A/N

Ok, it's about to get morally fuzzy. Just sayin'.

***Sookie***

He stood in the doorway, barefoot and soaked in red. I took in his person, my insides wrenching as I tried to reconcile what I knew of Godric. Vampire, ancient, survived through years of hiding from the outside world. In the lines of his body I saw the monster inside slither through him, his eyes alight with something feral and lusty. Could such a creature both love and dole out pain so easily? And would love, or at least contentment, stop him from causing further suffering to others?

It wasn't something I could answer at the moment. His eyes looked like pits of grey, empty darkness and full of things that lived in the shadows. This was what we feared in the darkness. The Godric's of the world, pacing back and forth just outside the light of our primitive hearth-fire beckoning us with the promise that it would be different, different than the last fool who took death by the hand and walked out into nothingness with him.

In my mind's eye I watched the scene in front of his throne take place again and again.

Godric's hand took Victor's throat. No, his grip was simply there and the eyes of the vampire were a wet thunk on the ground. Godric's hand took Victor's throat again…. Small dots of warm liquid dotted my skin.

I wanted the vampire before me to be incongruous to the lover I had hours before, and my mind spun when that fact wouldn't change. As calmly as he had held Victor, he had held me. He could do it now. He looked liked he wanted to. Like he wanted to possess me.

"Sookie…" His voice was dulcetly serene, not patronizing or begging. In place of the softness I expected to see in his features was pure longing that could have been mistaken for begging. It was all wrong and twisted, his sweetness, covered in someone else's blood. So why was it still calling to me?

"No, don't say my name as if this changes what you did." My voice creaked, but didn't break. He tilted his head in what must be mock confusion. How anyone could have been confused, even a- no, especially an immortal person such as himself? I felt rising ire color and darken my thoughts, and any semblance of control I had over my emotions began slipping away and I didn't care about holding tightly to it anymore.

Before, I had raged at Eric with careful conviction. Now I wanted to pound my fists onto Godric's perfect chest, red soaked and all, and scream at him for what had had done. His actions were against nature, against humanity, against me.

He had smothered a dream of mine that he wasn't like that. That he was beyond being a competent demon, and was instead penitent and willing to be something else. I was so certain, so sure that he was the one stuck believing in a false dilemma that only needed to be shown, guided towards the light. That was before Eric.

"It was necessary. And this has been discussed between us." Words. He presumed to smooth this over in order to cover his deviance.

No, it wasn't quite that he misled me.

No, no. I should I be angry with myself for not listening carefully.

He quirked a smile at me, and it wasn't out place like I felt it should be. It was not quite duping, but pleased, and so close to sincere I ached to believe that he wasn't deeply embedded with a natural propensity to violence. Happier feelings pushed back on the tension inside me and I felt out of body, observing my own internal state in a tug of war, of wanting and needing to separate from this.

The inexplicable joy I felt only served to affirm that this was a madhouse.

A small giggle crept its way up my throat and I choked it back down. I wouldn't break down, not in front of him. I know, after the incident with Debbie, a normal person would have given in or given up by now. But not a Stackhouse. And not when my telepathy had earned me the ability to summon a robotic response on command.

I let that old instinct move through me, confident and quick. My defense mechanisms unfurled themselves over the information I had before me. Quickly, I picked up the scraps of my argument with Eric and formed them into something coherent to say to the man who had supposedly defended me from some great threat.

"That kind of action was not 'discussed', but we certainly can talk about it now. Violence was not the answer there. I said it to Eric, and he had a chance to convince me it was necessary. But wasn't Godric. It really wasn't."

What I said wasn't completely hollow, but it held a sound that was less than full and complete. Less believable. While Eric had lectured me, I felt less and less sure of what I was saying. All of my arguments had been clear cut and had seemed so obvious. Now it was all scattered and I couldn't dwell on any data-points that applied to vampires more than humans. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, vampires don't exist and thus there are no studies on how they are. The idea of not knowing a single thing about an entire sentient species that had been living side by side with us for who knows how long was singularly surreal. Each time I asked my mind for an answer it whispered about the impossibility of vampires, werewolves and the supernatural. My faculties floundered and I could feel the confusion seeping into my long-standing beliefs about what was right and wrong. Still, the iron grip on face and words remained, even if my insides stretched themselves taut enough to tear.

"Please, he has already regrown his eyes and is going home. It was a minor punishment comparatively, and it was expected for his behavior." Godric's voice was level and all too casual sounding, and I faltered. I wanted to believe in its sounds of safety, its sure-seeming truth.

