A/N: Hello my lovelies! Once again I would like to thank all of you for the phenomenal reviews for the last chapter. You guys make me happy and sad, all at the same time.
For sephyir: you asked "how could Sookie see the dog even before Eric died?" Craig was still conscious and manipulating the "dream." Therefore, even though Eric was awakened mid-way through the scenario, Craig played it out for Sookie as if nothing had changed. Therefore, she registered him yelling at her, but the "dream" continued on. I hope that helps.
To my lovelies at LTEA and the Sookieverse, you guys make this happen.
Once again my undying gratitude goes to my betas Kristin and Gallathea, without whom I couldn't do this.
Chapter 32
"Absolutely not."
After all this time, wishing and praying that she would change her mind, that she would choose to spend eternity with me, she finally asked me to turn her, and I'd said no. Pam would have probably laughed at me but, frankly, I was angry. Despite my love for her, despite every sacrifice I'd made for her, despite my clear desire to have her by my side for all of eternity, she wanted to become a vampire so she wouldn't feel weak, not so that she could spend her life with me.
She did not want eternity with me. She did not want to cleave herself to me. She wanted to stop feeling the frailty of her humanity. Five years earlier, I may have understood this. Five years earlier, I may have encouraged this. Five years earlier, I may have granted her this request. Now? Her request gouged my heart. She had awakened a need in me that I'd thought the millennium had erased. I was still Vampire. I still saw the pettiness of humanity. I still felt superior to most humans, and I still saw most as cattle, as nothing more than a source of food and occasional pleasure. However, Sookie had also made me see that I hungered for more, and that I could not continue to hold myself entirely aloof from the humanity around me. She made me want to find a way to straddle a line between my vampire nature, and the humanity long buried within me.
Her eyes flickered through a range of emotions, beginning and ending, however, with shock. It was clear she could not believe I had refused her. Did she not understand me at all? I tore my gaze from hers; turning away before my hurt and anger surfaced and became uncontrolled.
Perhaps I simply loved her more than she loved me. It sounded petty, even as I thought it, but perhaps it was simply a factor of her relative youth. I'd had a thousand years to come to this place. She'd had less than thirty. Perhaps she wasn't ready to truly feel and understand what I was feeling? I did not like to trivialize her feelings, or to patronize her, yet I could not help but feel that nagging doubt. It was not a feeling I was used to, nor was it one I enjoyed.
I also had to admit, if I was being honest with myself, that her comments wounded my pride. If I had protected her as I should have, if I had not failed her so completely, she would not feel this way. She was, effectively, telling me that not only was she hurt because of my failure, but that she expected to be hurt again and again—that she knew I would fail her again and again. How could she still love me knowing I failed her so completely, and while expecting me to do so again? My pride demanded that I prove to her she would be safe with me, that she would never again be hurt if she was by my side.
His words echoed in my head. Absolutely not. I couldn't believe it. I stood there stupidly staring at him, as I tried to work my brain around his response, but I couldn't make any sense of it. He may never have come right out and asked me to become a vampire, but he'd hinted around the subject many times, and every time I rejected the notion, I sensed his frustration. Even before we'd been intimate and before we'd fallen in love, my mortality worried him. That night, so long ago, when he'd driven me to the orgy, he'd told me that my mortality was something he thought about, was concerned about. And then, after everything I'd been through, after all the near misses and injuries, then he decided to deny me?
I finally found my voice. "Then I'll ask someone else. Bill, or," I almost said Pam, but I knew that she would never disobey him if he told her not to, "I'll go to Texas and ask Stan." I sounded petulant, and I knew it, but I was beyond angry. How dare he make the decision for me? After everything I . . . we'd been through, how could he?
He was towering over me in an instant. "You would give yourself to them? You would make yourself subject to them? You would give them power over you? The power of a maker over a child?" he thundered, and his eyes were flashing with anger. "You are mine, Sookie Stackhouse. If one of them so much as touches you, if any other vampire or human so much as touches you, I will kill them where they stand, do you understand me?"
A smarter person would probably have cowered before that kind of rage. Well, I never claimed to be that smart, and instead, I chose to go toe-to-toe with an angry, thousand year old, Norse vampire. "Yours? For how long? Until the next asshole decides to take me? Until Felipe decides he wants me? Until a mountainside collapses and buries me?" I watched as his eyes darkened even more. "Or is this just more convenient for you? I mean I've got what, forty? Fifty more years? Max. Then you'll be free to move on, right?"
He stepped back from me as though I'd visibly struck him. "You're killing me," he whispered, and turned away.
What? Suddenly, I wasn't feeling so self-righteous. All of my anger escaped me, like a balloon losing its air after it has been pricked by a pin.
"Eric," I said, as I walked to him. I placed my hands on his shoulders, pulling on him to turn him around. That he did was because he wanted to, not because I had any hope of making him. "Eric, what do you mean?"
"Is that what you really think, Sookie? That I don't want to turn you so I don't have to spend eternity with you?" He asked softly, as his eyes held mine. "After everything, after all of this, do you really think so little of me?" He threw back at me, and I felt shame burn my cheeks and the embarrassment spread all the way down to my toes.
"Then why?" I demanded.
"Because it isn't what you really want. Because you're doing it out of fear. Because I couldn't protect you. Because I failed you. Because not once did you say it was so you could spend eternity with me."
