A/N Thanks for all your lovely reviews since I've been posting again. I'm sorry if I'm not always able to reply, but I do try to. In this chapter, we return to Eric and Sookie - yay! Also, we will learn over the next couple of chapters exactly how the Viking vampire came to be in exile. Finally! xx

Chapter 17

The effects of sleeping underground, for Eric, were twofold: he awoke thoroughly disoriented, and he awoke ravenous. Something about lying beneath the bare earth seemed to intensify his appetite, which would have been enhanced anyway since he hadn't fed on anything for two nights and he had given Sookie his blood before sleeping. For this reason, even after coming fully to his senses, Eric remained buried for some time as he struggled to master his impulses. If he surfaced so overwhelmed by the need to feed, with Sookie close by, it would be a catastrophe. He focused on his love for the woman, calling to mind the emotions of the night before, and was astonished by his connection to what he could only describe as his humanity. Confident that he had disciplined his hunger, that he would pose no threat to his lover, he slowly emerged. She was not there. He had been concentrating so hard on overcoming his appetite for her blood that he had failed to register, through his blood in her, that she was gone.

Eric, for some reason, found himself laughing like a fool and calling her name: 'Sookie! Don't hide from me! Where are you, baby?' His laughter died on his lips. She wasn't hiding; she was nowhere close by. A spasm of terror shook Eric to the core. She'd been taken. But how? How could the weres possibly have found them here? No, she'd taken fright and ran. She'd been vulnerable – traumatised by her abduction by the wolves, and then spirited away several hundred miles from home by a vampire she barely knew. She had hardly been in her right mind, and he'd taken advantage of that. He'd seduced her and made mad declarations of love that in the light of day she'd probably interpreted as either psychopathically demented, or as some sort of piss-take. He whimpered as he imagined the emotions that might have made his lover run away from him – and again he was amazed by the sensation of empathy. He choked it down. Sookie had fled into the woods with nothing to defend her but his blood in her veins. They were deep in bear country. She had no idea where she was. He had to find her no matter what her reasons were for running.

His sense of Sookie's scent was enhanced by the blood she had taken from him and he allowed his instinct for tracking to take over, even letting his appetite for feeding motivate him to some degree since it helped to dampen his emotional turmoil: at this moment, he needed to be vampire, not a love-struck human fretting over hypotheticals. He set off due east following his lover's trial. It intensified as he contoured around the shoulder of a steep, deeply wooded hillside and thankfully he could discern no other scent; nothing had crossed Sookie's path that might have been a threat to her. The forest thinned out on the approach to a rocky stream which tumbled into a pool on a narrow plateau. She was sat, head bowed, her legs dangling into the water. She turned to him before he had the chance to speak her name.

'Eric. Please. Don't... don't come any closer.'

He dropped to his knees and spread his arms. 'Sookie. I'm sorry. I don't know what to say to you. Except, please, trust me. I'll take you home, wherever you call home, you don't even need to speak to me. Just come with me, please. Don't be afraid of me. I can't bear this.'

'Eric Northman. Who are you?'

Eric opened his mouth to speak, and yet had nothing. Who was he? What possible account of himself could he give to this human who had already been betrayed by one of his kind? His body went limp, sinking into the grass; 'I don't know, Sookie. Who am I?'

Sookie gazed at him, questioningly, warily. She slowly stood and walked to him, kneeling to take his bowed head in her hands. 'Eric, just tell me. Tell me everything. The weres... I overheard them talking about you. It didn't register with me until today, whilst you were sleeping, and I was having doubts. I was frightened. Bill was... he said he could be trusted. He lied. The weres said that you powerful, and that they wanted you. That was why I was taken, Eric, to trade with Bill for Pam in the knowledge that this would summon you. And that you might join with the weres, against Bill. So here am I – again, Eric – a pawn in some drama I don't begin to understand. Tell me, Eric Northman, who you are.'

'Sookie, I can do better than that. Whatever I said to you, given your history with Bill, would you trust it? I need to do better than giving you my word. I would never, I will never, betray you or lie to you, Sookie, but I understand how little the word of a vampire might mean to you if Bill abused your trust. I can show you how I came to this. I can let you feel it, live it with me. You have my blood. I'm over a thousand years old. Join your mind with mine and I can help you see who I am, Sookie. The former sheriff of Area Five, yes. Falsely accused of treachery and exiled by my king, whom I utterly despise, yes. Living in hiding in a dive in Shreveport, yes. But these are just words, why would you believe a vampire whom you might justifiably suppose is simply using you as a pawn in his big drama? I get that. So live it with me. See the truth of it, Sookie.'

'You can't glamour me, Eric. I'm immune to it. Maybe you've tried it, I don't know, but vampire mind -control is not on the agenda with this piece of ass.' The bitterness in her voice was like a slap in the face. Eric grabbed her wrist and focused his pain through his blood, into her blood, and Sookie screamed with the shock of his emotion. 'Sookie, that is my blood in you. That is not glamour.' He let her go and moved back. 'I will take you home right now and we need never meet again. I will always be there for you, whenever you call me, but I'm not interested in compulsion, manipulation, or any of that vampire-on-human bullshit. What you don't give freely, I don't want. Not your body, not your mind, not your love if it's based on anything but the truth about me. I ask you to trust me, to let me take you into the truth about me. That's a big ask, I see that. I am amazed that I see that, but I do – and that's why I say that if you want to leave this place now, it is your choice. But know this, Sookie, I do love you; I don't care that you might disbelieve me or at the very least dispute my motives, but you have ... changed me. Ha! The weres were wrong! They already had me when they had you! They thought that Pam... Oh Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck is this?'

Eric turned away, struggling to stand, crying out in a language foreign to Sookie but fraught with pain. She rose and helped him to his feet, embracing him and stroking his hair, understanding at that moment, with shocking clarity, what it meant for Eric to say he loved her.

'Yes, Eric. Whatever it takes. I want to know. I'll go with you.'