"But… he only looked at me. That's all, really." I husked out, the timbre of my voice unintentional, vulnerable.

Even after Eric had taken some of my arguments out behind the shed and shot them, I found their deflated corpses and resurrected them for Godric. Eric's words about the possession and hunger vampires had niggled their way into my psyche, but stubbornly it wasn't something I wanted Godric to know. It was one thing for me to realize that I might not be right, but it didn't necessarily make his actions correct either.

"No," he slashed his hand through the air sharply and all but sneered, "it is not a look, Sookie. It is a threat. A promise that if my back is turned, he will take you. The blood on me is irrelevant."

Outrage looked good on him, to devastating effect. Godric was boyishly handsome but when he glowered, his eyes were akin to looking down into a well. They ate light; too much so to belong to someone young. The way he set his jaw gave him a look of determination and ownership that wouldn't look amiss belonging to a CEO in a company's boardroom hell-bent on a hostile takeover of another company.

A wave of guilt at allowing my mind to wax on about Godric's beauty swept over me. But… he was attractive in his righteousness, and my knowing it meant that in some way, this was how he was meant to be.

He may not be god, but he had a right, perhaps a divine right given to those like him, to judge others.

And I certainly was no deity that I could dictate what was inherently good and evil; I only knew that Godric's void, the space that would have been a human's mind, was the largest of all in the compound and as I reached out to touch it now I felt it subsuming me. When I let myself feel the vacancy in the air as fully as I dared, it would feel so teasingly substantial. Like it was a tangible thing that had its own wants, needs.

His firm rebuttal, and not-so-secretly the way touching him with my my made me feel, now tugged at my heart and made me feel longing for an agreeable end to this conversation, despite how at odds our beliefs were.

The world inside here may be crazy, but he seemed certain as he told me that all this was necessary, that maybe it would never happen to me again. The whole of society could fragment, implode and Godric wouldn't fall with it.

He began walking towards me at a leisurely pace now, every bit the predator. I saw the same rawness on him that existed in Eric's expression when he looked at me, if for different reasons. Slowly he crept, approaching me head on, and time squeezed itself into bigger pieces. Or so it felt, as my mind raced.

Even with Debbie I had tried to explain her behavior within the paradigm of being human. But there was very little that was human about such extreme violence being done so quickly to someone she didn't know. Most humans hurt those close to them, whereas Debbie's actions were calculated based on how she could elevate herself, and potentially Yvetta, by eliminating me. While it made it easier to accept what she did, I was still knee-jerk compelled to find a different, more emotional, reason for what happened.

There wasn't though.

I hadn't done anything specific to Debbie, just like Victor hadn't done anything specific to me. And, following the same logic, he would have done something as brutal as Debbie had done, had he felt he wanted something I had.

Godric came ever closer, and I tried to not be afraid. I wasn't Godric's victim. He stopped a few feet away from the bed and stared at me with an unreadable expression.

"I hear you Godric. But believing you means that everything is changed. This wasn't what I thought." His void fluctuated outward, and small pulses of fear crept into my posture and I bowed my head, unable to keep my eyes on him any longer. He didn't make a sound, and I felt his displeasure acutely.

I let my gaze drift to an empty spot on the bed. This was all so tangled and knotted up into things that were hopelessly irredeemable, even as I had the optimism to hope anyway.

Despite the violence, I know that Godric didn't lie that I meant something to him, even if we had only met each other days ago. Regardless of his care, I did see how he might always take matters into his own hands without what I would consider due process or compromise. I had always believed that it was important to be respected in a relationship. To have my opinion taken seriously. But I couldn't see a middle ground if my beliefs were so far in one direction and his in another. If we were two different species, living in different societies.

Had Eric been more honest than Godric? Had he been trying to tell me that Godric wasn't what I thought? Godric deserved some credit for trying to be honest, but it was Eric's carefully placed words that had finally revealed and clarified the workings of this place to me. Not even Debbie's cuts had been so effective.

Godric must have sensed he had lost me and I heard him take another step forward.

"I am going to come sit by you and we will talk about this." I snapped my face up to look at him moving towards me warily, as if I was now the one who might bite.

"Not covered in his blood you aren't." I stupidly inhaled at the thought and gagged at the smell. It was more than the scent, however. I felt a certain responsibility towards that blood.

