Hi y'all
Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed or added me to their favorites/alerts – I'm very flattered :)
A quick reminder: the story's set at the end of season 2, but instead of taking her to dinner, Bill takes Sookie to the queen's palace… I haven't read the books, but characters and storylines from season 3 will show up at some point.
R/R – enjoy!
…..
Because there were no windows in the room, Sookie had no idea how long she had been there. She'd tried to count the hours or visits by the guards at first, but once she had started to doze off into distracted bouts of sleep, time had become impossible to keep track of.
She wanted to guess that it'd been two or three days, hoping that if someone later told her it had been longer, she'd feel buoyed up with hope. But inside her head, Sookie knew she couldn't really focus on 'hope' anymore.
Sookie wasn't just being kept in a dark, damp room – she was chained up inside it. A three-inch thick silver collar was around her neck, attached to a heavy duty silver chain which was in turn attached to the wall. The stains in this horrible place made Sookie realise she wasn't its first resident and the silver restraints hinted that the victims had often been vampires as well as humans.
She shifts from one buttock to the other, as it has now completely gone to sleep and is beginning to tingle painfully. The length and height of the chain doesn't allow her to lie down or stand, just to sit and kneel. But after she tried kneeling for a bit, she decided sitting was the only option – the pain of the hard concrete floor was just too terrible otherwise. Her beautiful lilac dress is now torn and stained with dirt but she's not so bothered – the reason she regrets wearing it now is that the flimsy material gives no cushioning against the floor.
Sookie longs to be able to pace and work off some of the stiffness in her body. Almost worse that her discomfort, though, is the inactivity – she's never been very good at sitting or standing still and it's playing havoc with her mind.
Forced to do nothing but sit, think and doze, her thoughts are a tortured cycle. At first, she was convinced that Bill would come for her – that he would disobey whatever orders he had been following upstairs and tear the guards apart to rescue her. That fantasy had sustained her for a bit, but as the hours dragged on, Sookie realized that it simply wasn't going to happen. Now she was going mad trying to figure out why he had brought her here and why he had suddenly changed from a protective boyfriend into someone who just stands there whilst she was being dragged off to a dungeon. But Sookie doesn't even know where 'here' is. Not a great start.
Instead, Sookie has started to fantasize about what she'll say to him when (if) she sees him again. Perhaps she'll start by cursing the day she met him, she thinks. It's all been a terrible downhill slide from there. Maybe Gran wouldn't have died if she'd stayed away. Her eyes well up with tears. Fuck you Bill Compton, she thinks. It makes her feel a tiny bit more comfortable if she repeats it like a mantra over and over in her head.
When she fidgets again, a sharp pain runs up her spine and she gives a strangled yelp. Her voice is too hoarse to be able to cry out properly. She spent too long shouting for help yesterday (at least, she thinks it might have been yesterday) and they haven't bought her any more water yet, so her throat is drier than a marathon runner's.
More than water, though, Sookie desperately wants something to eat. At intervals, an anonymous hand has rolled a bottle of water through the door to her but they haven't given her any food yet. Sookie wanted to see the good side of it at first – all those pesky unwanted pounds would disappear. But now it makes her want to cry even more. She'd rather be fat, happy and free than thin and miserable. She knows not eating is making her very weak, too. She's finding her head feels increasingly heavy and hard to hold up.
A creak comes from the heavy metal door – Sookie looks up, instantly hopeful and – despite her recent bout of cursing him – begs it to be Bill. But a hand simply rolls another bottle of water inside. Although she drinks gratefully, Sookie feels her spirits plunge further. Every time she sees a glimmer of hope and it's taken away again, she falls down deeper into despair.
Now that she's wet her parched throat, Sookie tries shouting again. She shouts for help, for food, for Bill. But no-one comes.
She screws her eyes tight and tries to hear the thoughts of some of the palace residents, but all she hears is silence. Other than a brief glimpse of Hadley and the two guards who grabbed her when she arrived, there's been no-one human around her.
Nothing, nothing, nothing thinks Sookie wildly. What on earth is she going to do?
If anyone in Bon Temps can understand what Sookie's going through, it's Lafayette. Not only has he recently suffered torture and imprisonment at the hands of a vampire, but right now he's in another painful situation that he can't see a way out of it.
The scene in the snazzy living room of his little house very much resembles that of a few days earlier – Mrs Thornton is crying in a corner, he's knocking back tequila shots before midday and Tara is tied to a chair. But instead of tying her up so she can't attack them (back when the Maenad had control), this time she's being restrained so she doesn't hurt herself.
In the early hours of the morning, Lafayette had gotten home, exhausted, from his shift at Merlotte's – only to find more drama than ever inside his house. Mrs Thornton had been banging on the bathroom door screaming. Tara was inside pushing more and more sleeping pills into her mouth. And so Lafayette had had to kick in his own bathroom door, drag his cousin into the living room and handcuff her yet again to the table.
None of them had had any sleep yet. Lafayette had been lecturing for hours whilst Tara cried and her mother prayed to Jesus tearfully without any respite.
The buzz of his cell phone interrupts Lafayette's latest rant and he looks down at the display, cursing softly when he sees the number. The caller has rung more than 10 times already today.
But Lafayette answers it anyway.
"What's up hooker? I told you last time, I don't know anything else."
Jason's voice on the other end of the line is just a distraught mumble.
Lafayette sighs. "Brother, how can I know more when I ain't even left the house since your last call? I told you, I is all in caught up keeping my idiot cousin tied to the table."
"I know," comes the reply. "I just thought that since y'all were the one the vamps talked to the night she disappeared that you'd be the one they call again."
Lafayette doesn't bother with a glass this time – he takes a swig of tequila straight from the bottle. "That's probably right. But let me ask you one thing, what time is it right now?"
"I guess 11.40," says Jason. "Why?"
"Is that 11.40 at night?"
"No. In the morning."
"That's right, bitch. There is motherfucking sunlight outside. You think a vamp is going to call me right now?"
"Oh," Jason replies, realizing his mistake. "I guess that's right. Didn't think of it like that."
Lafayette suddenly feels guilty. He can hear the pain in Jason's voice and he's all too aware right now how awful it is having to worry so much about your family.
"Listen," Lafayette says, gentler now, "have you spoken to Kenya again? It's been more than 48 hours now. She can do that missing persons thing for you."
"Yeah. I done it. But I don't know what else to do now, man."
To Lafayette's horror, he can hear Jason crying on the other end of the phone now.
"Man, Lafayette, I don't know what to do now. First Gran, then Amy… Sookie is all I got left and now she's missing too."
Lafayette steals himself. He knows what he's got to suggest, but he really doesn't want to do it.
"Okay." Lafayette takes a deep breath. "I got one idea. We can go see Eric Northman at Fangtasia. He's the Sheriff of the area, whatever that means, and he gotta look out for Bill anyway. Seeing as no-one's seen him since that night either, I reckon the vamps is the best chance we have of finding answers."
There's a pause at the other end of the line. "Really?" Jason asks at last. "Eric is pretty, well, you know…"
"Terrifying?" finishes Lafayette. "I do know. Better than y'all think. I hates that motherfucker. But I think we have to. Come by mine at 7 tonight. We'll go together."
Lafayette waits for Jason's reply, than hangs up with a click. He mutters to himself, takes another swig of tequila and turns back to Tara.
"Now, bitch," he says wearily. "What was I saying?"