The bright light hurt her eyes as Sookie's vision came back to her. She must have been knocked out cold and have concussion she thought as she tried to focus, wondering how long she had been out to it if it was daylight already. She tried to sit up but her head hurt and even breathing was uncomfortable. Her whole body felt worse than anything that she had ever encountered, worse even than the worst beating she had ever taken. She just wanted it to stop hurting. She wanted everything to stop. She just wanted to sleep and not ever wake up again.

Her eyes closed but somewhere close to her she thought that she could hear voices coming towards her getting louder now but she didn't have the strength or interest to pay any attention. Sleep, she just wanted to sleep and she wanted the bright light to go away and for the pain to stop.

'You cannot stay here,' a voice stated coldly somewhere behind her startling her, 'the way is closed.'

With an effort that hurt like hell she somehow managed to sit up a little, wondering at the time why on earth she had been lying in someone's garden as she gave her surroundings a bit of attention now and realised she was surrounded by the most beautiful and vibrant flowers she had ever seen since she was in … 'Oh my stars, I am in Fae,' she said out allowed in surprise.

'You cannot stay here. You do not belong here now. You are no longer one of us. You chose a mortal life,' the voice said with something like contempt and yet Sookie felt that it was masking a touch of pity or compassion and even perhaps regret. 'You were of royal birth and yet you chose a mortal life over your own people, you have given up a life time that is beyond your comprehension, an existence of tranquillity and prosperity but you have chosen mortality with all its foibles, all the pain and sorrow that goes hand in hand with living in that other world,' the voice went on, 'do you know what you have done?'

Sookie tried hard to see who it was that was speaking but didn't have the strength to, it was all she could do to continue to breathe and with each breath she found herself getting weaker and weaker, drowning in the atmosphere of that other place, that unearthly world.

She looked down at herself and saw a light engulfing her, shimmering and getting brighter by the moment. She didn't know what was happening. Her whole body was tingling like an electric shock drilling through her.

'You must leave now. You will never come back. You have chosen what you call love. It was your choice and now you must live with it. May that love, if it even still exists, be the answer to all that you seek,' the voice was fading once again as she laid back down too weak to hold herself up, 'go now and don't return. Go now to find what destiny holds for you. Go back to your future.'

What did it matter what the voice said, she knew it couldn't be real, no one could hurt this bad and still be… and still be alive.

She closed her eyes again and at once there was immediate relief. The blessed darkness came and took her.

She was gone.

The silvery light of the moon shone down in fitful breaks, clouds scurrying past to obscure the radiance from time to time but beyond the clouds a dark inky blue sky splotched with shimmering stars occasionally peeped out, giving a hint to an observer that if the veil scattered and lifted then a fine summer night might appear.

It mattered little to Bill at the time in his weariness. His leaden feet plodding resolutely onwards towards his goal, each step was a weariness to him that was beyond words. If he could just make it up the drive and across the lawn he would be home but with each step his strength diminished. Despite the balmy night the wind seemed to chill him to his bones, the tattered rags he was wearing doing little to comfort him besides, the oppressive cloak of abject despair that he wore and that clung to him like a hair shirt staved off any sense of the reality of the surroundings. He felt nothing bar the numbness and ever increasing emptiness consuming his every feeling.

Just a few more steps, he told himself, a few more and he could rest. He would be home and could sleep forever and ever. That was his last hope.

Rounding the group of trees that stood at the edge of the lawn, his tired eyes looked up for a moment gazing hazily through the utter exhaustion he barely had any strength left to hold at bay.

But what was this, was his mind playing some last dastardly trick on him for there was a light on the porch and it was not the blazing light of his refurbished mansion, it was not even his home as he knew it to be now. The view in front of him was as though time had been stopped then turned back on itself.

He stood swaying, confused and unable to take in the sight that met him. No it couldn't be. He shook his head. It … it was the light of a lamp burnt long ago and lit by the hand of one that was dead and buried not half a mile from where he stood.

He knew that his mind must be deceiving him, one final trick of wretchedness to bring him to his absolute and final undoing. It wasn't enough the pain and torment that he had gone through for the last one hundred and seventy odd years, oh no even now, even right at the end when he knew in his cold dead heart with a final surety that he had at last met the true death, even then he could not go on peacefully without some last grotesque torment to plague his mind.

As he stood wearily staring into the gloom he saw a movement, a white spectre. Was this one last and final ghoul to meet and perhaps take him on his inevitable path to eternal damnation he wondered, wasn't the last century and a half enough punishment for his sins? Was there even more to come, he asked himself knowing full well in his own mind that he believed himself to be deserving of it for all the pain he had caused. It was fitting, no more or no less than what was due he believed.

But then with suddenness the vision took shape and even as he swayed and fell to his knees, with movement like a gazelle, it ran towards him. Warm hands held his and a soft voice full of love gently whispered to him.

'William, my William, my husband, it is not your time. You have other things to do, other loves to have and hold. I will love you always my beloved, I always have and always will but it is time for you to live. Go back William go back to your future.'

The voice faded as the shadows of darkness overcame him and he was no more. The Bill Compton who had fought so vainly to keep some spark of humanity alive within his vampire existence, that Bill Compton melted into the heavens and vanished into the night.

He was gone.