt tucked in the back pocket of his jeans. "Oh," I sat up, and wiped my eyes, trying to grasp on to what I could remember from my dream. "I didn't realize."

I'd never noticed the weight of the years on his face before, I guess because I'd never seen the earlier version, before he abused his body and mind for years and years. "Come inside with me. I'm going to take a break."

I let him pull me to my feet. "Thanks for the waffles."

He smiled. "And thanks for last night."

"So the waffles were a tip, for last night?" I winked at him, leaning into his arm around my shoulder.

"Absolutely. I always tip in waffles." He smiled, looking lighter than I'd seen him look in weeks.

I sat down at the kitchen table while he washed his hands in the kitchen sink. "What are you staining?"

His back was turned to me, and the smell of the lavender soap I kept by the sink filled the room. "Kitchen table for an order that I've been slacking on."

I suddenly realized what I needed to do. It had never been clearer. "Tell me everything about Pam."

He turned around, and his face dropped as his eyes met mine. I'd hit a nerve, from the look in his eyes. "What?"

"I want to know about her. I think we're missing something important. Maybe we just need to talk it out."

He pursed his lips and then sighed. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything." I'd never asked about her before, really, concerned about upsetting him, pulling him back to the past. However, this was now affecting our future. "Eric, we've really got to get to the bottom of this."

He sat down, and put his head in his hands. "It's hard to talk about."

"I'd do whatever I needed to do to keep you safe, even from yourself." I furrowed my brow. "I need you to start talking. We need to figure this out. You know we do."

He started talking, and once he started, he didn't stop. He just kept going, starting with the first time he saw her, to her horrible step-dad, and finally to his own shortcomings when it came to her, how he didn't really listen to what she said most of the time, and took her for granted.

"There was nothing I could do about any of it. Not really." He looked down at his hands and picked at a scab. "I almost ended up in juvie after I broke a couple of that bastard's ribs. I tried taking her away from it, as soon as I could afford it, but nothing was ever enough to make it right. Her real dad threw this huge wedding for us, and we tried to start new, but there was always something behind her eyes. Eventually, it became hard to look at her. Not to say that's why I drank, but it didn't exactly make sobering up appealing."

"I dreamt about her," I whispered.

He furrowed his brow. "When?"

"Just now, when I was asleep outside."

"I've dreamt about her, too." I knew he had. It wasn't the kind of thing one told their wife though. Hey, by the way, honey, while I was laying beside you, I was dreaming about my dead wife. "Did she tell you to ask me about her?"

I shook my head. "No. I dreamt I was watching the two of you when you were kids. Teenagers."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh."

"I don't know what any of it meant. She was telling you about her stepdad."

"So we know she had a shitty step-dad. I already knew that, and I don't know what that has to do with her murder." He rubbed his temples.

I glanced at his knuckles, lined with tiny scars, having obviously punched a wall or two. "No chance her step-dad murdered her, is there?" That seemed way too obvious.

He shook his head. "Nope. He died of lung cancer the year before she died. He deserved worse for what he did to her for all those years." I tried to imagine the effect of knowing that happened to his girlfriend would have on a sixteen year old boy, and I couldn't, not really.

"I don't know then. Can you think of anything significant?" I put my feet in his lap, smiling slightly as he rubbed them. I shivered internally, as his mood darkened. I couldn't read auras, but he wasn't going anywhere good in his head. Nowhere I wanted to follow. I wasn't good at blocking Eric out, because I'd never really had to.

"I don't know. She was seeing someone according to Felecia, but she didn't ever meet the person." His face fell again. "She said she seemed really happy before her death, in that respect."

I got up and curled up in his lap, relishing in his warm breath on my cheek, as I nuzzled his face, trying to distract him, even slightly. "Come on. Don't get all depressed over this. Please."

"I wish I'd paid more attention, that's all." He brushed his lips over my cheek. "And now I feel powerless to change this situation. It's like I can't win."

I sighed, knowing what he meant by feeling powerless. "I love you, Eric Northman, and we'll figure this out."

As if on cue, Eric's cell phone rang. I reached across the table hand handed it to him. He glanced at the caller and answered it. "Hey Stan. Yea, I'm around. Come by whenever." He hung up, looking indifferent. "He said he found out something interesting about Pam's case."

My eyes lit up. "Well that could be good news."

"I don't know what he would have found that I didn't already know about," he grumbled.

I glared at him a little, before getting up off his lap, burned by his negative emotions. "Really, don't. We really don't need any more negativity around here."

He looked over at me, his eyes cold. "I'm sorry. It's kind of hard to stay positive."

"Well, try a bit harder." I put my hands on my hips. "If not for you, then for me."

"Says the empath to the alcoholic." He gave a little shrug. "Maybe he'll have figured something out."

