A/N: Well, lookie here! It's a new pre-canon-divergent AU by me! Again! I figured that I have a vague idea of where this is going and have written 375 words or so of chapter 2, so I might as well post. Two WIPs are better than one, amiright? Plus, I already made the cheesiest banner and cover yet. Because the moon is made out of cheese. 😬 *ahem*

Chapter 27 of BAS is with the wonderful ilovemysteries and I will give that a post in the next couple of days. And a reminder that Sunshine Eternal is now complete and I would dearly love a comment or review if you read it. 😬😬

And another reminder that you must opt in for email alerts on FFN now.

Chapter 1

Sookie opened her eyes. There was a bright light glaring down at her and six or seven people standing over her wearing blue and white. One of them spoke, but she couldn't see his lips move or understand what he was saying. Her head was full of pain and terror and panic and other people's thoughts. Her arms were strapped down somehow and she tried to get free of her restraints but she had absolutely no strength.

One of them put something over her nose and mouth and she couldn't pull away. She thrashed around, trying to fight it, but eventually the world just faded to black.

The next time she opened her eyes, she immediately winced at the cacophony of thoughts of so many people in pain. She was one of them. Everything hurt. Her eyes wanted to close again but she tried to keep them open. She couldn't and succumbed to the pull of the darkness.

A few days later, when she woke again, she kept her eyes closed while her other senses adjusted to being aware. She could hear beeping and voices and footsteps going back and forth a little ways away. There was an antiseptic smell mixed with detergent and cafeteria food. She tried not to think about how she felt. She already had a splitting headache from the thoughts of the people nearby, and maybe something else, but there was burning or aching or throbbing or stabbing pain all over. It felt kind of far away, but like it was getting closer.

She finally opened her eyes. The lights were dimmed, but she could see clearly enough. Not that there was much to look at other than ceiling tiles and the unlit fluorescent lights.

She turned her head and Jason was sitting in a chair by the window beside her, asleep. He had a line of drool stretching from his lip to his lap and Sookie chuckled. It hurt like hell, and it didn't take long for her to stop.

It had been enough to wake up Jason, though, and he nearly fell out of his chair. He dropped the Playboy he'd had hidden behind a Sports Illustrated onto the floor.

"Holy shit, Sook, you're awake!"

She laughed again at the statement from her brother, Captain Obvious, and then winced and put her hand to her head and then her throat. She was glad that her arms were no longer strapped down, but there was an IV in the right one.

"Hurts. What happened?" Her voice was very rough and quiet. And God, talking hurt.

"Maudette found you when she got to work last Monday morning. I guess Jim Fortenberry's hellhound got out again and he nearly tore you apart out by the dumpsters behind the Grabbit Kwik. You hit your head real hard. You nearly died, Sookie."

Old Man Fortenberry's dog was known all over town for being a menace. It was big and brown and ugly, a Heinz Fifty-Seven who looked like bits and pieces of several different breeds, all hot glued together at the last minute. Whatever it was, it was vicious, mean, and aggressive, and everyone had known that something like this would happen eventually.

Jason took her hand and smiled at her. "Fuck, I'm glad to see you with your eyes open. I can't lose you too, Sook. You're the only family I got left."

Sookie was glad that Jason had been there beside her when she'd woken up. Gran had passed away the summer before last in a car accident on the way to Houston with Linda for an experimental cancer treatment. Neither had survived. Sookie and Jason had gotten a lot closer since they'd lost their grandmother. Sookie had only been nineteen at the time and it had been tough being suddenly independent so young. It helped going out to shoot some pool together or having Jason over a couple of times a week for supper.

Sookie had a flash of memory, but then it was gone. Pain and the smell of carrion and a wall of darkness and something soft yet rough tickling her face. She tried to grab hold of the thought but her eyelids suddenly felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each and it got harder and harder to keep them open. Eventually, she stopped bothering to try.

There was a doctor standing at the foot of her bed when she opened her eyes the next time. He was holding a chart and looked up and smiled at her when he noticed that she was awake.

"Miss Stackhouse, it's lovely to see you with your eyes open! You gave everyone quite a scare. I'm Doctor Hebert. How do you feel?"

He was a short, portly man with glasses that were too big for his face and a fringe of brown hair around the sides and back of his head. Sookie felt bad about her lack of manners but she couldn't waste her energy on pleasantries when she had so little energy to give.

