Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE.

This was written with love and thanks (but without ESN) to Thyra10 (Dead without a Work Permit) and with the help and encouragement of the wonderful members of the Alexander Skarsgård Library Forum.

Friday

I wake up today and the cleansing frenzy seems to be going on in the upstairs part of the house. It seems to involve ladders and more bleach and the occasional screech about the mould that pervades Louisiana houses. Amelia seems to be getting better, and working harder to find something to clean. She's not so quiet today, and actively coming out with words – which is a nice change from sombre silence.

I'm feeling altogether better too. I have more energy today than I have in a while, and I daresay I'm approaching normal. I slowly move out of bed, and for the first time in days, I clean up with a washrag, and put on some clothes. Clothes just make you feel more like a proper person, civilised and more put together. Dr. Ludwig is going to be calling around Saturday morning to take the stitches out, which will mean I can have a shower. The absolute bliss might even rival my all time favourite shower….

I go out to the kitchen and make some toast, some coffee, and sit down to eat it. I think getting some of my thinking in order has helped me sort things out too. Now I have to think about how to move forward in our relationship.

One of the key things I've discovered is that I know some of Eric the person, some of Eric the vampire, but lots of things stump me about him, and about me. It's not surprising that after only a year and a half, I know only a little about Eric the person and vampire, and that after two whole weeks, I know hardly anything about being in a relationship with him.

Somehow, I don't think Eric is any better at this than I am. I would have said before that surely he knew – he'd been married before, right? But from what I knew about how he married his wife, he hadn't had to persuade her, and he was only getting to know the girl he intended to marry when Appius turned him. I suppose on the plus side, I have something in common with his wife – the relationship starts out with knowing her while she's with someone else, and then suddenly being married for the sake of politics.

In all the time that I've known him, Eric hasn't been big with the dating scene – feeding in his office doesn't count as a date in my book. I don't know if he's had any other relationships with human women in the last couple of centuries either. Somehow, I don't think that before the Great Revelation that he had equal relationships. Eric had told me that he'd had the blood of many women, and had almost utter control over them. That doesn't speak to a relationship, just to him being a vampire. It's what all of them did to hide, so it doesn't really compare. I know it's not what I want, and he doesn't seem to want that with me.

Of course, he tried to convince me to follow the route that all these other women wanted, but look where they ended up. Eric didn't talk about them the same way as he did about me. He talked about control over them, not happiness. So I can't just go along with what these women wanted, if that's really what they wanted at all. I'm not them, and I'll never be them.

So maybe Eric didn't have any more experience in relationships than I had. Or perhaps I had more than him – at least of vampire/human relationships, which is funny and scary. If I'm the person with the most relationship experience, then we're in real trouble. But Eric had told me he didn't do this much, what with the control, and not having women to his house. Sometimes being the exception to the rule was a little scary.

Eric offered for me to move in with him, in a way to save me from whatever perils the Fae world had planned for me. I sometimes wonder if I should have done just that, and hidden at his house. I'm sure I'll second-guess that decision to my dying day. But the real truth of the matter is that those Things that caused this could wait for me forever. They frightened even Eric, and I'm sure that I could be sitting here, in the same state, weeping instead because they staked him and took me anyway. That's if I would be sitting here at all. After all, if Bill hadn't seen them take me and contacted Eric and Niall, I would have been with them long enough for their plans to take effect. Plans that didn't have me leaving that room. If I'd been staying at Eric's, no one would have seen them take me. Eric isn't all-powerful, and he's dead in the day, and I'm very glad I don't have him to add to the casualty list.

They almost killed Bill, and they almost killed me. The Things even told me that they found my parents and killed them too even though Fintan hid them. Eric said on the night of the Vegas takeover that he couldn't defend his house all by himself, so it wasn't going to be some impregnable fortress I could hide in for the rest of my days. If he would be vulnerable there, then so would I. Somehow, hiding wouldn't have been the solution to trying to dodge this incident – information and caution, maybe, but not hiding. Going to stay at Eric's house may have changed the scenery for what happened, but it didn't mean that it wouldn't have happened. But I'll never know now how badly it could have gone, and I'm sure I'll always wonder if I couldn't have made things better for myself.

