A/N. All the usual disclaimers apply. Again, a big, giant, Eric-shaped thank you to all those who let me know you read and like this story via reviews, Pms, alerts and all that. You're the reason I write and your opinion matters a great deal. This chapter was coming out very slowly, I kept re-doing it. My dear beta Kristen was of great help. So, here it goes. Hope you enjoy it, guys. Reviews are petted and fed cookies and milk (or martini and olives).
~oOo~
"Absolutely out of question, and we are done with this subject." Eric snapped with the finality of the proverbial last nail in the coffin.
"But Eric, look at him! He's gotta be the most gentle vampire to ever walk the night," I seethed, looking at Dermot, his eyes red around the rims, talking excitedly to Claude. The distance between us and them was big enough for Eric to focus on me and our conversation and only throw the occasional hungry glance in the direction of my fairy cousin.
"If he is unaffected by the smell of fairy blood, it does not mean he won't get hungry or unreasonable or out of control like all new ones do. And who is going to protect you then? Please stop being so difficult, Sookie, now is not the time." Eric was growing tired of arguing with me, if the two lines between his eyebrows were any indication.
"You can't make him leave and stay at whatever temporary hole you have at Fangtasia if he does not want to." My anger actually had almost nothing to do with Eric's intention to have Dermot bunk anywhere but in my house for the unforeseeable number of nights to come; 'till he learns of our ways of control,' Eric had simply stated. I was just using this opportunity to release some of the thick tension between us.
"Oh, trust me, I can. And I will. Unless he wants to leave this area, he will answer to me and do my bidding," said Eric Northman, Sheriff of Area Five. Damn. I should have known he'd pull that card.
"But Claude and I made a home for him earlier. We made up a comfy bed with fresh linens, got him cases of blood and even a few Vamp magazines. He will feel welcome and at home there, and Fangtasia will only scare him." I knew I must have sounded pathetic, compared to Eric's iron-wrought logic, but I was past caring.
He sighed heavily, which he seldom did, since he didn't need to breathe, and fixed me with an annoyed glare. I took it as a sign of his utmost exasperation. Eric was going to be absolutely unmovable. This realization made me feel suddenly tired and weak and numb in a desirable, welcome way. I just wanted to… I guess I just wanted to stop thinking and worrying. I knew that the hurt of Eric's treatment would hit full force come morning, but for now I was grateful to take this break that exhaustion was offering.
"I'm tired," I mumbled, defeated, and turned around to walk home, letting Eric know wordlessly that he could take over from here. The last thing I wanted right now was for him to see me in this state: ready to cry and beg him for attention and comfort like a lost puppy.
"Sookie!" Claude's elated voice called to me and I couldn't help but smile a little, seeing how happy and overwhelmed he was. Small things, Sookie Stackhouse, it's all about the small things. 'If you still can enjoy the small things on an everyday basis,' Gran used to say, 'you can pull through.'
"Sookie, this is actually cool! Dermot's been telling me all the things he can see and feel differently now." Claude practically jumped with excitement. "It's not so bad, so you shouldn't mope. He could be working in my bar at nights, he would be quite an attraction, a fairy turned vampire."
"He now owes fealty to Sheriff of Area 5 and will do his bidding if he wants to stick around," I said with a great deal of venom and gestured with a bleak hand towards where Eric was in his element, telling Dermot what he could and could not do.
"Did you two have a falling out or something?" my cousin asked with an almost concerned expression.
"I don't know," I croaked, unable to hold my face together any longer.
"Come on, Sook, nose up. Nothing a good fucking wouldn't fix, I'm sure." My dear, tactless, well-meaning cousin.
"You sure do know how to make a girl feel better," I said through my tears, with sarcasm that Claude absolutely ignored.
"Of course, that's what cousins are for. Do you want me to beat the shit out of that bag of dead meat?" Claude made a dramatic pause and assumed a battle stance, which made the silver-clad fairy look even more gorgeous, if it was possible. I gawked, and Claude laughed, "I won't be able to, of course, and I'm not about to try, but I think it's the right thing to ask about now, right?"
Claude's ham-fisted, but absolutely guileless attempt to cheer me up wasn't really working, but for a minute I gave in to a sad, pathetic kind of laughter, wiping tears with the back of my hand and thinking that at least I had someone to turn to when things started to look sour.
"Eric won't allow Dermot to stay with us," I told Claude when my mini-fit of hysteria subsided.
"Maybe it's for the better, cuz. This is how he shows that he cares for you."