"Like shit. How bad?" Talking hurt even worse now, if that were possible. She moaned and the doctor sent the nurse for some more pain medication.

"It was touch and go for a while there and you've given us a couple of pretty good scares since. You had one hell of a goose egg on the back of your head and there was some swelling in the brain, as well as a couple of small bleeds, but they've mostly resolved themselves. There are a lot of bites — bruising and punctures and a couple of bad tears — and there is damage to both muscle and connective tissue in both arms and your right calf. You lost a fair amount of blood and needed three units and a skin graft. You were lucky that there is a very good plastic surgeon here in Shreveport and much of the scarring should be minimal. You've been given treatment just in case the dog was rabid, although that seems unlikely. Unfortunately, it was euthanized and cremated before the Parish police thought to send the head off for testing. Fortunately for you, you slept through your first two shots. Only one left later in the week."

"How long?"

He smiled. "You've been here — and mostly out of it — for eleven days. Some of that was the medication and some of that was the brain injury. You've had a bit of a temperature, but your blood work checks out. You might just run a degree or so higher than most. Ninety-eight point six is just an average."

Sookie tried to adjust her position and moaned.

The doctor smiled apologetically. "I know the pain is bad, but you are healing very quickly. Impressively so. I expect that you'll make a full recovery and might even be able to go home in another week or ten days."

She was out in five. Sid Matt Lancaster had dropped by the hospital to talk to her about filing suit against Old Man Fortenberry for not keeping his aggressive dog contained after numerous warnings from animal control. He'd claimed that his dog had been locked up the whole time, but that's what he always said. Sid Matt thought that he also might be able to prove negligence against The Grabbit Kwik, too. The dumpster was not easily accessible, there was almost no lighting around back, and the rear door's lock had been broken for weeks and the employees had to walk around. They had all complained to the owner about these issues more than once and nothing had been done. Sid Matt wasn't known as an ambulance chaser, so he must have thought that she had a pretty good chance of winning, or at least getting a decent settlement. She hoped so; she was going to be out of work for a while and it was going to be really hard to live just on workers' comp. At least she didn't need to pay the medical bills.

Once Sookie was home, she continued to get better every day, and so much more quickly than she'd expected to. But it was so hard to look at herself in the mirror. She was very glad that the injuries to her face had been relatively minor. The plastic surgeon had done a wonderful job, and he'd assured her that even the worst scars would fade a good bit over time. But the angry red welts and divots on her throat and breasts and stomach and thighs, especially, made her feel really ugly. She tried to just concentrate on how quickly she was getting better rather than how terrible she looked.

A couple of weeks after she'd gotten home, she'd woken up fidgety and grew more restless as the day wore on. By early evening, she felt like she was going to crawl out of her skin. She couldn't stay inside any longer and went out onto the front porch and then kept walking until she reached the middle of the dooryard. She looked up and spun around until she saw the moon, one night shy of full. She broke out in goosebumps and then her skin seemed to almost ripple. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, everything had changed.

…

Eric Northman was checking out a nest where three vampires had been holding eight human women against their will. It was out in the middle of nowhere, off of a logging track in the woods about seven miles east of Bon Temps. The women who had been whole enough had been glamoured and compensated. The others' families had gotten the same treatment. The vampires had been kicked out of the area permanently, after Eric, the sheriff of Louisiana's Area Five, had removed their fangs.

He was tempted to leave the building there to use as a safehouse, but there was too much evidence inside. He prepared the old cabin for burning.

He caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye and he turned to look. She was frozen, looking straight at him, half hidden in the dense underbrush. He had no use for Weres, but the animals they became were still beautiful, of course. This one, especially. Her features were delicate and feminine, but it didn't make her look remotely weak. She was a pure light silver with piercing blue eyes, full of intelligence, that held his gaze and wouldn't let go. Not until her ears pricked and she turned and ran.

She was incredibly graceful, so much so that his mind hadn't quite processed what he'd seen at first. Very quickly, she'd leapt and darted and glided until she was out of sight, all on her hind legs. She'd been bitten, not born. But somehow she was just as beautiful and almost as graceful as if she'd been a fullblood. Maybe even more so, for the sheer incongruousness of it.

He found himself thinking of her off and on for the rest of that night. Wondering who she was and what she looked like when she wasn't covered in hair.

By morning, he had given up trying not to think about her and had decided to find her instead. And if he didn't have any luck during this month's moon, then he would just have to wait four weeks and try it again.