Hi! So here's chapter 8! My first Pam's POV! I guess it's character-like but please tell me what you thought about it, okay? Thanks again to BloodSucker815, my beta! And thank you all that are reading this story! ~Célia

Pam "The One That Got Away"

I hated it. I really hated it. And I had been thinking, for the last few weeks, that maybe I should move. Maybe I should go back to England for a few years, perhaps. I could even meet someone new there... Who knew? Louisiana wasn't fun anymore. Eric wasn't fun anymore.

For the past year and a half, since he had come back from Europe, he had been a fuckwit. Yeah, a fuckwit. You wouldn't tell it just by looking at him, but I did know Eric. And he was not himself. Sure, he did go to work every night, he entertained the vermin at Bloodbath, Deadliest and Fangtasia and he even showed up at the other three Fangtasias in Monroe, Baton Rouge and New Orleans; he was still Sheriff of Area 5 and he dealt with all the politics that it concerned. He drank from and fucked beautiful woman quite often. He had friends, well, acquaintances, that he met and spent time with. But I knew him best. He was not the same. We had even been having sex again, for crying out loud.

Don't get me wrong. There was nothing wrong with having sex with Eric. It was great actually. I always came and it was always amazing. But it wasn't us anymore. We were more than best friends, we were family. And you just don't fuck family. It's like… Well, fucking a cousin. Yeah, you can – it's not like fucking a brother, which you can't. A cousin you can actually fuck but you shouldn't. And you know that you shouldn't.

And the reason? That was easy: he missed Sookie. She's the one that got away. And she literally got away. As in: away to Tennessee. So he missed her. And that was why we had been doing the horizontal mambo quite often. He wanted sex to mean something. He wanted a connection with the person he was with. And I did understand that. Sort of. Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't really understand it. At all. Because it was Eric. And Eric was a vampire, a bad-ass, a… Well, it was Eric. And so I didn't understand his need to connect. But I did understand that some people (humans namely) might have that need. Maybe the blood bond transferred some of Sookie's feelings to him? Hell, who knew?

Eric should never have gotten himself into the blood bond. Yeah, I got it, it was obviously advantageous to have a telepath working for you. But Sookie just wasn't worth it. It was not that I didn't like her. I did. I even admired her – she was definitively my favorite human. But she was just not worth having my maker moping around.

She called me tonight. She said she was already living with the bear and that they had decided to get married next summer. Fuck. Marry a bear.

"Oh." That was the only thing I could answer.

"You knew that we were boyfriend and girlfriend Pam. Almost for a year now."

"Yeah but… ahh…". A bear?

"I'm 29 years old Pam. And I'm not like you. I won't stay like this forever. I have to have a life. Have someone of my own. David's good for me." There was certainty in her voice. She really thought the bear was the best for her. Yuck. How desperate do you have to be to marry a were?

"But a fucking bear Sookie?"

"He doesn't mind that I'm a telepath. It would be pretty hypocritical if I minded that he's a were-bear."

"Did you tell him about you?" She had always tried to keep her telepathy a secret.

"Yes, a few weeks ago, before I moved in. I had to." She answered me. Suddenly, she didn't sound as certain as before. And then, I heard her sighing deeply.

"What?" I asked.

"What 'what'?"

"What was that about? Why? The big sigh? What's the matter?"

She didn't answer for a minute and I shut up as well. But then she said: "It's just that… aaahhh…" I knew she was having difficulty telling me what was thinking about. But I just waited. She'd tell me. Sookie had never been one who dealt well with the silence. The "management" of the silence. She had always felt the need to fill the silence. And so, she continued: "It's just… well… David asked me if I have any more secrets and I said no, but… aahh… there's the… aahh…. The fact that I'm a fairy. Part fairy I mean."

"Yes, there is that," I knew what she wanted to say so I helped her, "and Eric."

"Yes, my Lord, there's Eric. How is he?"

"He's all right. You know my master. Always doing something. We'll open the 4th Fangtasia franchise next month and Eric has been checking all the others. He's been traveling a lot. Meeting tons of people."

"But is he okay?"

"He is."

"Thank God. I always worry about him. Sometimes I wish he hadn't closed the bond."

She did? "It was for the best Sookie. And believe me; it was really hard for him. Without Ocella he wouldn't have managed it. You guys were pretty close. As bonded as you can be."

"Yes, I know. It was for the best, but…" She shut up.

And now it was I that couldn't deal with the silence. So I immediately asked her: "But what?"

"But I still miss him, Pam. And I was wondering if… aahh… Do you think I can meet him, perhaps?"

"Why would you do that?"

"Well, I'm marrying David next year. But there was the knife thing with Eric. The uuhh… vampire marriage. And I thought that I should at least meet him in person and talk to him about…"

"No Sookie. Definitely not." I wouldn't let her destroy Eric's (little) progress of the last months. No. Definitely not.

