Come With Me Now- The Fifth Interlude
"Give Sookie my love…"
Let me walk this world with you Mr. Northman or watch me die.
If you die, I die.
One thing I never lacked was the faith of my convictions. The mistake that most people made was thinking they knew what those convictions were. Of course, I retained the advantage over all of them by outliving everyone who might know any different. Everyone except Eric.
He had seen me in life before I was turned, and he had seen me the day I was turned. He would know. He always knew everything. Except one thing.
Give my love to Sookie.
I had spared a smile when I hung up, wondering if he would finally know at last, what I had always wanted to tell her. Sookie. His Sookie. Even when she wasn't, she was his Sookie.
Eric's Sookie. Compton's Sookie. Never my Sookie.
How sweet it could have been.
When I saw her on Compton's arm that night I knew that it was too late for me. Her awkwardness reminded me of what it was to be young and innocent and I coveted that, longed for that, longed for her. Did I want to destroy her? Protect her? Save her? I never knew, and it was usually all of those things at once.
I should have killed her that night. I wished a thousand times I had, as I watched her move further and further from me, unimpressed and uncaring about my best efforts to gain her attention. I was a material girl playing at love in man's world. I could live a thousand years and never be what she wanted.
I don't know why I have always tried to so hard to hide my feelings. No one was ever paying the slightest bit of attention to me, or them. I should have packed a bag, left town and spared myself the humiliation of living in the trench between my maker and that pathetic Confederate excuse for a vampire. Because there in that trench, between them, is where I was destined to live out this little drama from the first moment I laid eyes on her.
Fuck it. No matter where I lived, I lived and I looked good while I did it.
Eric said the Yakuza was after us. Again. One more time. One last time, only this time it would be me with the sword, me with the chain and me with the last fucking laugh. I owed Eric that. I wanted to give her that. She would never have accepted anything else from me.
As soon as I hung up the phone I started planning. I started running, away from my feelings, toward the Yakuza, away from the past and toward the end.
Give my love to Sookie…
How sweet it is…
I'm starting to see what all the fuss is about…
She moved through our lives like a sheet loosed from a clothes line in a storm, weaving into our tapestry but never being a part of what we were. Never letting us be a part of her.
I didn't even know I wanted to be a part of her until she came to Fangtasia bleeding and screaming when the Maenad attacked her. Until then it was a sweet fuck and feed I painted her with in my mind. That night though, I hadn't wanted to leave her, and later when I cleaned her up and changed her bloody clothes I saw something that took me back to a time when I knew what innocence was first hand.
I could see the road that she was headed down with Eric and Bill and I knew there was nothing I could do that would change that course, but I wanted to. It was the first time I had wanted anything in a very long time. It had been even longer since I had admitted to that kind of desire.
Of course, as I warmed inside to her, my outside became colder to compensate. To protect me.
I was vacillating between pleasure at these feelings and pain over the very same ones. I swore I would do nothing and plotted plans that I hid even from myself.
It was only after the fact that I admitted to myself that I took Sookie to the basement so that when she saw him with Yvetta she would push back, and realize that this was not where she wanted to be. That Eric was not who she wanted to be with in this life.
It was only after the fact that I realized my interest in Yvetta was designed to raise the competitor in Eric, and shift his attention away from sweet Sookie. It was only after the fact when I felt his pain and saw her wipe tears from her eyes surreptitiously as she left Fangtasia that I felt any remorse at my tactics. It was only after that I realized that even if he lost her she would never ever be mine. He wasn't in the way, he could have been in Oland and she would never have seen me standing beside her.
I'm not in the mood for lesbian weirdness tonight, Pam.
That or any other night, sadly.
The night he chained her in the basement I was planning to take her away before he returned, but Yvetta and Bill fucked that plan up, and when she returned I was forced to stand by and let them take her further into darkness.
Eric could have talked his way out of it with Russell, and they would have tried to find us, but I could have kept her safe. Eric was good at coming up with plans, he would have found another and by the time the dust settled he would have forgotten Sookie Stackhouse.
