I hope you like this, I rewrote it a few times, wanting to get the feel right, I may rewrite it again, who knows.

Let me hear what you think.

Merick

Part 18

Finding her was no difficult task, not with my blood in her body. She hadn't gotten far from the shop. It was only a few blocks down Chartres Street to the St. Louis Cathedral and its cemetery just north of that and that was the direction she was headed, whether she was aware of the path she had chosen in her despair, or not. I caught up to her quickly.

"Sookie. Please stop." I reached out to grab her arm, not intending to jar her backwards or to harm her with a rough grasp. "Please." Her soft footfall froze. But she did not turn to me.

"What do you want from me Eric?" She kept looking ahead down towards the triple crowned church, bathed in the glare of the spotlights that lit its grand white entrance. She looked a thousand miles away. I hated it.

"I want you to stop walking away from me Sookie." Direct, perhaps harsh, but again, quite true. She wheeled on me, the same heart wrenching tear streaks on her face.

"I don't know what to do Eric, I'm feeling so many different things in my head right now."

"How can I help? What do you need me to do Sookie?"

"Be honest with me Eric." She broke down in tears again and I pulled her into my arms. I looked around us, there weren't a great number of other pedestrians on the street then, but there were enough, looking at us and I took to the air with her again, they could think whatever they wanted of me, of us, I didn't care, they could tell their friends they'd seen a flying Vampire, no one would believe them anyways. I took her to the St. Louis Cemetery number one. It was the first place that came to mind, and one not unfamiliar to me. Only a city block in size, 100,000 souls were entombed there, and I had walked the rows many times during my visits to New Orleans. The floods had left it a little worse for wear, with the brown stains of the water level visible against the white stuccoed edifices. I knew of a little corner, away from the tourist tracks and the paths of the Haunted New Orleans tours, the crypts belonged to the less culturally significant former citizens, so there were no ghost tales about them to draw prying eyes, at least in the moonlight. I sat her on a little memorial bench, wrapped back up in my jacket against the night air and I sat beside her. Her words to me echoed in my ears, pounding against the inside of my head.

"I have been honest with you from the moment you awoke Sookie." She couldn't look at me.

"I know." She didn't sound completely convinced of her statement. That bothered me. "It's just that nothing makes sense right now Eric. I want my life back, I want to know who did this to me, but at the same time I am so frightened."

"Why are you frightened?" Some psychologist I was turning into. Pam would have probably gagged to hear it. She had been quick to renounce that aspect of her humanity when I had turned her; if she'd ever held that kind of compassion for anyone human.

"You've told me that you couldn't remember what happened to you, when you were under the spell Eric."

"Not until I made love to you again Sookie. Then it was all clear."

"Are you certain of that?"

"What?" I furrowed my brow in confusion, and then felt a cold shiver run down my spine as the comprehension dawned, kissing me with the wisp of some horrible doubt that sickened me.

"Can you trust those memories Eric?" She pushed further.

That thought was terrifying, could I trust the memories, or were they just the product of the fantasies, born on sleepless days and angry nights of blackness? Again I had to pause before answering her, trying to find an answer to my newfound confusion.

"I have to believe them Sookie. There are too many things that we share, there is too much to discount. They are real." I needed to hear myself say it, to strengthen my own resolve. But my poor Sookie was so lost in her own confusion that she could hardly hear me.

"What if I lose these days Eric?"

"Then I will show you the journal. You will read your own words."

"And what if I don't believe them?"

I couldn't understand why she was suddenly being so difficult. Did her fear stem from something other than the lost memories? Did it stem from my hesitance?

"If you do not believe them then I will prove myself to you."

"You would have sex with me, even if I didn't want it?"

