A/N- Many thanks to the lovely Miravisu for the Swedish translations. :-)

VIII.

Nnenna Freelon was a wonderful live performer. Pam had never heard her before and really enjoyed it. We split up after hearing Freelon perform because Eric had to go back to meet with people from Lafayette. Stefan, Markus and various other bodyguards who'd come out for the evening stayed with him, but Rasul and Pam stayed with me, along with Andor and Cadel. We were meeting up with Amelia and her man, Bertram, at The Dungeon at 1 am. We got there early and the vampires all had True Blood while I had a gin and tonic. Pam was having a lot of fun comparing The Dungeon to Fangtasia, which Eric and Pam still owned and from which Sheriff Maxwell operated his Area 5 base. The Dungeon was substantially more tourist oriented and the tourists appeared quite taken with staring at the four vampires in my company. Cadel, who was Welsh, was particularly playful, hissing and snarling in full fang at people coming near the table to a chorus of 'Oooohs' and 'Aaaaah' and jumpy reactions. Then he'd burst into laughter if he got someone really scared. He had deep dimples, which looked very amusing in combination with long, sharp fangs.

After more than a day in the total quiet of the Eric's compound, the rush of minds, first in Preservation Hall, and now in The Dungeon was really something. Even twenty-four to thirty six hours away required an adjustment in my ability to filter things out. The only humans I'd been around since spending the past two days with Eric were Amelia and Sara Weiss, who'd come to check on me right before the jazz performance. But I decided in the end that it was actually as if I felt a bit refreshed and more energetic for having had the break. Other than time spent alone in my apartment, where really, I cold potentially still pick up neighbors thoughts, I hadn't had a real break from the thoughts and minds of others for years.

While we sat in our little booth area I became aware of a really strong and anxious female mind and glanced over at the bar, at a woman who appeared to be in her early twenties. She was upset because her friend might not be able to come after all. She was thinking about leaving because she felt nervous being in the bar alone. That feeling was borne out when a former boyfriend of hers came into the club started giving her menacing looks. She was afraid of him. Now that she had seen him though, she seemed afraid to leave because she was worried he'd follow her out. She was sitting at the bar waiting for him to get distracted so she could make her exit. I'd noted that there were at least three police officers around the club, along with two FBI agents, so I figured she was safe and went back to listening to Pam and Andor arguing about jazz. Andor seemed to speak with an accent similar to Eric's, but more obvious, I guess because he hadn't lived here very long. I really wondered where he was from. He wasn't as talkative as Cadel or Stefan. Andor seemed to spend a lot of time just watching others and taking everything in.

Ten minutes passed and the ex-boyfriend had walked over to the woman at the bar and soon she was on the verge of tears, telling him to just leave her alone. The guy was a serious creep in my book. He was thinking of ways to try to make her feel bad, including her weight, her occasional stuttering and even the recent death of her father, with whom she'd had a strained relationship. He was still angry because she had broken up with him. She definitely knew where to draw the line for her mental health by getting rid of this guy, I thought to myself. When the guy refused to leave her alone the third time she asked and she started crying, I found myself muttering under my breath,

"Fucking asshole…" which briefly caught Pam's attention.

But then the guy grabbed a hold of the woman's arm and she was really scared. That was when I saw that he'd hit her before. In fact, he'd beaten her up once. Badly enough so that she had missed her college classes, embarrassed to go out with bruises. All the other people at the bar were ignoring the escalating problem.

I bounced out of my seat without a word of explanation to the others and walked over to them and said,

"Samantha, I'm so sorry I was late. Who's this guy? He looks familiar. Why are you crying, sweetie? Are you okay?" all with my very best Louisiana drawl.

The creep looked at me and focused mainly on my breasts. He was really so offensive. Samantha, who had never seen me before in her life, looked at me as if I was her long lost guardian angel.

"He's just leaving," she said, stuttering slightly from both stress and, as far as I was concerned, legitimate fear. He was thinking about trying to get her out of the club and 'show her a good time' after all. The guy was really a piece of work.

"Well, good. Because if he made you cry, I really think he should leave." I stared at him with my arms crossed.

"The only person who's leaving is you, bitch," he snarled. Then he grabbed my uppermost arm to push me back and away from her, but he grabbed it hard. Hard enough to probably leave marks.

I looked down at his hand and said in a low but very clear voice,

"Take your hand off me. Right now."