I chose not to side with Claude and my own rational part, which was eagerly agreeing with this notion, and huffed, folding my hands across the chest.
The evening drifted on and on in the ripe, summery murmur of the forest, as Claude and I sat at the foot of a large tree in wordless contemplation, while Eric gave Dermot an express How-To-Be-A-Vamp 1.0 at a distance.
I relished my fragile numbness and tried to concentrate on the slumbering woods and the windless night around me. After some time I couldn't even tell whether a few minutes or a few hours had passed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Eric circling us. He moved with cat-like grace and kept throwing gilded glances at Claude.
"Hello, fairy," he said when he stopped at a safe distance and shot a fangy smile at my cousin. I felt a pang of pain when he all but ignored me, and made a silent statement by getting up and striding purposefully to Dermot, who was now finally free of his very damn responsible Sheriff.
"You're not my type, vampire, so back off," Claude drawled, rolling his eyes and sounding wonderfully bored. I had my back to my vampire (though I was not sure if I could use that particular possessive pronoun any more) and I sneered in grim satisfaction while mentally high-fiving my brash cousin. Eventually, I turned around.
"Ah, do not get your… whatever underwear you're wearing in a twist. If I were hitting on you, you'd… feel it, definitely. Though not for long," Eric's smile grew wider, and, if I say so myself, much more dangerous. His look dragged to me almost reluctantly, and I could tell, he was struggling to remain calm and nonchalant, with the divinely smelling Claude standing up-wind to him.
"I would actually like a word with my wife," he paused, probably to gauge my reaction, and I felt my hackles rise at such blatant provocation. The gall of that vampire, using this title like that. "And since you have apparently taken the role of her literal knight in shining armor, I'm forced to ask you to move your ass." I swear, Eric's nose crinkled with distaste.
Claude gave me a 'remember what I said' eyebrow wiggle and after underlining his point with a few lewd hand gestures, strolled without a word to Dermot, who was finishing off the case of Blood by now.
I was left face to face with the vampire, who was currently being the bane of my existence, and gathered my anger and pride around me like a cloak. Not meeting his eyes, I stared at the shimmer above his temple that graded into bright, golden hair. Good god, how I loved to nuzzle that spot.
I shook my head before my thoughts took me to the place I didn't care to visit right about now, out of fear of breaking down miserably right in front of the person who I least wanted to see me in this state . Ugh, did he have to look so excruciatingly desirable from head to foot every goddamn minute of goddamn night?
"How's Dermot?" I asked, my voice pitching a bit too high not to betray my total lack of casualness.
"He's well, he's good. He'll make a fine vampire and a great asset to my retinue." Good. The talk of retinues and assets was just the thing I needed to drag me back down to brown earth.
"Is it all you're thinking of? Your little piece of Louisiana?" I knew I was being unfair, but the little angry beast in me wanted to claw and tear.
"Sookie, you are perfectly aware that I can feel when you mean what you say and when you want to hurt me deliberately. Now is the latter case, and I want to know why you are doing this," Eric answered calmly, but I could feel exhaustion seeping into his voice.
Was he even serious? I tried to count backwards from ten, because the last thing I wanted was to start a ripping row. The kind where I'd be doing all the ripping.
"Eric, you can't be so clueless," I whispered.
He took the remaining few steps towards me and stared at me with frightening intensity.
His voice, however, betrayed none of it.
"I find myself very clueless about you as of late. It bothers me, too."
"What the hell happened to the Eric who could read me like an open book printed in giant letters in simple English?" I asked vehemently.
"I guess the same thing that happened to the Sookie which that Eric loved." The frankness, the absolute openness with which he said that and, especially, the past tense which he so carelessly tossed into the already full of barbed wire sentence, dragged across my heart, leaving bloody gashes.
"You do not love me anymore?" It came out as the gulp of a drowning person, and it took all of my willpower to hold my precariously trembling lower lip from pulling the rest of my face into a weeping tragedy.
"I do not know who I love anymore," again, the same detachment on the outside and the barely covered tumult I could feel was beating at the bond where he was forcefully tempering it.
"I want my Eric back," I said, apropos of nothing, like a whiny four-year-old asking for a favorite toy which was forgotten somewhere and could not be retrieved.
He looked at me for the longest time, as if trying to predict my reaction to something he was about to say.
"This is neither time nor place to have this conversation." Great. Viking taking a cop out.