I returned his shrug. His negative attitude was making me ill, almost physically. Instead of sticking around like I might have in the past, I did what was right for me. I went in our room and got dressed. "I'm going for a walk."

I'd just put my sandals on when I felt his hands on my hips. "Let's not fight about this. Please."

I turned around and looked at him critically. "You're making this really hard for me."

"I know. And I'm sorry about that." I knew he was, but it didn't really matter. Not at the moment. "I made you something."

"I don't really need a present at the moment." I needed him to go back to being old Eric, instead of this new version, torn between the past and the present.

He looked at me, his uncertainty foreign. "Well come see it anyway, and then go for your walk. I'll speak with Stan downstairs so you have the house to yourself for a while."

Space. Yea, I needed some of that. "Thank you."

"Let's not do this again. Talk about her like this," his voice cracked. "It's too hard."

"I can't promise that. We might have to." I bit my lip, trying to keep his sadness from engulfing me. "I have to go. I'm going to go down to the beach, and I'll give you a call. Meet me in a bit?" Hopefully he would have pulled himself together by then.

He nodded. "I'll come down after I talk to Stan." I leaned into him, as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. "I'm sorry."

I knew it wasn't something he could help, not really, but he had to. "Why don't you take that negative energy and use it to come up with a solution here? Don't be sorry. That's not helping anything either." I wiped my eyes. "Seriously, I wish you could feel for three seconds what it feels like to me when you feel like that."

I was better at controlling how I processed things than I had been, but it still did a number on my head, trying to sort everything out.

"I don't think I'd handle it as well as you do." He kissed my forehead. "See you in a couple of hours."

Eric

Fuck, I hated hurting her. It was especially hard though, because she didn't get hurt like other people did. Things needed to be resolved for her to feel better, which seemed damn near impossible.

Telling her about Pam had felt really odd, like a betrayal of sorts even after all this time. We'd kept what happened to her all those years before between us. They were our secrets, mine and Pam's. It didn't feel right sharing them. Even with Sookie. Nothing had ever felt better than unloading my fists into that old pervert's face. How her own mother ignored it for years, I'd never know.

She'd never wanted to talk to anyone about how she felt, instead opting to do what I'd later found she did best, avoid, avoid, avoid. I didn't fight her on it, because really, as selfish was it was it was easier for me if she didn't get into things too much. When we discussed anything related to her childhood, it usually resulted in me getting angry, almost irrationally so, and Pam withdrawing into an incredibly dark place for days and days.

Hindsight was really 20/20 when it came to seeing our issues. We were fucked, probably from the beginning.

But damned if I hadn't loved her, in all her damaged, imperfect glory.

I sat down at the kitchen table, and realized that I needed to find out what had happened to her. I had all along. I'd been so numb, from the realization of losing her twice over at the time of her death, that I'd folded before I should have, let go when I should have looked for resolution. For both of us.

When I met Stan about twenty minutes later downstairs, he was practically bursting from excitement. "So, De Castro is running for governor of Louisiana."

I shook my head. "Who?"

"Felipe De Castro." He looked at me like I was an idiot. "Remember, your wife was found in the back yard of a piece of property he owned?"

"Right." I'd forgotten most of the details of that. "He was cleared right away. Home with his wife at the time of death. The story was corroborated by several people from his law firm."

"From his law firm." Stan raised an eyebrow, his overactive imagination going into overdrive before my very eyes. "Of course they confirmed his story."

"I'm not sure how this is helpful."

Stan rolled his eyes at me. "We can draw attention to this again, because he's moving into the public sphere of interest. I've already written an anonymous letter to the editor of The Times-Picayune asking how anyone could ever consider voting for someone that had a murder committed on their property and didn't care if it was solved. A lawyer, for that matter." He smiled. "I expect it'll be picked up by some other papers, too."

I raised my eyebrows, impressed. "Wow. You've been busy."

He smiled, wiping his glasses on the front of his shirt. "It was easy. A piece of cake. I will need you to sign the rights over to me though. I'm absolutely writing a book based loosely on your experiences. If it goes anywhere, I'll buy you dinner."

I didn't care about book royalties, if that was what Stan was worried about. "Fine. It'll have to be lobster though. And not here. I eat here too much." I smiled, genuinely, for the first time in a while. This was progress. If we could get people to look at the case again, it might help solve it, or at least give us some leads to go on. "So what now?"

He thought about it. "I think we monitor the fallout carefully, and then go from there. See what this de Castro has to say about it. Maybe I'll post on a few websites too."

We said goodbye, and I wandered down to the beach. On the half hour walk, I thought about, oddly enough, the first time I'd kissed Sookie.