He didn't remove his hand or lessen his grip, so I swept my arm upward. He pretty much snarled at me and took a swing at slapping me. What the hell would he do in private if this was his public persona? Well, I guess I'd already seen that in her memories. Anyway, it was his second and final mistake. This was the stuff of my Krav Maga trainer Uri's dreams. I managed to pretty much dodge his open handed hit although he still just caught my cheekbone. It stung but I was far too pissed off to care. I jabbed him in the throat, kneed him in the groin and then grabbed his wrist and spun him to the side as I twisted his arm up behind him and kicked his knees out from under him. He was down in much less than five seconds. When he looked up, all the other people at the bar had moved away while four snarling vampires and two FBI agents with handguns drawn were staring down at him. Samantha looked like she didn't know whether to be freaked out or applaud. She seemed to be coming down on the applause side, clasping her hands together and thinking that he'd had it coming for years.

"Who the fuck are you?" he said in a hoarse and painful voice. The throat jab was really a painful hit. You had to be careful with that one because you could really harm someone with it.

"Someone who doesn't appreciate being hit. Like most of the rest of the people I know, including Samantha. I'm an FBI agent. And so are they," I said pointing to the two guys with the guns.

I looked over at the two agents, one of whom looked vaguely familiar from Sara's office. I had the idea that his name was Norm. Yeah, it was Norm, I saw, reading him. He was quite amused that I'd taken the guy down so fast. He remembered me from several years back when I had been pretty fragile, at least in his eyes.

"Norm, can you guys deal with this? I'm on vacation. Samantha, why don't you come sit with me for a while. Norm, the guy watching, over there in the blue shirt, is NOLA PD. The guy hit me," I pointed to my cheek, "so maybe I'm gonna think about charges." I looked down at the creep, Howie? and read him carefully. "You know, I really think he needs a drug test. I'm thinking he's under the influence of something. Who the heck hits a woman in a public place with tons of witnesses? He's on something. You can give them my contact info," I said, nodding to the police officer who was walking our way.

Norm, who obviously seemed in the know from Sara, just nodded without asking any questions about how I knew what I knew and signaled that I could let the guy go. I released him, and he promptly toppled over with a moan. I glanced at him for a minute wondering if maybe I'd hit him, or twisted his arm, a little too hard. After all, I'd been having doses of Eric's blood and could be stronger than I realized. He was rubbing his wrist. It didn't look too bad, since he could move it gingerly and I didn't see any bruising. Well, I thought to myself, he hit me first. Only a fool in a town like this would hit a stranger. What if I had been a Were or were and really lost my temper?

Samantha looked apprehensive as I walked back to our table and was followed by Pam, Rasul and Andor. Cadel waited near her and held out his arm as if to direct her. Pam was all a-fuss over my cheek. It tingled a bit but really wasn't that bad. My arm was little tender, though.

"Eric is going to kill us. Absolutely kill us. We are going to be in so much trouble. Honestly, Sookie" she hissed in a very low voice so it was not likely that anyone would hear my real name, "Why the hell did you have to pick a fight with him yourself? Couldn't you have had one of us go over and set him straight? What were you thinking?" She stood over me looking at my cheek and pressing around on it as if to make sure nothing was broken or something.

"He just slapped me. It's not like he punched me or anything. One of you would have scared her too, and she would have left with him and he's beaten her up before. I was thinking that getting him to leave alone was a better bet, Pam. Ow… It's fine. Geez Louise, Pam, cut it out! You're going to bruise it if you keep poking it." I didn't want to tell her that what really hurt was my arm, where he had grabbed it. I was pretty sure it was bruised.

Samantha sat down diffidently in a chair that Cadel had pulled up for her next to me.

"Lady, I don't know who you are, but thanks," she said to me.

"You're welcome. You should really avoid him. He's a very nasty man, Samantha."

Rasul was just taking the whole thing in with sparkling eyes and then he finally burst into laughter. "He was what? 6' 2"? You had him on the floor whining like girl in the blink of an eye. It was a riot. It's good to know that at least with humans you can take good care of yourself, Sasha."

Pam was indignant. "Eric is not going to think it's a riot, Rasul. Eric is going to be furious."

"Eric needs to lighten up, Pam. Nothing is going to happen to her and that doesn't even look as if it will bruise if you leave it alone." He snapped his fingers for a barmaid and asked for a glass of ice water and napkins. "Good thing for him you didn't have your gun, Sasha," he said with a chuckle and a wink.

I crossed my left leg over my right knee and pulled up my pants leg and showed him my subcompact G26 on my lower calf.