"When is there time and place for this?" I asked his feet, feeling resigned and devastated. I could already feel the stretch of the long, lonely month or months ahead of me, coping with my load all by myself again, while Eric took his time figuring out whatever it was… that was plaguing him, on his own. I couldn't claim being very experienced relationship-wise, but I was sure this was not how couples went through times like these.
Suddenly, a funny thought fluttered through my head. I wondered if Eric's own experience in the emotional tangles of complicated relationships was even more squalid than mine. A ridiculous laugh was on the verge of escaping me if not for Eric's voice, which brought me back to our conversation.
"That would be your room, twenty minutes from now. And tell the fairy to scram." The last part was amplified specifically for Claude to hear. Claude may be blunt, but he always gets the gist of things when it's important. From the corner of my eye, I saw him give me an okay sign.
The whole way Eric was handling this situation was so contrary to what I had been expecting that I could do nothing but gape at him, rubbing my leaking eyes furiously.
"Ok," I mouthed, shocked into total lack of anything else to say.
Eric's look slid down to my lips, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. Good God, but Claude was right. Sometimes rushing into it head first just worked better; maybe a good night of screwing ourselves into oblivion would help. Before I could do anything about this thought, however, there was a shift in my reality and a gust of wind that followed. Eric took off flying.
I looked over where Claude and Dermot were picking up the empty True Blood bottles to take them home and deposit them in the garbage can. A cold, spidery feeling of guilt was tickling my insides. I had come here for Dermot and so far had barely even said one word to him, opting to waddle through my own problems instead. And, as compared to becoming a whole new being, a few bumps (however painful) on the road two that people travel looked increasingly petty. I marched over to Dermot with purpose.
"Sookie!" He turned around when I was still a few yards away, hearing my footsteps.
"Dermot, I'm so sorry about this mess. How are you feeling?" I stretched my hands out with the intention to hug him, something that has become a conditional reflex upon my side during the last few weeks.
Instead of stepping in to close his arms around me as the Dermot I used to know would have done, the new Dermot retreated hastily, a look of pain marring his beautiful, now pallid face. He looked like a weaker solution of his former ruddy liveliness, but acquired another sort of appeal. He'd be definitely turning women's heads now. Not that he hadn't before, I supposed.
"Sookie, I can't. Eric will rip my fangs off if I come closer to you than this. I have to keep my distance, at least for the time being, while I'm still… fresh," Dermot said, genuine hurt lacing his voice.
Of all the complacent, domineering vampires! I felt a breath hitch in my throat in helpless anger. I could just picture those beautiful, smug lips forming the exact same words.
Pressing my lips together in an inhuman attempt to restrain the tears of powerless rage, I stomped off in the direction of my house. Someone was going to get a piece of my mind.
I ran home like the wind, flogged into action by the fury that boiled in me so strongly, I wouldn't be surprised to see actual blisters on my skin.
When I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece in the living room, I realized it wasn't even midnight yet. I sighed and tried to bring it home to my entire body that the night was only starting. And boy, did it protest already.
Eric was lounging on the couch in the living room, snuggled in the ugly, threadbare coverlet he hated so much, with the air of the owner of universe. Point made, Sheriff.
I have to admit that if I saw him showing any signs of concern or repentance, I might have caved and let go of all the fight in me. But seeing his impudent indulging in the moment, the expression on his face of the man who thought there were only two points of view—his and wrong—spurred my anger exponentially.
"Who do you think you are, forbidding Dermot to even come around me?" I demanded venomously as I stopped right in front of him, my hands on my hips.
He regarded me lazily, not even batting a damn eyelash while I was practically trembling with emotion. Then he got up, with typical ease and elegance, as if he were entertaining a random acquaintance at a high-society soiree, and went to the window.
"I have reported these recent events and filed the case with the higher authorities. It is now registered as official offence, and there will be an investigation. When Dermot's unfortunate maker is found, he or she will suffer a severe punishment. A public one, at that."
Right now, I couldn't care less about Dermot's unfortunate maker.
"That is all fine and dandy, but it doesn't answer my question." I cringed at the frigidness of my own voice. It was as cold as the damn endless winters in Siberia. Never in my life had I imagined talking like this to Eric.
"I wasn't going to answer your question, Sookie, because the answer is obvious enough for you to understand without me having to voice it." There was a finality in his tone brooked no argument.
With a tremendous effort I clamped down on my urge to rant and rave at him about taking over my life and the people in it like that. There were more important issues.
"Fine. I'll deal with it tomorrow. Let's have that talk," I bristled to his back and hugged my arms around my chest.