I'm glad for my own sake that I made it through, even though it's all hard and painful. I'm also glad that I didn't move into Eric's house too. He didn't offer that to me because he really wanted me there, or at least that wasn't what he'd told me. He told me it might be best and sensible. Oh the romance! Eric thought it was expedient for me to stay, not that it would be nice. How much more complicated would my inevitable break-up with Bill have been if I'd moved across the cemetery like he'd asked me before Dallas? Eric didn't even dispute me that it would mess with his life. It would certainly have messed with mine.

If I'd gone to stay with Eric, sure, he might have protected me, and maybe no one would have died, but instead of The Incident having me lose my mind, slowly crumbling away in Eric's house could have done the trick. I meant what I said to Eric that night. I needed to work on my shields all the time, in order not to let my telepathy make me a shut in. It's the one reason I wasn't sitting alone in my house in the woods for the rest of my life, subsisting through working at home schemes and Internet shopping.

I can't afford to give up the mental exercise of constantly keeping my shields up. If I was ever tempted not to do that mental exercise, I'd become lazy about it, and soon the din would become too much. Bill helped me cope with my telepathy better by practicing on the Fangtasia employees, not by having the constant quiet. Vampires were a great relief, as were weres, and they offered me a reprieve and a normal relationship, but it couldn't be more than that. I didn't want to be like the Ancient Pythoness – guarded and brought out for special occasions. If I ever wanted to be with people again, I just couldn't close myself off that way. I know I don't want to spend all of my time with supes. Whatever I am, part fae, telepath, I'm mostly human, and I want to be around humans.

I don't want all of my relationship to move ahead with Eric because it makes practical and political sense. I'll accept some of the things that have to be done for my protection, but there's a limit to what I'll give up in order to still walk this Earth. I don't want to give up sunlight and food and freedom to be a vampire. I don't want to give up my sanity so I can be safe in body, even though my mind is long gone. I don't want to give up my control so that everything goes smoothly for everyone else. I'd had a taste of what it was like to be surrounded by beings that didn't consider you a person – The Things didn't consider me that way – they cared not one bit. I wasn't going to live the rest of my life like that.

This relationship, as big and scary as it is, asks me to give up a lot already. If I stay with Eric, I have to accept that there will be the death of some of my dreams. I will always have less hours with him because I can have both the day and the night and he needs the night to do his vampire ventures, be they making his living or being Sheriff. I know that being with him will mean going to live in Shreveport with all of my friends back in Bon Temps – everything he is and has is rooted there. I knew that when I refused his offer to come and stay with me when he was cursed. Eric equals Shreveport. I will have to give up breakfasts and watching the sunrise together and the idea that one day my husband and I will retire and enjoy our old age. Eric will never do any of those things with me. I have to give up the idea that I will have normalcy, and I'm not so sure I'm pragmatic enough to do that yet.

I will never have children for one. Eric's life is just too dangerous to bring a child into. He has a tough time protecting me from all of my troubles, and I couldn't do that to a child. I can't hand up a nice piece of leverage to all the vampires who would bend me to their will by using a child to get to me. I couldn't keep a child inside for the rest of their lives, and I wasn't willing to subject that same child to the sometimes erratic and violent nature of vampires. Even if I could, I know Eric isn't that cruel and heartless to bring a child into danger, like it was a hobby, so that I could have a normal experience like every other woman. He'd been a father himself, and he knows you're supposed to love them – not use them selfishly to fulfil your needs while ignoring their own.

My life in the supernatural world has been dangerous anyway. Too many people know about me in the supernatural world now, and they'll never let me go. In the supernatural world, I'm the smallest pawn in the biggest game of chess ever played. It didn't escape my notice that tales of Eric and I had travelled far and wide. Niall knew about our tie to each other, and I certainly hadn't been spreading it around, otherwise some support group would have invited me to join. Eric didn't tell many about it either, because Felipe de Castro didn't know that I was bonded to him. Sam knew that he could go to Eric for help with a bartender because of me. All the fangbangers seemed to know me by name on the phone. Charles Twining tried to kill me because of the things he heard. Eric told me he tried to downplay our relationship, but the King didn't buy it.