"I have to wear a weapon. I'm required to. But why on earth would you think I'd shoot him, Rasul? He was unarmed. Especially, if I can have him the floor 'like a girl' as you put it, it would be excessive force. He was just a bully. It was the perfect Krav Maga-lite scenario. He had no weapon. I actually train to incapacitate a person with a weapon. So this was easy."

Rasul laughed again and smiled at me.

"You're really my favorite human, Sasha. Eric was way ahead of the curve, as usual, finding you. You're always an adventure."

I noticed that Andor was just silent as usual, as if taking the whole situation in and taking notes. I wondered if he'd tell Eric.

Pam frowned.

"What's wrong now, Pam?" I asked her.

"You've got so many guns and you never showed me how to shoot any, not even the shotgun. And I asked years ago. You've never shown me how to shoot anything at all. You knew I wanted to learn to shoot." She actually pouted, which looked pretty silly with fangs slightly run down. Clearly the thought of using a gun was stirring to Pam.

"Pam, if there's a local range that's open at night, I'll let you shoot my gun. We can go whenever you want. The G26 is a good one for you to try because your hands are small."

"I'll find one as soon as we get back and we can go one night this week."

I laughed. The idea of a vampire wanting to use a gun was rather comical, but whatever made her happy… Still, it really seemed like overkill. Who knew, though. Pam was pretty tiny at about five foot three. All of the other vampires in Eric's immediate circle were men and, with the exception of Rasul, were all well over six feet tall. Even if she was strong, there would always be vampires that were larger, older and stronger still. And she was Eric's second. I wondered if she felt at a disadvantage. Maybe learning to shoot and getting a carry permit, if it was legal in Louisiana, was a good plan after all. She could use silver bullets and be quite lethal that way. I was sure she could easily kill anyone she slowed down with silver.

I bought Samantha a drink and she talked shyly to Cadel for a while. She was pretty and buxom. In a vague way she reminded me of myself at that same age. Tentative, but curious. She was a little afraid of the vampires, but she didn't dislike them at all. She was happy talking to Cadel and thought he was nice in a slightly dangerous kind of way.

When Amelia and Bertram arrived, I still had the icepack that Rasul had put together on my cheek. Amelia took one look at me and shook her head.

"Some things never change…"

She eyed Samantha and then with a knowing look at Bertram, introduced me to him as Sasha Gordon. He was tall, dark haired, with deep set blue eyes. He looked as if he was in his forties and there was something about him that just exuded power. He shook my hand. More chairs were pulled up to the table so that Amelia, Bertram and I could chat.

Samantha said that she was going to go home, and seemed considerably happier than when she had been sitting at the bar earlier. It seemed that Cadel had asked for her phone number. He offered to walk her to her car. I gave him a dark look.

"I'll be a model of gentlemanly behavior, I assure you," he said nodding to me, with a dimpled smile.

"Good, because really, she's had enough go wrong already," I said quietly.

Samantha looked at me oddly, as if wondering how I could know that. She hadn't even really figured out how I knew her name was Samantha. I shook her hand and wished her luck.

After she left, Amelia turned to me and said in a low voice,

"What the heck did you do to get smacked in the face, Sookie? Pam's going to catch it if you get hurt."

"I'm fine. Please, don't get Pam started again, Amelia. That woman's ex-boyfriend was being mean to her. A real jerk. But that's over. So, Bertram… it's really a pleasure to meet you."

I'd never met a sorcerer before, but that was, apparently, what he was. Sorcerers were more powerful than witches according to Amelia and you could really feel his power. He was good humored, and full of wit. I liked him. I could tell that Pam liked him, too. When I found out he was really 60 years old, I began to get the picture that Amelia had found herself a very, very unusual man. He actually had a very odd thought signature. If I didn't know better, I'd really think he was part-fairy. And a bigger part than me, for sure. But the vampires didn't seem to be affected by him, so I wasn't sure it was really being a fairy at all that I caught in his thought pattern. Well, I definitely wasn't going to start getting into it in a public place. I'd have to ask her the next time I saw her. All I knew was that Bertram was assuredly not all human. I really liked him very much and Amelia seemed very happy with him.

After talking for a while, I got Pam to dance with me, and eventually Amelia danced with us as well. The three of us had fun laughing and dancing to Laura Branigan's Self Control before finally sitting down. Then Rasul asked me to dance. I said thanks but I told him I thought it was probably really a bad idea. Pam, Andor and even Cadel burst out laughing at that one. Rasul let the subject drop, after sensing that maybe I had a point there from the look Pam gave him. Amelia and I made plans to get together for lunch later in the week or the following week. She wanted me to see how she had renovated her place.

