A/N: Thanks again to everyone who favorited/followed/reviewed. This chapter is a little fast paced but I hope not overly so. Enjoy!

To Say Goodbye

He's stopped watching her so much now that she's adjusted to her grandmother's house and since school has started again his visits are limited to the weekends. Still he can't help but check in on her once in a while in the afternoons. It's a Wednesday night and as usual he can see Jason and Sookie working on their homework on the kitchen table, while their grandmother cooks.

"Sook honey be a dear and take this in to your uncle." Sookie obediently gets up and grabs the glass of lemonade she's handed.

"Okay." Once she walks into the living room she's out of his sight so he opens his mind and is glad to feel walls keeping him out, if he wanted to he could push and break them down but they'll get stronger as she gets older and as long as she's not bombarded by human's thoughts it's a successes.

"Why thank you honey." She looks so soft, so young… can't wait to touch. Looks so much like Linda. Bartlett's disgusting thoughts filter in his mind and clearly he can see her pictured in his head.

"You're welcome." He's sees her instantly back in kitchen resuming her work, but even the assurance that she looks fine and that Bartlett didn't do anything doesn't calm him down. He's enraged, that man who he had considered harmless due to his family connection and immobility was vile. He could feel the want and could clearly see his plans to try and sate it. The thoughts faded as soon as Sookie's grandmother left the kitchen and joins him, still it was too late the man had sealed his fate.

An old bus with the nearby Christian church name slathered on the side comes to pick up Bartlett. Warlow follows. Bartlett lives in a small isolated trailer located right next to a lake. Too fucking easy. He wonders if he should just drop him into the lake but he sees the railing on the porch, Bartlett has been crippled far too long for that accident to happen without suspicion. So he waits.

He wants to storm in, terrorize the man as he lays helpless in bed unable to move, unable to call for help. He can imagine a lifeless body limp, eyes wide with fear, and blood decorating every inch of that trailer. Sookie is a little girl, an innocent who he wanted to mar. Still he can't let his emotions get the best of him, it has to be the perfect accident. So he slips in once he knows the old man is asleep, the inside is as shabby the outside is and he's glad to see that moving the stove and cutting the gas line is as easy as slicing a throat.

Once back outside he waits until he hears a heartbeat slow and eventually stop. His hands aren't bloody and he knows the only reason he could hold back was because Sookie had her walls up, she didn't hear the thoughts that were in her uncle's mind. He saved her from dealing with that, saved her from having to feel violated. He never wants that for her.

"My uncle died." It's been weeks since that happened and the funereal had already passed, so the comment struck him as odd. They were sitting on the edge of the Stackhouse property playing Go Fish, though he usually didn't dare venture so far out of the woods near her house, Jason had gone to a friend's house to sleep and Sookie's grandmother was taking a nap. He could clearly hear her even breaths and figured that as soon as she woke up he could just duck into the forest.

"I'm sorry." He rearranged his cards unnecessarily. He had just been telling her a "story" about fairies conveniently leaving out their telepathic powers bit. "Were you close?" He knew they weren't but something had made her bring it up.

"No, but he was family." She fiddles with her own card. "Janice Hix said she was real sorry I think she meant it." He understood then what had caused the sudden shift in topic.

"Are the other kids being…nicer?" He had observed how they had treated her last school year, though they didn't bully her at least not outright, (he figured that was more due to Jason than anything else) they did shun her.

"Kind of, they still think I'm different but my teacher this year did say she didn't understand what all the fuss was about." She grinned as she placed all four sixes on the ground in front of her. "Doesn't matter much, Tara's the only one I need."

"Eh their loss, got any threes?" He was happy to hear school had gotten better for her, humans were so judgmental when it came to things they didn't understand.

"Go fish!"

It takes him months, to feel that Sookie isn't in danger at every moment. Bartlett had gotten too close for comfort and he would never make that mistake again. He scours the minds of everyone in Bon Temps even the children's and though some have not so nice things to say about her none of them hold any real malice towards her. Many are just wary and spooked by her ability to answer things never spoken, even though an incident like that hasn't happen in months. He feels protective, like even a dirty look sent her way will cause him to strike, still he manages to wrangle his emotions and calm down.

Bon Temps is safe. It's too small for a vampire nest to reside in and even the vampires that pass through hardly stay long enough to warrant as a threat, he figures it's because Shreveport is so close that Bon Temps feels like a waste of time. It's true. Shreveport is large enough that a death or two isn't such an event. Plus he knows a sheriff resides there and no vampire wants to get caught red handed with a queen's lackey nearby.

After his paranoia fades, he knows he has to leave her. Just for a while, a couple of years at least to allow her to grow up and become her own person without too much of his influence.

He's taught her all he can at the moment and has made sure she's as safe as possible. No other powers have manifested yet he assumes her light will come in once her body has matured enough to handle it, after all Fae blood was introduced into her blood line a couple generations ago.

He finds her laying in a field just soaking up the rays. He knows how good that can feel to let the sun infiltrate every cell in your body to feel it charge you up. She has a goofy grin on her face and even when she hears him coming she doesn't get up. So he just sits down next to her.

"I love the sun, don't you?" She sounds like she's on a sugar rush but he knows she's just getting something equivalent to a faery high.

"It is amazing." He looks around at the woods that surround them and he's surprised to realize how much they feel like a home to him. He wants to let her enjoy the sun, laze away the afternoon with her pointing out clouds with the funniest shapes or letting Sookie explain to him whatever new thing she learned at school this week. But he can't, he's overstayed his visit, the human holidays loom around the corner and he knows it's time to go.

"Sookie I have something important to tell you." He didn't think it would be this hard, he was an idiot, he should have expected it. He had been waiting for her for centuries and now that he has leaving her side his insides twisted in pain.

"What is it?"

"I'm… I'm going on a trip."

"A trip?" She sits up quickly and he worries she might get whiplash. He's not surprised by the confusion in her voice, his life had revolved around her the moment they met, it had always been on her terms and now he was just going to go.

"But… why?"

"I have some things to clear up some work things." It's not exactly a lie there have been rumblings of The Authority planning some kind of great revelation, these rumors were usually accompanied by talks of synthetic blood. Rumors or not he needed to know how true they were, he wasn't the kind to get surprised especially not by the Authority. Authority, please, they have no power Lilith wasn't a god she was a monster. He grimaces he's heard the tales of the high figures in the Authority claiming that Lilith's blood was sacred. It's goop, proof of my power, a warning to all the others, I can destroy you.

"Oh."

"But I'm coming back." He's quick to reassure her. He wishes he could explain things better but he can't.

"When?"

"I'm not sure." Years, until you're eighteen at least, but he won't tell her that what if it takes him longer, he needs to set up his life properly so that she can be in it.

"Then how can you say you're coming back?'

"Sookie, you and I we're just alike remember?" She nods even though he can tell it's with some hesitation. "I'll always come back to you, we're the same." He looks straight into her eyes and he hopes she believes him.

"You're my bestest friend." She has tears in her eyes and his heart aches because she's crying over him.

"You're my only friend." He's been walking this plane for over a millennia and still she is the only one who he can be around without teetering on the edge of darkness. The abyss that calls to him constantly but with her around it's only a dull echo. So when she finally rushes off to her house he forces himself to walk away.

A/N: Please review and tell me what you think!