Eric turned around, and his face completely belied his harsh, careless words. He looked sad. Grieved. Devastatingly so. It took all I had in me not to throw myself at him in the only consolation method I could think of right now. Instead I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, bracing for whatever was to come.
"Are you sure," he asked slowly, obviously picking his way through the verbal minefield, "That you want to have this conversation right now, when you're all riled up and seeing red with me in the middle?"
"I want to put it behind me, Eric," I answered with the same careful deliberation. Taking a pause and looking him directly in the eye, I shot at the hip, "It's Appius, is it?"
For an eternity of a torturous few seconds, all the answer I got was a blank stare. It was long enough for me to cram a hundred of horrendous scenarios in my brain, starting from 'I think I'm in love with someone else' and ending with 'I loaned you out to Felipe, indefinitely.
"You stood there, with a stake in your hand. You would have done it." Eric's absent voice interrupted my little mental horror movie suddenly.
"Is this why you're acting this way? Because I was ready to kill a murderous sociopath? To set you free of him, once and for all?" I could hardly believe what he was telling me. "For god's sake, Eric, he was a dangerous outlaw! He forced himself on you! He and this… Alexei—" I couldn't even bring myself to refer to him as 'boy'—"They wreaked havoc in your life within just a few days. And all you could do was sit around on your ass and wait it fucking out!"
I knew it would strike a cord. If Eric had to be defined in one word, it would be control. Various degrees of control, most of them reaching hundred per cent, that's what Eric was.
In one fluid motion, moving with vampire speed, he was right in front of me, eyes ablaze with almost otherworldly gleam.
"Do not assume you know every nuance of a vampire's relationship to his maker," Eric growled in a tone so low and steely, it reminded me exactly why I was scared witless of him two years ago.
"Yeah, sure, I know shit about your damn makers!" I practically yelled, equally incensed. I had enough trouble with vampires and their damn makers to last me two lifetimes.
My use of the plural 'makers' was not lost on Eric. If possible, his face became even more stone-hard than it was before.
"Appius was a thousand times the vampire that whore Lorena could ever hope to be!" Eric thundered, and I understood that something very derogatory about Lorena's progeny was clearly at the tip of his tongue.
"Just listen to yourself, Eric! You are defending an abusive asshole and all the reasoning you're giving is that he is your maker?" Fuck, did that sound eerily familiar. Did I ever imagine I'd go down that road with Eric? Hell, no.
"I had learned to love him, Sookie. Because I could either do that, or remain miserable for the rest of eternity. And I'll meet the sun before I subside to spending my nights embittered, ruined for any sort of enjoyment and looking over my shoulder all the time like some. So, I adapted. And you had no right to make this decision for me," Eric hissed back, and I knew with perfect clearance who these some were. All I had to do to look at an example was to go across the cemetery.
I wasn't even going to mention the irony of Eric last statement, even though I was currently talking to the absolute king of making decisions for other people while frequently disregarding their opinions. We would get carried so far away, I'd never be able to get myself back on track before dawn forced an end to our conversation.
Filing this away in a seemingly ever growing pile of unresolved issues between Eric and myself, I said, with probably a little too much disdain, "Yeah, you adapt. That's what you do. Like a virus. When something doesn't turn up the way you planned, you say that you adapt to it, and it becomes right just like that, at a click of your fingers. Well I don't do that. I fight for things I need to be the way I need them!"
Eric's face molded into a beatific smile which had a terrifying edge to it I couldn't quite place. Like he was looking indulgently at an atrociously spoilt child pulling a very evil prank.
"Yes, Sookie, I do adapt. Flexibility is the number one rule of survival. Sometimes I forget just how young and brief you are. You think you can change things around you, but in truth you can only change your attitude towards them, and it is the only thing you can change. Almost always."
"This is the most cynical thing I've heard! Even coming from a vampire." I felt tears pooling all over again and bit my lip in an attempt to hold them back.
Eric's long-fingered pale hand reached out and he tugged my lip from my teeth with a gentle thumb.
"Don't do that," he whispered. "You know, Sookie, one thing I just can't adapt to? One thing I can't wrap my brain around?" His thumb brushed my lower lip with a barely there caress which was killing all the anger in me. I just wanted to test Claude's advice on making up.
"What is it?" I asked, a barely audible exhale of breath.
His other hand moved into my hair, taking out the clip in a deft movement.