When we got back to the compound around 3:45 am Eric was waiting in his office for the five of us according to Stefan, who looked as if he thought we were in dire straits. Andor glanced over at Markus, who shrugged as if to say what did we expect. When we entered his office after knocking, Eric regarded us soberly for a moment then rose from his desk and walked over to me. Andor, Cadel and Rasul stood silently, looking grim, while Eric held my chin and turned my face to the side, looking at my cheek. His nostrils flared slightly as he looked down at me and my heartrate accelerated a bit. He was mad... Then he spun me around and took my jacket off and looked at my arms. Pam, who stood nearest to me, looked ever so slightly agitated when she saw my forearm. When Eric was done looking at me he directed me to a chair opposite his desk and then positively growled at Pam, Andor, Cadel and Rasul. I thought there couldn't possibly still be a mark on my face but Eric clearly seemed to know I'd been hit in the face and which cheek it was. There were a few bruises from where the guy had grabbed my arm. He stood mere inches away from Andor and asked him what had taken place. I sank my head into my hands and listened to Andor tell him that I'd gotten into a fight with a guy at the bar we went to, because the guy was being nasty to some woman. That I'd left their group without a word, had gotten hit but that I had beaten the guy up and that he was probably going to be arrested. He just had to mention that the guy was a lot bigger than I was, too. Eric didn't even look at me. After a moment of silence, in which I had the clear feeling that he was trying to be calm about the whole thing, he reamed them out for the fact that they couldn't even be trusted to keep control over a situation involving a five foot six inch tall human. He was particularly mad at Pam, whom he said should have known better, given how long she'd known me. He stood over her speaking to her harshly. I started to open my mouth to tell him it was really my fault but before I could even get a sound out he wheeled around and pointed his finger at me and glared with a look so cold that it would have frozen hot lava. I held my tongue. The four of them looked chastened as they left.

Once we were back upstairs I said to him,

"Eric, you need to stop with the overkill on the safety stuff okay? I can take care of myself. Nothing's happened to me in more than three years, remember? I had that guy on the floor in less than five seconds after he hit me. I've been trained by the FBI with one of the best Krav Maga instructors in the country. Krav Maga is very 'him or me' and not all nice and pretty and sense of honor like martial arts. They train you how to incapacitate people and even how to kill them if you have to. He barely left a mark on me and I could have dislocated his shoulder, broken his wrist or crushed his larynx with what I did to him. When it comes to humans, for the most part, I have it well covered, okay? Especially if it's only one at a time and there are no weapons. Nothing really happened."

He just stared down at me angrily, his eyes flashing like lightning. Then he said with a steely, accented voice,

"I really don't think there is another person I know of who can piss me off the way you can."

He threw his shirt into his laundry basket and stamped out of the bedroom, back into the library. He was really, really mad. I waited a few minutes and then finally walked to the doorway and saw that he was sitting at his desk with his feet up, using his laptop.

"Eric?"

"I am still mad," he said with a sharp edge to his voice, his back to me.

"But nothing happened. It was fine."

He turned to me and gave me a very dark look.

"Omöjliga kvinna, gå till sängs," he said harshly, with a wave of his hand. "Just go to bed." He shook his head. "Otroligt!"

"I'm not a child, Eric. I'm not a child to be sent to bed." I knew he was mad, but now he was making me mad.

"Well, sometimes you act like one. En fara för dig själv är vad du är."

"It's not fair to tell me off in a language I don't understand."

"Liksom det inte är rättvist att den enda person som du vill knulla hamnar i trubbel och hon lyckas skada sig själv hela tiden? Ja, you should be glad I'm mad in another language because you wouldn't like what I have to say to you at all. And you shouldn't be eager to be around angry vampires, either. Just go to bed and when I'm no longer so angry, I'll join you." He turned away and kicked at something on the desk with one of his feet.

Finally, about half an hour later, he came back into the bedroom and quietly closed the door. The room was totally dark but I wasn't asleep. I heard his jeans zipper unzip, the clothes come off and the sound of them being tossed into the laundry basket. He got into the bed and slid over next to me.

"How did you know? I looked in the mirror and it didn't leave a mark. How did you know?" I asked softly.