She'd been in New Orleans for a week, and we'd spent a great deal of that time together walking around and talking about everything. Well, most things. She was staying in this beautiful inn in the French Quarter not far from my old house. I'd booked it for her when she told me she was thinking about coming, knowing that it was on a quiet side street and she liked quiet. We stood together at the front door, hand in hand.

It was almost like dating someone in junior high again, both of us nervous about making a move. Trying to shuffle the fragile pieces of our hearts around to see if there was room for another person in there.

"Do you want to come up?" she asked hesitantly, clearing her throat. "I mean, to see the room? It's really lovely."

I did, and I wanted a hell of a lot more than that. But I knew we weren't there yet. I liked her, a lot. I'd liked her before we'd even spoken on the phone. But now that she was here, it was really so much more than that. I felt a sense of peace with her that I'd never felt before. She was comfort, warmth, maybe even happiness. "Yea, I'll come up for a minute."

We walked past the front desk, and the teenager working shot us a knowing look as we ascended the ornate staircase. A few minutes later, she turned the key in the lock on third door on the left. "Thanks for picking this place for me. It's really perfect."

I smiled, thinking how very perfect she was. "No problem. I walked by this place a lot when I used to live around here."

She hopped on the high bed with the rich burgundy brocade bedspread, her feet nowhere near touching the ground. "So, I'm really glad that I decided to come meet you. You're really great."

I moved a little closer to her, and she reached out, pulling me even closer, until I was standing between her knees. "I feel like I've known you forever."

Her eyes twinkled up at me. "And I think I'd like to know you forever." She shook her head. "Sorry, that was a weird thing to say. We haven't even kissed. Maybe we'll have no chemistry. But you know, even if we don't, I'd still like to know you forever."

I leaned down, brushing her lips with mine. The sparks were palpable. She pulled one of her hands out of mine and put it around the back of my neck, pulling my face to hers again, a bit harder this time. Yep, there was no concern about chemistry, that was for sure.

I smiled to myself, thinking of how we'd spent the next few hours, exploring the feelings we had for one another, which certainly extended beyond platonic.

When I found her on the beach a little while later, I figured my head was in a better spot. The smile on her face as I approached her let me know that she agreed. "Hey."

I sat beside her on the rocky beach. "What are you reading?"

"The Time Traveler's Wife. You think we have issues." She snorted, closing the book and turning towards me, a knowing look on her face. "You're better."

I smiled at her, her hair windblown, and her face a bit red from all the sun she'd gotten today. She'd never looked better, almost like an oasis in the desert. "Yea, I think I am."

I proceeded to tell her about Stan's news, and she nodded along, a smile on her face.

"That sounds very promising." She looked up at me with new hope. I stood, and helped her up, and we brushed the sand off each other's backs. "So you're still planning a New Orleans trip in October?"

I nodded. "Yea, I guess you won't be able to come, huh?"

She shook her head. "Not for more than a weekend. I'll be teaching then."

"Will you be okay here, on your own?" I hadn't thought of that.

"Oh yea. I think Pam is your problem." She grinned. "And in turn, our problem, but I don't think she's going to haunt me without you around."

"I didn't just mean with Pam." True, Pam had been our biggest problem, but she was not our only problem. "With being back in school and being in charge of things here."

She nodded. "Right. Yea, I can handle it. If I can't, I'll make Amelia handle it."

We walked home hand in hand, her ultra girly beach bag slung over my shoulder.

When we got to the door to our house, Sookie stopped and looked at me. "I think we should go stay somewhere else tonight. We need a night off."

I nodded. "Can you feel her?"

She shook her head. "No, but I don't want to tonight either. I just want you and me."

"What if she finds us?"

Sookie shook her head. "I think she'll get the hint. I hope she will, anyway." We turned and walked down the stairs. "Besides, I think being where she always seems to be is affecting us too."

She was probably right. "Where do you want to go?"

"Rose Eden Cottages? They're really cute."

Where Bill had stayed? Negative. "No. Let's do a B and B. Coachstop Inn offered me a deal if I put their brochures up in Salty's."

"Deal."

We checked in just in time to watch the sun set from our room. "Everything seems so simple, when it's not complicated." Sookie giggled, as we dug into our scallop dinner.

"Truer words have never been spoken." I smiled, feeding her a huge scallop, and exhaling slightly as she groaned, chewing it with her eyes closed.

She grinned over at me, a bit of butter on the corner of her mouth. "Have I mentioned lately that I love living here?"

I reached over and wiped it off with my thumb"No."

She smiled, before pushing our plates aside. "Well, I do. Despite everything. And you're still the best man I've ever known, even if you're flawed. Maybe it's because you're flawed."

She was right, for whatever reason Pam left us alone that night and let us step out of our heads for the evening and simply enjoy each other's company.

The next night, however, was a completely different story.