He blurred away in front of me and I heard the water run in the bathroom. Watching vampires move quickly had been at first interesting, but now it was terrifying to think of vampires running down humans. I wondered, when I didn't want to, what it would be like to give in to fear, turn on my heel and race away from him. Would he catch me and put his hand around my throat? Would he hold me off the ground, one leg grinding in between mine while he dragged his fangs along my skin? It wasn't difficult to draw a parallel between how dominating he was in the bedroom and how effective he had been in putting down a perceived threat.

I screwed my eyes shut as the water continued to flow in the background. I thought of Godric standing nude in its stream rubbing the dried blood away, and then I tried not to think of that at all. Did vampires wash themselves as fast as they could move? Or did they take their time, luxuriating as humans were wont to do? Maybe he was reliving what happened, too. He probably wasn't regretting it.

Staying with Godric now felt out of the question. Pain flared, hot and warped in my gut. I didn't want to watch images dipped in blood from behind my eyelids when I slept, or find myself with him intimately only to remember something that his hands had done. But when I closed my eyes now, the sensation of his fingers running along my thighs ruled supreme over the incident with Victor.

Manners Ms. Stackhouse.

It was supposed to be easy to break up with someone who had and would continue to hurt others.

The sudden movement next to me caused me to jump. We locked eyes and I sucked in a breath that constricted my entire chest. He was dripping water from his hair down his bare chest, looking achingly intense. The way the lights reflected off the sheen of moisture on his torso didn't aid my self control or conviction to separate myself from him one iota. Beautiful things shouldn't be capable of great evil. They really shouldn't.

I was stuck here with him, even if we weren't in a relationship, and the future promised more of the same danger and savagery, if Godric was to be believed. It occurred to me that maybe telepaths do not find their happily ever afters.

He must have seen my bitter and conflicted feelings written out on my face, because he reached out to cup my cheek. I pulled my head back, disinterested in what the feel of his skin on mine would add to the mess inside me.

"I know it was a lot to show you at first. If I could have prevented it, I would have. I do not know what Eric has said, but I will say that I did not make a promise to commit no acts of force. If my kingdom is not ruled, my court, Eric, you, the donors and myself are all in terrible danger. It is not the way I would manage my affairs, if I could. But it is how my world must be run. Going against the established methods of my kind would guarantee my death, and by extension yours. Please understand I do the best I can, and I do nothing that is unnecessary."

"I want to believe you. I really do, and- and I'm not trying to sound vapid in that there isn't a need for order. I've lived my whole life listening to the horrors inside others' heads, but I never expected any of them to be acted out in any capacity and for the most part, humans don't. Now I know vampires are different, but you all were once human..."

"But we are not. If I was a human, I may agree with your assessment of tonight. Though contrary to your insistence that humans do not commit an abundance of violence, I have seen more than is sufficient to judge them masters of it. You have a sampling problem when it comes to your judgement of your own… kind. You live in a rural county inside one of the, if not most, internally stable and non-violent countries on this planet. It's likely that no other country has ever been safer when it comes to avoiding systematic violence and war. But let me assure you, slavery, rape and killing are occurring at this very moment, it is being perpetrated by humans and they are good at it." He stopped, letting his points settle in. Appreciation thrummed through me; what he said was something I could understand. He was giving me a way to be right, too, instead of feeling out of depth. That there was a sampling problem hadn't presented itself to me before.

"Sookie, we're not human. Not at all. If anything we're a particular kind of magic that has taken over a dead human body much in the way a parasite would and has preserved its survival skills for its own benefit. We may look like you, but you can assume that this is a convenient and mayhap not coincidental, but deliberately deceptive form for us to maintain. We look like our food and our food is attracted to us." His hands moved again to touch my body and I repressed all of the emotions that would cause me to quake under his touch. The massaging started on my thigh with one hand while the other looped around my waist, pulling me ever closer. It wasn't quite fear that was stuck in my throat. There should have been some kind of apprehension and terror, but there was only relief.

I was relieved because I was beginning to believe him, even as I knew that the underlying barbarity of vampires was a fact and that it would rear its head again and again. Even Godric's sexual attention had been fervent and dominant, with the threat of sexual savagery underneath. He was calmly explaining this to me, and he spoke like someone who always expected to win the argument, like someone who would find every avenue to erode another's point of view that didn't mesh with his agenda. And I couldn't even hate him for that, given how vampires had likely been hunted for so long as to leave only the toughest and cleverest survivors alive.

The best of all of them. Godric.