Seeing her fed on by Russell and knowing that Eric planned to end himself to save her was more than I could take. He was my maker! He was going to give his life for her and for some debt that mattered to him to so much for his dead family. When I watched him walk into the sun I felt the depth of my own betrayal cut into me as the tears ran down my face.
The guilt kept me glued to the camera when Bill called to be released so he could save Sookie. I couldn't look away. I couldn't consider at first saving her. She would never want me, and Eric was dying for her, better to let her slip away, too, perhaps to find him in the afterlife. Better that I lose her, too than let Compton have her when my maker was no more. It was that guilt that held me in place, backing Eric's deception with the best poker face I ever fucking played to get Russell out into the sun.
In the end though, I just couldn't let her go. Nor could I admit my feelings for her, so I let Compton save her life while I watched my maker burn. I had never felt so much despair as I did in that moment as I watched my world burn along with Eric.
When by some miracle Eric survived I swore to myself that I would let her go, that I would stop caring about Sookie Stackhouse because when she disappeared I could see what she meant to him.
All those fucking nights in her ratty run down house before he spent a fortune to make it more than a hovel. All those fucking nights in his cubby there, and then running away to mountains of Sweden when he finally couldn't stand another moment of being in this world without her.
I wish I could say it was his feelings that mattered the most, but I kept flashing back to her smacking Bill Compton's stupid face and running out in the sun to save Eric.
She was dumb as stump, but I loved her, and she loved him.
I could see it, even if no one else could. Even if she was blind, I was watching her heart so closely I couldn't miss it. No matter how much I wanted to fucking miss it.
I had my pride. I refused to throw my hat into ring that I had no hope of being victorious in. So, when the chance presented itself I pushed her toward him.
With what you are, Faerie Princess, you need to be somebody's or you won't be at all. Eric is handsome, he's rich, and in his own way he cares about you. He really does.
When I found them together in that stupid old house they both loved so much I pushed again, begging her to keep him there, knowing that with how they felt about each other it would only be a matter of time.
I was never really sure if my slip to King Bill was completely accidental.
Especially when I saw the look on her face when Eric kneeled to die for her and I totally lost my shit. I had planned for it to happen, for them finally be together, but the reality of it brought out the worst in me. I could not lose them both, and in my moment of fear and despair anger took over and I fired that rocket right at Sookie's fucking head, wanting to erase her from my own head once and for all.
When Eric sent me away I collapsed in on myself, crying on Ginger about Sookie and her fucking fairy vagina, and her incredibly stupid name. Emotions are ugly things and in that moment I hated her as much as I loved her for never even having noticed I was right there, waiting to be seen, to be loved.
And when I finally boxed all that useless shit up and went to set things right with her and my maker she melted me with her stupid cow eyes and convinced me to turn Tara. I still can't figure out how she did it. Maybe it was the "I'll owe you one," and the totally stupid fucking idea that I could find some way to turn that to my advantage and make her mine.
Still, Tara had been a gift to me and I had loved her. In my own way. Not as much as I loved Eric and not as much as I loved Sookie and in the end I had to leave. I wanted to find Eric, yes, but when I sobered up and realized that I had completely fucked up and hugged Sookie in a my drunkenness that I was not going to be able to stay there with her.
So, I ran.
I labeled it following, and I did. I followed that fucking Viking all over the goddamned world. I played the fucking bucket game to find that son of a bitch and then I got him off his ass and on his feet the first place they took him was back to fucking Shreveport.
Back to fucking Sookie Stackhouse.
Back to the fucking Sookie Stackhouse that would never be mine.
It was so fucking dangerous for me to be here. So fucking chipping at my guard, at my walls, at the very core of me. I fucked up again when he came out Compton's McMansion and told us we were going to Fangtasia and called her a fungus, unconsciously hearkening back to him telling her that perhaps he would grow on her so long ago. Inadvertently admitting that she had grown on me!