"It is my generous, compassionate, forgiving lover, who is usually willing to give a second chance to almost any being in this universe, standing there with murder in her beautiful eyes, ruthless and assuming she can judge who deserves to be sent to final death and who does not. And I find myself at a loss of what to do, which I hate. I also find myself unwilling and unable to adapt to that, which I hate even more. You say you want your Eric back. Your Eric wants that Sookie back, too." His voice, just as his hands, was ever so tender. That was the voice he usually used when he whispered sweet or obscene nothings in my ear while moving inside me. The baffling contradiction between the voice and the callous meaning of his words raked across my insides like a rusty, blunt can opener.
I don't know what regretful things might have escaped my mouth then and there if not for the phone, which broke the sickly spell I seemed to be subsiding to.
"Saved by the bell," I heard Eric mutter bitterly, as I reached for the receiver of my salvation, not even giving the subject of who may be calling me at midnight and for what ghastly reasons a second thought.
"Sookie?" Remy's tentative voice broke into my whirling mind. "I'm so sorry to call you at this hour, but I figured since you're, you know, run with vampires a lot you might be keeping odd hours." He said the 'run with vampires' part so casually and easily and with such pleasant lack of judgment, I found myself smiling wanly at the receiver. But then I remembered about the lateness of the hour.
"Oh God. Did something happen to Hunter?" A giant pit of consuming blackness was forming in my stomach.
"No, no, Hunter is fine! Sorry… I knew calling at this time might give you the wrong idea, but I was just… I couldn't wait till tomorrow. A vampire came to see me about Hunter today. He knew our address and where I work and everything. He mentioned Hadley and you. He said he is your friend and was there on your errands or something along those lines. Asking questions and all."
I saw Eric, who, obviously could hear the entire conversation as clearly as if someone was shouting it into his ear, strain and give me a look.
"A vampire?" I asked, trying to buy myself time to form all the right questions with Eric listening right there.
"Yeah. Slim, tall, dark-haired. Smiles a lot, but kinda like a shark seeing a piece of meat."
Victor. That description left very little room for doubt. Victor did have a distinct air of intensity and forwardness about him. Exactly like a shark going after a harbor seal. I felt cold tendrils of fear crawl down my spine.
"And he said he came from me?"
"Yes, so I just wanted to know what that's all about." Remy didn't sound worried. More like annoyed slightly.
I desperately wanted to know what Remy told him, but I couldn't ask in front of Eric. Hunter's little quirk was a secret even he did not know.
"Remy, I did not send anyone and I will look into it. Don't talk to him and don't invite him to your house." I said feeling completely lame and useless. As if Remy could stop Victor if he was on a mission.
"I've been thinking of taking Hunter to see my mother in Texas. Maybe I should finally make that trip now." Remy, God bless his heart and his smart head.
"That's actually a brilliant idea. It would be perfect if you could get on the road come morning," I blabbered, smiling into the receiver brightly.
"Well, it's settled then," he said and paused. "Sookie?"
"Yes, Remy?"
"I don't want any harm to come to Hunter, you know?" the statement was absolutely loaded, and I swallowed heavily.
"Yes, Remy. I promise, he'll be fine. You both will." It was the most empty, most meaningless promise I had ever given in my life.
"Ok. Right. Goodnight then," Remy said and hung up.
I sighed, relieved that he did not mention Hunter's telepathy.
"So, why would Victor Madden visit your little cousin, Sookie?" Eric asked, with conviction in his voice. To hope he wouldn't be making a few educated guesses of his own would be an exercise in futility.
"I don't know, Eric," I lied smoothly. "Maybe he plans to get to me this way. He's been after me for a while.
Deep inside I prayed he would let it go, but the phone interrupted us once more.
I picked it up urgently, hoping it would save me yet again.
"Sookie, I forgot to tell you," Remy's voice came from the other end of the line. I listened with baited breath, hoping that he'd forgotten to tell me Hunter asked to say hello or something equally innocent. "That vampire said that Hunter's ability could be developed, if he trained from early age. That he'd surpass you. They offered help in training, too."
He kept saying something else, but I didn't hear. I was looking at Eric, whose face screamed 'betrayed, wounded, deceived' and a whole plethora of most horrible things simultaneously.
"Yeah, Remy. I'll call you back about that," I said absently, and hung up, preparing myself for the storm to come.
Eric's eyes shone as bright as if he was about to cry, real human tears.
"Quite a secret you kept from me here, lover," he said in a deadly whisper. For the first time that lover sounded as an intended insult.
He opened the window, without looking back even once, and at the next second I was completely alone in the room.