It looked like I would be giving in to him, maybe not now, but at least at some point. And the dangers of not doing so, when he was capable of the obvious, were clear. I wasn't sure he would hurt me, but I recognized now the glint in his eyes from our time before matched the one he had when he held the other vampire by the throat. All of these passions were inextricably linked.

Godric took my silence as leave to continue.

"We as a species do not see the purpose of changing our behavior. It's a noble pursuit to become less violent, but we must defend ourselves or die. I must defend you or you will die."

"Then hide me, Jesus christ shepherd of Judea just take me away from all this! Take yourself away and stop!" Inside I started to shatter with the realization that I was about to agree with him. That I was about to let this injustice and future ones like it, slide away into worse ones.

Yet I was begging Godric to not be himself and though it was truly selfish, I couldn't stop.

"It is not so simple-"

"Yes it is! It fucking is!" My own voice was a hopeless wail, and I knew he knew the score. He kept his gentle rubbing and caresses up, focusing on the tense parts in my back and pulling me closer to him so our bodies were flush together. When he pressed his lips to my ear I bit back a sob.

"Sookie, no. We would be pursued. I could not defend you every waking moment. My claim means nothing if I will not protect it. Conflict will find us no matter where we are. It is part our nature and partly who I am. Sookie, I know I am guilty. Very guilty." His voice dropped to a quieter whisper.

"I know you are. I know and I-" He cut me off with a bruising kiss and I could feel his fangs on my lips, pressing and cutting. His hands wrenched me down to the bed and he was straddling me now, and I watched him slowly curl his body over mine as his gaze absorbed me beneath him. He looked less human, his skin pale and eyes dilated, his face eerily still but for his moving lips.

"You are too valuable. If I let you go, you would be taken away and kept enslaved by others. Punish me if you will, but you cannot leave." He dragged his fingers along my cheek before gripping my chin possessively. Shamelessly he tilted his hips down and grazed my stomach with the base of his erection, smiling impishly, cruelly. I groaned unthinkingly and dragged it out into speech.

"I don't truly understand, but I do know it's not a game Godric, for me to punish you for disobedience! And I don't know if I believe you, but because you believe it… I guess... it doesn't matter." I looked away across the room, away from his devouring stare, not wanting to acknowledge how close his face was to me now or the weight and shape of his body on mine. It would be so good to crawl deep inside my shields and never come out, to let go and live only to crave the sensations he provided my body. I didn't like the effect he had on me, that he could stop me mid-sentence with need for him, that I wanted him even as he was pinning me to the bed and forcing my human morality to swallow his arguments.

I registered painfully then, that I was wanting him to do that. To help me cease prolonging the pain of our differences and instead fulfill his mayhap empty promises. The aching in me didn't care if his words were hollow; that part of me believed beyond belief that Godric would take care of me and that this was all that mattered, given that no one had ever truly cared unconditionally for me anyway but for my grandmother. My friends and brother loved me, but they feared me.

Godric did not for the latter, and the former held potential. Yet the rest of me was still an awakening dream of red that assured me these times of killing would never have an end. Godric would repeat these events and this part of me would despair while the other part rejoiced. But if his actions left my humanity in tatters and me desolate, he could penetrate and suffuse me with his own truth. It seemed so easy, and tempting to just take everything he was offering, and I squirmed under him solely due to the dreadfulness of my thoughts.

"A game, mo ghràdh, is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." He still held my jaw in hand, fingers deceptively loose on the curve of it. I looked up at him and I felt bursts of pained lust low and deep. He had the grace to not smile and mock me, but none of the self restraint to not press himself further down on my body as he talked. I felt his right leg move to seek entry between mine, and finding it, he pulled his other in to push my legs apart. Every inch of him was solid and real on me; chest, groin, legs. He was so firm and there I wanted to coalesce with him and no longer be Sookie Stackhouse. The sudden and excruciating pull to feel the bare skin of his chest on mine sent electric pangs straight to my chest.

"Do you find me not necessary? Do I… matter?" He asked. They weren't questions, as he unhurriedly busied himself with our burgeoning foreplay. Both his hands were now moving down my sides, my head free to loll back with unabashed pleasure if I wanted to take it.

"It's not…" He let go of my chin and pushed a single finger into my mouth and I instinctively sucked. The sound of it was debauched, all suction and saliva and forbidden.

"We can step back. I'll offer you the same deal as before mo ghràdh. What do you think, hmm?" His finger worked itself in and out from between my lips, exploring gently the insides of my mouth and tongue, making me feel indolent with pleasure. It was so new, and so good each time and another moan rippled up from my diaphragm and hummed around his finger. I could hear him chuckle and then felt him grind himself down on me all the harder.