His words cut me, but I couldn't deny their truth. Not once did I say "I love you. I want to spend forever with you." I couldn't refute it, and yet, I still couldn't shake the fear. He was also right that a part of me blamed him. No. Not blamed him exactly, but didn't believe he could protect me. He could not be there all the time. It was a fact of life, or unlife, for him. I didn't blame him, but there it was. I needed it because he couldn't protect me all the time, no matter how much he wished to.
I was still in shock that this had gone so wrong. I was so sure that if I couched it in terms of reality and practicality, traits Eric had always prided himself on, that he would agree, and yet there we were, arguing about a romantic gesture. I reached through the bond, not wanting to violate his privacy by reading his thoughts, and I tried to gauge exactly what he was feeling. I sensed such hurt, and anger, and love, and . . . fear. Fear? Eric was afraid of me.
"Are you afraid of me, Eric?"
I saw his shoulders tense, but he looked me in the eyes. Whatever else one could say about Eric, he never flinched from looking you in the eyes. "I'm not afraid of you, Sookie. I'm afraid for you. What I saw yesterday . . . Sookie, that wasn't you."
How could I tell him? How could I tell him that yes, it was me? I was not the innocent girl who wandered into Fangtasia wearing a white sun dress anymore. I was not the innocent girl who believed that, regardless of what he'd done to me, I should save my boyfriend. I was not the innocent girl who believed that people would eventually understand and accept the supernatural world. It took me being beaten, raped, staked, shot, kidnapped, nearly blown up, and a host of other trials, to realize that I was not, and could not be, the same person that I was. How did Eric not see that? But there was something else. I could feel that he was holding something back.
"What else, Eric?"
"What else, Eric?" She asked, and for once I didn't know how to respond to her. I didn't know how to tell her that the thought of her without her humanity, without those loving and forgiving traits, without the grace her grandmother had instilled in her . . . the thought of that person becoming a vampire possessed of the abilities she now had, gave me great pause. Imagine the power. Imagine the possibilities.
Now imagine the potential for corruption.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It may be a cliché, but clichés exist for a reason: they offer truths. Truths we otherwise refuse to look at, unless they are couched in terms so overused that we try to ignore them. Still, they niggle at us. They make us stop and think, even as we laugh at their seeming irrelevance. We look at our friends, make fun of the masses, and pretend we are loftier and that such homilies are beneath us, but in the end, those statements are succinct reminders of important lessons of the human, and vampire, condition.
Watching Sookie that day, as she unleashed her awesome display of power on Craig, was a chilling reminder of that truth. The thought of such power, coupled with the dissociative and easily compartmentalized nature of a vampire . . . well, I was not ready to contemplate that yet.
"Eric," she prodded, "I do love you. You know that. I know you feel it. And I do want you—for now, for the next forty years, or for the next thousand. For however long you want me," she said, as she wrapped her arms around my waist and placed her head on my chest.
Her words were a balm, and she was right. I could feel it, her love for me. It was something I really never doubted. The only thing I'd doubted was its intensity. Still, a tiny part of me felt it was too little, too late. It was like the difference between someone buying you the perfect present because they knew you wanted it, or them buying it because it was on your wish list—yes, it's nice that they listened to you, but it's even better when they intuit you. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, I took the easy way out. "One year, Sookie. Give me one year, and if you still want to be turned, then I'll do it," I said, hoping to buy time. Time to make sure it was what she wanted. Time to make sure it wouldn't be the biggest mistake of my existence. Time to torment my soul with the thought that I could have her by me for eternity, if only such happiness would be allowed to me. Time to torment myself with the reality that, Sophie-Anne's gift aside, no child stays with their maker for that long.
I heard her sigh before she replied, "Fine. One year." Then she looked up at me. "But I won't change my mind," she said. I fervently hoped she wouldn't, and surprising myself completely, I found myself praying that she wouldn't. I just hoped I'd have her back by then.
One year. He asked for one year. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't too much to ask for, and yet I couldn't help but feel there was something else he wanted to say, that something more was bothering him.
Still, if nothing else, I could feel his hurt at what I'd failed to say, and I swore to myself that I would make that up to him. Of course I wanted him. Of course I wanted to be with him forever. Who wouldn't want that? Now, I just had to show him.
"Eric, one year from now, or ten, I will want you as I've wanted no other man. Give me a thousand, and I will still say 'more,'" and I wound my hands around his neck. "I love you, Eric Northman. I love all of you; your past, your present, and whatever the future brings. Now, show me how much you love me," I demanded, as I pulled his head down for a kiss.
A brief moment of hesitation, and then his lips were working against mine in perfect harmony. A millennium of those kisses? I could not even begin to fathom what led me to ever resist the idea.
I felt his hands grip my hips and his fingers dig into me, and all I could think was: more. All barriers were broken, and the bond between us was like a floodgate suddenly opened. Why had I ever fought against it? I'd been a consummate fool. I was swamped with a nearly overwhelming feeling of love, desire, and need. Need. To be needed in that way is like no other sensation. It makes one ...
[EDITED] SEE CHAPTER 1 NOTE
A/N: I hope you all enjoyed that. This was the last full chapter of CTL. The only thing left is the epilogue. I thank all of you for reading Chasing The Light, and for the love and support you've shown me and the story. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.