"But Pam…"

"No Sookie. And I mean it. You don't need to see him. And he doesn't need to see you. In fact, it will hurt you both. You guys decided you wanted to end this… this… well, whatever you call that relationship of yours. You just spend a week together and Eric was not even Eric by then. I never understood how you two got so involved with so little contact. But the truth is: you did. And even after almost two years you still miss and worry about him and let me tell you he still would…" I paused.

"What? He still would what?"

Die for you. "Well, I don't know. It doesn't matter. The point is: you shouldn't meet. It's not healthy to force past relationships." I had read that somewhere. And I agreed with it. Especially in Eric and Sookie's case.

"And what about you? Can't I meet you? I miss you as well Pam! I haven't seen you since that first time I visited Bon Temps. It's been a year and a half already."

"Yeah, there's work and such…!" WTF? "There's work and such"? I was obviously lying. I mentally slapped myself. I should be better at falsehoods. Well, I was. Maybe, deep inside me, I didn't want to lie to her.

"Pam, tell me why you are always busy when I visit Bon Temps."

To hell with all of this. She deserved to know and so I told her. "Eric smelled you on me that first time we met. And I don't want to risk that again. I'm sorry. I miss you too my telepathic friend."

"Oh... I understand." She sounded sad.

"Don't be like that Sookie. We are still friends. You're my favorite breather." I tried to cheer her up. She always laughed when I called her breather.

"Yeah, I know." She still sounded sad.

"Tell you what: Eric will be staying in Houston for a week or so next month because of our next Fangtasia. I'll visit you in Tennessee then, alright? That way he won't even know that we met."

"Thank you Pam."

"You're welcome. Are you okay now?"

"Yes, thanks. But… aahh… Pam, what about my marriage with David?"

"What about it?"

"I mean: I can marry David, can't I? The vampire wedding didn't mean anything, right? And should Eric know about my wedding? Should we keep it a secret or tell him? I think that he deserves to know. But that doesn't mean that I want him showing up in my wedding day saying that I'm already married and screaming "she's mine, she's mine" before killing my fiancé. Actually, that's the last thing I want."

I laughed. I laughed loud and hard. That would be Eric to a T.

"You are right. He should know. I'll talk to him next week when he's back from New Orleans. Don't worry. I'll call you then and say how it's gone, alright?"

"Sure. Thank you again."

"I gotta go now Sookie. Take care."

"You too Pam."

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Yeah, I should definitively leave Louisiana. This was absolutely not fun anymore. I was sure Eric would go berserk when he knew she was going to marry a bear. A fucking bear. And on the following year. Fuck. But she was right. I had to tell him. He had to know. Fuck.

All of a sudden it was Tuesday and Eric arrived back at Shreveport in high spirits. I was at the computer when I felt that he was close. And 30 minutes later, Eric entered my office at Bloodbath smiling. Wait. Smiling? He was smiling? Eric smiling?

"Pam, you won't believe it. This is great. Natércia is alive after all." Oh, hell. Natércia was the only vampire besides me and Ocella that Eric had had a close relationship with; I hated her. He continued talking: "You know how she never showed up after the Great Revelation?" Yeah, I did know that. Thousands of vampires were killed all around the world after that night; Natércia was in Russia back then and that was a country that didn't accept us graciously. Eric worried about Natércia like a maniac when she didn't report back. I, on the other hand, loved that she was MIA. "Well, she was caught back then but she wasn't killed! And she and a couple more vampires managed to break free from the Orthodox Patriarchate Church of God," Russia's Fellowship of the Sun, "and she has been staying in Germany for a few weeks, recovering. It's great Pam. My friend is alive after all. She's alive, she's alive. We have been friends for 800 years."

"Yeah!" I tried to smile. I managed it. But poorly. "It's great Eric. And New Orleans? How was it?"

"What happened Pam?"

I stayed in silence. For the past week I had made lots of scripts for this conversation. I memorized a whole speech about breaking free from Sookie and shit like that. But I blanked. "Pam?" I couldn't remember anything in that moment. "Pamela?" Just the truth.

"Sookie moved in with the bear. They are going to get married next summer."

So, he now knows. What do you think? Should he go to Tennessee and finally talk to her again? Or just forget Sookie and try to move on? Will he be madly angry or depressed? Or neither? Btw, I'm still deciding if Sookie will actually marry David or not...

Another thing: Natércia is my grandmother's name. Like Sookie, I was raised by my Gran, so this was my little homage to her. And Natércia's character will be back later! Let me just tell you how to pronounce it in Portuguese. It's something like: Nuh-Ther-cee-uh! (Uh=as in mum; Eh=as in never; Cee=as in messy) and the stressed syllable is the second one (Natércia).

Last but not least: "100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can Be Wrong" is a boxed set released in 2004 on Island Records that includes the song "The One That Got Away".