***Godric***

She was sprawled out underneath me, unwillingness gone and replaced with an ever-climbing need for my touch. I enjoyed watching and feeling her thoughts fade into the obscurity of her indulgence, the jolts of desire with each press of my body to hers rebounding their way back through the blood. The thousand ways she said yes to me in our connection were inciting a riot of demands from all parts of me. I leaned in close, glancing my lips along her hairline as I listened to the soft and sweet sounds of her mouth.

"I know you agreed to be mine once already, but I'll give you the choice again. I know this is hard for you, so I won't do anything to make it any more difficult after this. You'll have to forgive me this moment, however." I wedged another finger in more forcefully and pushed down far enough to make her head jerk before retracting them. Dragging my wet fingers along her lips in a languid motion before plumbing her depths again, I continued.

"Know that you'll always be under my protection and I'll give you the employment you seek. But as for this... " Licking a broad section of skin on her neck, I reluctantly withdrew my fingers from her mouth before sitting up astride her. She tasted like a divine mix of fear and want, the feel of her heartbeat drumming away on my tongue calling me back.

"Come to me again, when you want me badly enough." I stood up now, wrenching myself away and leaving her dazed and flattened on the bed.

"Vampire society will march on, as it always has, but I will wait, for now. I'll see you in an hour for your reading of my employees." I smirked as I watched her lift herself up gingerly, lips slightly plump and red from use.

They could have endured more of it, more than prying fingers.

It was best for all involved that this fascination with non-violent resolution between vampires ended and that Sookie gave credence to what was truly important to the both of us; her place as my companion.

Strange that it was this moment that I knew she would be my child someday. But it was true; I cared about disabusing her of the notion that vampires could in any way be relied upon to not be brutish, self-serving monsters because there lay a future before us where she would need to know that for a fact. But for myself and Eric, she should trust no one. She should obey no one but me. And unlike Eric, who I had fashioned to never submit to anyone besides me, I wanted her most of all to be the entire archive of my heart and for others to know it.

Eric never yielded in public, but her plush skin and heady scent was made for capitulation to me. She could be as headstrong as Eric, I sensed, but belaying that I could feel her deep seated need for acceptance and purpose. As her maker, I could provide that and more. I could give her a place, a home.

Turning her would also help resolve underlying issues with Eric, that much I knew. He would want to partake in acclimating her, if she were a vampire. Eric's progeny would also express interest in Sookie, her tastes being almost exclusively female. She would be easily deterred with a command, yet still, in the present the only other vampire I could truly safeguard Sookie with was Eric. It was fortuitous that Eric disliked her, given that he wouldn't be allowed a single touch for longer than I cared to plan for such a day ever coming.

My blood in her fluttered and its wings beat at her rib cage as she regained a semblance of control. The power inherent in the connection we had would have been strong enough to hold a human completely in thrall without glamor. Instead, I felt pushes of resistance sporadically. And it was good, knowing that even if another vampire found a way to get their blood into her, that unless they were my age, it wouldn't be easy to control her with her fae heritage and dae gift.

"I can't… this choice isn't a fair one, or a real one." She rubbed her lips with two fingers, staring off in my direction, deliberately focusing on some invisible point in front of me. I could feel intimately her confusion, her desire to walk straight into my arms and submit from fighting against a more rational need for escape. And I wanted that, no matter how cruel it was to take her fleeting human values and corrupt them to my purpose. If she wouldn't come now, she would later crawl back, trembling with need.

No. It wasn't fair at all.

"It wasn't fair that you were isolated away from your own friends and family by your ability to read their thoughts, yet you lived alone anyway, feared by your friends and neighbors." I felt a hot spike of anger, and I restrained myself from taking a step forward and governing her emotions with my physical presence and blood.

It didn't help that I wondered what that anger tasted like.

"You're rigging this Godric. I won't come to you, and you can't make me." It was too much to hear her say no but feel her say yes. Too much like Eric and all of things that brought out that terrible need to take and own that I thought had diminished into nothing but apathy. Instead, all these dark, writhing feelings sat resplendent before me.

Her vexation was a honeyed sound, calling me to sharpen her angles into weapons and grind all the parts of her I wanted to fit me into perfect existence.

Just as I loved that Eric was a warrior of renown that was wholly mine, I would make the woman in front of me something equally seductive and valued.

Something coveted, like the Viking.

The thought of both of them tethered to my side warranted my methods.

"I never said I was fair."