"No!" I cried out, leaping to my feet, my protest echoing against the tombstones and mausoleum walls. I couldn't understand how she had made that leap. "No Sookie! No." I found it very hard to calm myself and I paced for a few moments, in front of her, curling my hands into fists, dug into my chest. "No. I would never do that Sookie." Her despair was defeating me; I sat back down beside her, heavily upon the stone, dropping my head into my hands. "I would walk away from you, if that was your wish." I wanted to rage against that thought, I wanted to cry out my objections but I couldn't. I felt suddenly overwhelmed and I stared at her.

She sniffed again, and tried in vain to dab away tears that were too large for her fingertips.

"But that isn't what I want Eric." She looked so broken as she whispered it that I had to pull her into my arms. "I don't know what I want Eric, except that I don't want to lose this." She pulled my arms tighter around her quivering shoulders. "It feels like my own mind is fighting itself." Her voice was muffled against my chest and I more than heard her pain, I felt it run through my core. And then I understood.

"You aren't fighting your mind Sookie. You are fighting mine."

"Eric?" That beautiful little tear stained face looked up at me, now looking even more lost, yet charming, framed in the oversized collar of my coat. I could only smile at her, I loved her so much then. I had to kiss her, I had to taste her mouth, and she did not pull away from me as I bent my face to hers, pushing my lips against ones swollen red with tears. I felt her melt into me.

"We are bonded Sookie. Your confusion is because of me, because of what I have been thinking, and agonizing over, and for that I am sorry. I have been afraid as well, afraid that you would forget what we have found here, and afraid that you would return to your life without me. I am selfish Sookie, it isn't that I didn't want you to find your memories, I just need to be a part of them too."

"I'm feeling your thoughts?"

"More my emotions. And I have been feeling yours and once again we have muddled ourselves together Sookie, in our doubts and fears." I felt like laughing, it was an uncomfortable thing for me to feel overwhelmed by anything, except maybe by love-making and its normal conclusions. Sitting with her there, I hated that I had felt that way, and not immediately understood why, because I only wanted to be strong for her, because she needed me to be that way.

"Sookie, I have never been one for wearing my heart on my sleeve. Unlike you. But it does not mean that I do not possess emotions. I have always kept my feelings close to my chest as it were." I pounded my hand against it, as if that action would prove a point. "I have had to. Lest something like this happen. Someone has done this to you to hurt me somehow, because they know how important you are to me." I felt the need to explain to her why I had simply not pounced on the chance to pour out my heart to her at Papa B's. But it was she who comforted me, with a gentle hand on the arm that was still clutching at her in fear that she would vanish like the mist that rose around the stones as the temperatures fell.

"I understand Eric."

"A thousand years of being stoic." I began.

"They have not all been like that Eric."

"No, they have not, there have been moments." I reached out to run the backs of my fingers down her cheek; she closed her eyes and leaned into them. "There have been people."

"What do you want me to do Eric?"

I wanted her to stay with me always, I wanted her to give up the memories and know me only as the man who sat beside her, the man who I always should have been in front of her, I wanted her to be my lover. And I wanted to tell her the true depths of the emotions I was trying to keep in check, out of fear.

"I want you to be happy." I answered. Yes, I wanted that too. "What do you want Sookie?"

"I want to know who did this to me, and why. And I don't want to be scared anymore. And I do want my life back, but I also want you to be in it Eric. I just don't know if I can have everything that I want."

"Will you let Papa B and Octavia help us?"

She nodded. I felt some relief, not a terrible amount sadly, but some. And so I sat there, holding her in my arms amongst the crypts.

"If it is in my power, I will give you everything that you want Sookie. And if it isn't," I paused to grin, "I will use my considerable influence to ensure that you get it anyways." She laughed at me, a great smile erasing the tear tracks. She gathered herself up again, screwing on that face of courage that she'd been projecting for everyone for the last few days, only now I could see and feel underneath it. I kissed her on the forehead very softly.

"You want me Eric?" She whispered to me.

"I never want to be without you Sookie." I whispered back. "My soul would be empty without you." Beautiful blue eyes stared at me, as if they could actually see right into the soul I had opened to her. But of course, they almost could, through the blood. "Sookie, I" And then my phone rang.