No matter what, I'm never getting out. With or without Eric, I might never have children. I have to face up to the fact that I'm not normal, no matter how much I want to be. No matter how much I might yearn to be a married housewife with little children running round and playing in the sun, their blonde heads nodding together, I will never be that. I will never have all those small things that I watch my friends get effortlessly. I can't even hope to go a couple of months without incurring serious injury. I need a while to face this fact, that even though I feel like I don't matter, I've played a pivotal role in too many incidents, too many wars, to just hitch my star to the closest person who offers protection. Felipe offered me the same and I didn't take him up on it. As for the bond, that's not a reason to do anything either – I wouldn't have taken up with Andre if Eric hadn't turned up in the corridor. This has to come from a place in me, a willingness to make a commitment.

I want Eric, but my presence and pain seems to be required by so many that I can't afford to just jump in blindly. Just wanting is not going to make this work out. If this relationship is going to be the equal one I want, I should also think about how it will hurt Eric too. Even if it all goes right with him, it wouldn't be the first time someone tried to hurt Eric by hurting me. That wouldn't change even if I decided to become a vampire, which I'm not doing. That would just put me under the same political rule as Eric, and an asset to them, that they could do what they like with. It's not a solution even if I wanted it.

Eric will have to face up to the fact that I'll leave him one day, just by the nature of what I am. I'm not going to live forever. Some might say that with the limited time I have, however long that is, that I should throw myself into it all, with abandon. Yeah, cause Vegas weddings are always the best, I'm sure. His unlife will be made difficult with my presence, get him into more battles than ever, at least going by my track record. I'm a valuable commodity to others, because what I want really doesn't matter to them. Only my political value, my retail value, my ability to save them time, effort, lives and money matters. Now that the Fae are leaving, I wonder the effect that's going to have on my desirability, and who will target me next. I don't have the buffer that Niall and my fae connections provided me either.

If I can make this work with Eric, then I can't jump in without regard – there's no book on how to integrate your human life with a vampire's existence. I have never met another human in my position, so I don't have any way to see how it's done. Eric suggested the way all the other women in his life have wanted to do it, but he told me that I was different from them, so why emulate their patterns? I appreciated that he wanted to give it to me before I asked for it, but that wasn't what I wanted from him.

Eric perhaps still doesn't understand that I truly will never make demands on them in the same way that other women do, at least in our personal relationship. I hadn't asked for gifts, or for promises he made in his cursed state, or to live in his house and let him support me. It wasn't in me to be demanding, as if I had a right to these things for some reason. When I say that it is Eric I want, I mean that heart and soul. Not his money, not his power and prestige, and not as a personal bodyguard. I can give him something that those other women never could. That must factor into what he found so very enjoyable about our time together – I never asked him for anything.

I asked for the King's protection from the Fae troubles, I didn't expect him to rescue me. Sure, during The Incident I hoped that he was coming, I prayed that he'd come, but I didn't see it that he was obliged to come find me. Anything Eric ever gave me, I valued because he wanted to give it to me. Not because it was a requirement. Of course, this was also a lasting issue between us. Eric thought he had some obligation to me in New Orleans after Jake Purifoy's attack. He'd cited the bond that we had, but that wasn't reason enough to give me anything – genuine heartfelt gestures were what I wanted, not obligations. I don't want to be his obligation, a sacred trust, some possession.

Maybe in his long life, and all the women who demanded things, he never understood the sort of person I have always been. I was not someone who would demand tribute as if I was a goddess, or because this was the stage at which this pre-determined stage was going ahead. Anything genuine is given, not taken. Eric is surrounded by takers – both people and vampires. Nobody gave him anything freely. That was the vampire's world – you took and you demanded, and you manoeuvred. You didn't give, you didn't help, and you weren't charitable. It was one of the reasons it never would have worked with Quinn – it wasn't in me to demand time away from his mother and sister, to be not always sacrificed to their needs.

That week in my house, for my part, I demanded nothing. I didn't demand the money for taking him in (although I was later glad to have it) or ask for him to do anything he didn't want to do. I didn't demand he stay with me, and I didn't demand later that I would have all he promised. I will only accept what is freely given, and only what is finite. I won't run up a tab in my own name that I have to pay back at the discretion of the payer, and to the value the payer deems. In my experience those who demand, those who take find themselves indebted to others.