Our fates had been intertwined since she walked into Fangtasia in that fucking sundress. Only death would free me.
As I planned I called in favors and learned that the Yakuza hunting me, Five, the Dragon Warrior, was the former lover of Mr. Gus. I saw symmetry in that. We had ended Mr. Gus to save Sookie, and now I was going to end his lover to save her again.
In a detached way I found it fascinating that one small waitress from the ass end of Louisiana could have such impact on two people's lives who had been born a world away from her, but I suppose the same could be said of Eric, Compton and myself.
We had traveled through time to find Sookie Stackhouse. We have lived many human lifetimes to be here in this place and in this time to take her hand and walk her into the darkness. There was symmetry in that as well.
I learned that Five was in league with DeCastro and Madden out of Las Vegas and carefully laid my plans so that I could lure the Yakuza out alone. I could handle them, if I saw them coming, but the vampires might tip the scales in their favor. It wasn't hard. DeCastro rarely left Vegas, and Madden rarely left DeCastro.
I knew they were using the Yakuza as stalking horse to find me and Eric while keeping their own hands clean. After taking care of my financial matters and making sure that everything reverted to Eric, I went to San Francisco.
I had bought the building that used to house my brothel, and restored it after the earthquake in 1906. I maintained it, but it was unused. It was my sanctuary like Sweden was for Eric. When I needed to be reminded of what would have happened, when I needed appreciation for the life I had now, I retreated to San Francisco.
When I was there I would walk among the graves and wonder which would have been have been mine if Eric had not saved me from Bill and Lorena. It would have been a race to see if they could kill me before the syphilis had done the job.
It was there that I waited, lost in my memories, lost in the past until the Yakuza found me.
I had seen Eric fight with a sword many times over our years together. I used to watch him practice, awed by the fluidity and grace his large frame conjured as it moved. He had told me once that before he even touched the sword he would center himself in his mind. He would let go of everything he was, everything he wanted to be, because to fight was to die. When you went into battle anything you took with you only slowed you down. There could be only you, the sword and the blood that was to come.
I was sitting in the middle of what had been my receiving room in 1905. I had emptied the room of all furnishings when I arrived, as I had emptied my mind tonight. When they came in on cat feet I rose from the dark, fangs down, like the wrath of God himself. My intelligence had told me that while they were all formidable warriors it was Five that would be the challenge.
I moved like dark rain across the room and decapitated four of them before they saw me coming. It was fast, clean and oh so sexy that I wished for a moment that Eric and Sookie could see me.
Of course, it was letting that baggage in that allowed Five to land a blow with her blade, cutting me across the back as her last companion dropped headless to the floor. I moved away at vamp speed to distance myself and heal.
Watching Itsuko Muramoto from across the room I was thunderstruck by her lethal beauty. I could see the edges of her legendary blue dragon tattoos on her neck and wrists and wished for a moment that we could drop or phallic weapons and worship together at the altar of Sappho, but I knew from the look in her eyes that this, too was not to be for me.
This acceptance unhinged the thoughts I had been suppressing and Sookie cascaded through my mind like a waterfall. I screamed my rage and pain and attacked Five with everything I had. We danced, swords flashing like partners who had practiced long together, the only light in the darkened room was the sparks from where our blades met. Each blow I landed she returned and knocked loose another memory that I had tried to leave outside the battle.
How sweet it is…
Now I don't remember telling you lavender was my favorite color…
I'm starting to see what all the fuss is about…
With what you are, Faerie Princess, you need to be somebody's or you won't be at all…
Give Sookie my love…
I lunged and buried my sword into Itsuko Muramoto to hilt at the same moment she pulled a stake out of thin air and rammed it into my heart.
How sweet it is, I thought as I felt myself start to come apart and I saw the light fade from Itsuko's eyes. I was laughing when I died, Itsuko's stake in my heart, Sookie's name on my lips and a vision of young beautiful girl in white dress in my mind.
In another life, my faerie princess…