"In the middle of a business call, I felt your growing edginess and then finally anger. Then I could tell you had been hurt or hit or both. When you returned I could still see something slight on your face. A flush on one cheek. Your cheek was slightly swollen, actually. But clearly, you were edgy and trying cover something up. You stood with your arms behind your back, which isn't even the way you usually stand. So I look at the arms and find one bruised. And then, of course, there is Andor's description of what happened. You pursued the situation, Lover and you were proud of yourself for it. For a complete stranger, when you had plenty of help at hand. You had to do it on your own. You still always think you can handle things but I'm always going to remember the time you couldn't and you didn't ask for the help you really needed."

I sighed heavily.

"I can't live the entire rest of my life based on that one time, Eric."

"You're lucky to still be living it at all after that one time. We're both lucky you are. You have an uncanny knack for finding trouble, or for it finding you. And you're so quick to take risks. For people you don't even know. Just like you did in Jackson. In all this time nothing has changed and you have no more sense now than you did then. You're so resistant to asking for or accepting help. I said you would be safe here and you still find a way to get yourself hurt. It's infuriating. Just… don't get me started again." The accent was finding its way back into his speech and I could tell he was still mad even if he had come to bed.

I was silent for a while. Finally I said quietly,

"You actually felt what I felt that night?" He knew what night I meant. The one we still avoided mentioning, or at least he did.

"Yes, I did. I felt your pain, your fear, your desperation. And I tried to send you strength, as much as I could spare it, to get you to survive until Bill and Niall could find you. But I guess the current was too strong the other way for you to even realize it. It was excruciating. I will never forget that night."

"So if I get myself hurt, it hurts you, is that what you're saying? It could potentially be incapacitating?"

"For a smart woman you are so dense at times, Sookie. The worst part to me is not the pain. I can take pain. Pain is always temporary. It is my knowing that something is happening to you and being unable to do anything to help you that is my problem, the very worst part of the bond. You have to remember what the bond is, why it is used. It creates a servant, a slave, someone to do your bidding. Such a person is expendable. The feelings of pain or suffering would serve only as a warning to the vampire who controlled such a servant. You can just cut yourself off from them and be indifferent if you wish. You usually never allow yourself to actually feel what a bound servant feels. Why would you want to? But if you love the person to whom you are bound? Sure, who in their right mind would want to feel the suffering of someone they loved? But who could just tune it out? It is bad enough without the bond to know someone you love is harmed. But to feel the emotions of that harm to them and not be able to do anything? It was more excruciating than if they had been doing what they did to you, to me." He shook his head and I felt him stiffen as if he still remembered it all too well.

I couldn't wrap my head around it. He said he loved me and that it had been worse than if they had been doing what they did to me, to him. Part of me just couldn't take it in. Was it just the bond itself that made him feel what he said he felt for me? Why had he even agreed to it? Why not just tune it out if he could feel the pain? Why even agree to do something that had the capacity to make him more vulnerable? It seemed very un-Eric.

"Why did you even offer to be bound to me, Eric? Agreeing to do it made you more vulnerable. You didn't even remember being with me, my taking care of you, or any of it. Why did you offer yourself as Andre's proxy? I just don't get it."

"I couldn't stand the thought of your being bound to him, of what he could have done to you. The idea was deeply offensive to me. I didn't need to remember. I felt the way I felt, whether I remembered why or not. You were mine. I didn't want to lose you. Certainly not to him, not in such a way. Even though I knew he'd make me pay for crossing him, it was worth the risk. Both the risk with Andre and the long-term risk of having the bond at all. It would be great if you didn't try to compound that risk with every choice you make, however," he said with an unpleasant edge to his voice.

It was finally my turn to flinch. It was one of the moments when you see something with a broader view than just looking out for yourself. So Eric was saying I was rather cavalier about my choices and how they impacted him. What were the consequences of my choices for people that might love me, who had really lavished care on me? My grandmother had asked me that once, long ago. Really, since my grandmother had died, I hadn't had any cause to think or feel that I had to consider carefully how my choices or risks impacted anyone who cared about me. Until, it seemed, now. I was silent for a long time and then I said softly,

"I will try. I'll really try to be more considerate, Eric. But just remember, if I change too much about me because of what happened with Neave and Lochlan, they will have won, even if they're dead. They will have cut something essential out of my being me."

He just sighed, and pulled me closer.

"It's not always about winning, Sookie. Sometimes it's just about surviving," he said in a low voice in my ear.

I lay there in his arms thinking it was rather ironic that he was telling me off for helping a stranger when he told me he'd been turned by a man who had been pretending to be an injured traveler. He'd stopped to help a stranger.

Then suddenly, in an embarrassingly late flash of insight, I got it.