Tara found herself indebted to Franklin Mott – taking all that he had to give her as if it was some sort of payment for services. Copley Carmichael tried to get me into his debt with information on Remy Savoy. Quinn was indebted to the Colorado vampires for asking for help cleaning up dead men. I think my policy of not asking is the most sensible politically as well. I retain my freedom because I keep my debts and my demands low. If I were a more grasping person, I would have been in far worse situations, owned like a possession, too indebted to get myself out.

I don't want to be indebted, and I don't want to be owned. I don't want to do that to Eric either, as if he were a pet vampire. That's what my demands would make him. I wanted an even match, where neither of us were the boss, but captains of our own destinies that we shared together. He's already entwined in my life – in my body, in my blood, in my mind, in my house and he's just now making an appearance in my dreams, albeit in the form of a real estate agent. The idea that I could separate from him now is almost impossible. He's everywhere and he's not leaving. Pretty swift of him considering I've known him only for a year and a half. It will take everything I can think of to do not to let Eric overtake absolutely every corner of my life.

In the last couple of years, my life has gone from feast to famine and vice versa. I used to think I was doomed to spend my life alone, to die of old age. To have no one who understood the loneliness I felt, surrounded by other people who shunned me. I never fit in with my fellow humans. Now I still don't fit in, but the quality that had me shunned now is valued. I find myself now with a multitude of choices among men, or so it seems in my short experience of having a love life. Old age doesn't seem so daunting or silent as it once would have been – it seems to be an almost unattainable goal.

I rushed into the supernatural world with no real idea or thought of what it would mean, and it has swallowed me up. The price I've paid to be what I am in the supernatural world is high – perhaps higher than I want to pay. It welcomed me with open arms, but since I have been the subject of many plots. So much that I've gotten weary of the plots, almost always the last to know that everything I am is on the line – my body, my blood, my pain, my soul, my mind. Every time it spits me back out and keeps a little bit of me. Over time I've become harder and tougher. I haven't come to terms with that reality, not really. What I really need is to become smarter.

I don't want to rush into anything with Eric. I don't want to rush into another mistake, and have it spit me back out with less than I had before. What I have with him now is deep and undefined, and if I rush my decisions, then I could end up with nothing. I could end up with nothing because I messed up and didn't do things slowly, with thought, and with surety, because I rushed in where anyone facing the same challenges would fear to tread. Eric was so much more and he could consume me, heart and soul. He could leave me an empty husk, far better than The Things ever managed.

I finally have something to talk about. If we talk about this when he comes tomorrow, then I can tell him. For all I know, he knows this all already. I'm sure that he's not blind to how overwhelming he can be, how dangerous his life is, and how precarious his politics can be. After all, Eric has used that to his advantage all these years – I remember a time when he flooded the room with his presence and quelled Longshadow and Pam. His approaches to me so far have been without pressure, tentative and thoughtful. He hasn't tried to force me into decisions, at least in our personal, rather than our political situation. I can trust to his intelligence and experience to have figured this out without having to say a word.

With a smile, I go into my bedroom to get started on a romance book. Maybe we won't need a talk after all.

The End.

A/N: I'm Team Eric all the way.

But he's a scary guy, like the Mafiosi or a drug cartel kingpin. Sure, "bowling for vampires" is a hilarious line if you're not in the vicinity of an actual severed head, but Sookie, in her reality has lots to be reticent about. No woman with any brains (and let's face it, has Eric ever shown his appreciation for the brainless? Is that whereof his regard springs?) would hurl herself with abandon at him. Even if she did let him set the pace alone, then she'd lose parts of herself - and Eric didn't get interested in a lesser Sookie. I think Sookie has brains, and she doesn't lie to herself about how very dangerous he is, nor should she. He's not blind to this either, so I don't see that he'd be angry about her not doing what he wants and ditch her because she can't deal with it right this second.

Many of these issues are a double edged sword for Sookie – Eric is this far into Sookie's life with careful planning on Charlaine Harris' part. He's not going anywhere.