A/N: I honestly wasn't sure how I wanted to end this piece. I considered a handful of different endings. I wanted to try out Bill's reaction, and I wanted to give Pam's voice a try, but when it comes down to it, I knew Eric had to weigh in on Sookie's fate.

None of these, and all of these are the end of the story.

Mortality

Eric

I could not sleep. The night shift administrator, Gladys, led me, and Bill and Pam, down a long hall to a vampire-secure daytime reception area. There were no windows in the room, and a few spare beds lined the walls. There were other vampires, some that I recognized and others that I did not, and they had all settled in for the dawn. I couldn't sleep with them.

I am old. I can stay awake.

At dawn, the staff changed. New nurses filtered into the empty hallways with their banks of blinding fluorescent lights. Physicians stumbled around on wobbling legs, tired from all night shifts. I slipped easily into her isolated room. I shut the door and stood there in the darkness, penetrated only by the incessant beating of a heart monitor, the blinking of small colored lights.

Her skin was still bare, to the waist. The tube of plastic emerged from her left side and sloped down the side of the gurney where it attached to a pump. Smaller clear tubes had been inserted into her nostrils to push oxygen through her body. Breathing looked difficult, if that difficulty could be measured in the way her chest rose and fell again.

I could feel her pain. It sat in my chest like a tumor.

I reached out and touched her breast, my hand cupping the place where her heart lie cradled in a fluid-filled cavity. Each beat was slow and deliberate, as measured as my outward emotional response. Her body would not admit to weakness. I could understand that.

Sookie was not weak.

But she could not hold out forever, not like this.

Never removing my hand from her heart, I reached up and touched the switch that controlled the oxygen flowing into my lover's body. What color remained in her, however little there was, disappeared from her face. Her chest did not rise again. She did not attempt another staggering, painful breath.

Her sweet red lips were chapped and colorless.

Her heart beat slowed.

Her pain receded.

The medical team rushed in and pushed me from the room. A few of them waved their arms at me as though I were an errant flea. I was only a vampire after all. I had not loved the woman who had died in my arms. I hadn't saved her. Perhaps I didn't care enough.

I walked down the hall with a song stuck in my head, suddenly and mysteriously, as such things tend to be. As most things are.

He shot me down. Bang bang. I hit the ground. Bang bang. That awful sound. Bang bang.

My baby shot me down.

Mortality

Eric

I could not sleep, though it was near dawn. I watched as my younger companions slid wearily between the scratchy white sheets on their individual gurneys. Pam looked over at me with a flicker of mischief in her eyes. Bill appeared full of anger and sorrow, his face a poorly painted canvas of emotion. He was young yet, and could not keep such thoughts in check. If he lived long enough, he would learn to remain invulnerable.

Or, at least, to appear that way.

I walked back down the hall from whence we'd come. The shift change had begun. Weary night staff shuffled down the hallways, concerned only with how much sleep they could manage to get before the next work day began. Fresh staff roamed the halls slowly and quietly, still groggy and gloomy and unprepared for the day ahead.

I slipped easily into the isolated room in which my lover lay.

She had not opened her eyes in hours, and a dread filled me that I could not push behind the emotionless mask I had carefully crafted over hundreds of years. If I never saw those sweet but fierce eyes again, could I live with myself? Would I not dream of them forever? In a thousand years, I had never met a woman quite like Sookie Stackhouse. She shone like a beacon in a gray and impenetrable night.

I could not face the next thousand years without her.

As I stood over her, my hand dipped down to rest upon her breast, over the place where her carefully beating heart trembled in an ocean of blood. She was still stripped to the waist, with a plastic tube jutting from her left side, sucking fluid from her chest. Smaller tubes had been inserted into her nostrils to assist in her breathing, a task that caused her great pain and drained her of her energy.

I could feel her suffering. It was more than I could stand.

My hand slid from her breast to her throat. I tilted back her head, exposing the frail skin of her neck, as ghastly white as the rest of her. The self-restraint faded away, until only my passion and love for her remained. My passion, like Bill's passion, would allow me to force her. It would permit me to be blind to her desires.

I sank my fangs into her throat as gently as I could.

Even in her sleep, likely pumped full of medication, she whimpered.

There was but a spark of life within her when I tore into my own flesh, my fangs stained with her blood, and pushed my wrist between her lips. I tipped back her head so that she would have to swallow it. When the wound closed, I cut open a second one and continued to feed her.

She sputtered and choked, and reluctantly, she swallowed. Her eyes never opened. Never once did she look at me. I might have stopped if she had.

The heart monitor began to sing as she crashed toward death. I bent to kiss her mouth, licking her wet lips clean. The emergency team of doctors and nurses careened into the room. They were surprised to see me, and quickly pushed me out the door. I went willingly.

I stood outside the door, and leaned against the wall. I would offer to take her body myself.

I would not let her rise alone.

Mortality

Eric

I could not sleep. Insomnia is only possible in a vampire as old as I. Once, in a conversation with Sophie Anne, I learned that she and Andre would often stay up for days at a time, meditating or reading, talking or making love. They did not require sleep or nourishment. They could just be. It was a different way to live.

I walked back down the hall from whence I had come, away from the green-walled vampire waiting room where Pam and Bill slept. The day shift had begun, and the night staff stumbled through the brightly lit hallways toward their beds. It was just past dawn, and no one was quite awake.

I slipped into her room, undetected and undisturbed.

The isolated room was dark but for the small panel of colored lights that indicated her status. A heart monitor beeped methodically, noting the slow progress of the blood in her veins. She was as I had left her, hours ago. Her skin was bare to the waist. A thick plastic tube stuck out unnaturally from her side as though the weapon that had wounded her remained lodged in her chest. Two more slender tubes extended from her nose, pushing oxygen into her deflated lung.

I stood over her and placed a hand upon her breast, over the place where her heart struggled to give her life.

She seemed to bleed pain, and it tore at my insides.

Why had she refused me? Why had I allowed her to make the choice for or against her own survival? Was she not mine? Did I not owe her my protection?

It had been a long time since I had asked myself a question that I could not answer.

The sudden revelation of her blue irises startled me. She blinked, and then blinked a second time. Her pupils shrank and then grew again in size as she adjusted to the light. I had no doubt she could see me.

She could feel me.

"Eric," she croaked. Her tongue was dry, and her voice was hoarse. I could hear her chapped skin crackle.

"Sookie," I exhaled, as if I had been holding my breath for a millennium. I reached up from her heart to stroke her damp hair. She was perspiring.

"Everything hurts," she whimpered in a small, pathetic voice.

I could feel a new wave of pain expand through her. She swallowed the small amount of saliva in her mouth. I bent at the waist to kiss her forehead.

"Rest, my love. It won't hurt for much longer."