TITLE: When You're More Than A Memory

RATING: T for oodles of angst, some cussing and a sprinkle of violence

PAIRING: Pam/Tara

SYNOPSIS: Sequel to 'I Fall Without You'. How has fifty years of estrangement affected Tara?

DISCLAIMER: As always, True Blood and its characters do not belong to me. I'm just borrowing them so please don't sue me.

A/N – So, I remember some of you requesting a sequel to I Fall Without You. For some odd, twisted reason the idea for one came to me when I was at a Disney Classics marathon, specifically The Fox and the Hound. Don't ask, really…I'm not crazy, I just…I have a very active imagination that gets very inventive and drunk during the most random moments. *shrugs* It's a writer thing. So, here's the sequel and there's probably gonna be a sequel to this sequel. Comments, critiques etc. are welcomed.

* Song used is My Immortal by Evanescence. You're welcome to crank this sad baby up before you start reading.

The smell of piss, sweat and stale beer hung heavy in the air, an assiduous marker of the unwanted and the unwashed. Men and women lumbered about in the little piss-poor excuse for a bar, their eyes vacant and sunken, their hair lank and matted from grim, sweat and dirt. Frayed and holed clothes barely managed to cling to emaciated and abused bodies, the cotton or polyester blends caked in days of filth and sludge.

Amidst this sub-class of humanity in this septic tank of desolation, desperation and misery sat Tara. The vampire looked like a polished penny amongst the putrid crowd despite her wind-blown and tangled sable air, clothes that were frayed and dusty from her aimless wanderings and obsidian eyes so still and blank that they might as well have been fashioned from a statue.

Tara knocked back a shot of Bloodsky, the vampire equivalent of 80-proof whisky. Her only reaction to the almost acidic burn down her throat was the way her throat bobbed as the thick liquid slid down her esophagus. She slammed the shot glass onto the splintered and dented bar top and signaled to the bartender with an almost careless flick of her wrist.

I'm so tired of being her
Suppressed by all my childish fears

A woman's voice, so ethereally haunting that it almost bordered on a sob, drifted from one of the two battered speakers that were barely managing to stay fixed to the wall.

And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave

Two verses in and the song was already proving to be a study in melancholy and pain, the singer's voice all but waxing a kind of heartache and loss that would drive the sanest of peoples to hurl their pitiful bodies off the nearest cliff.

Your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone

As if on cue, an image of Pam sprang to the forefront of Tara's mind, sending a ripple of emotion across her lifeless eyes. The vampire's response was to crush the shot glass cradled in her palm; it shattered like so much sugar glass, sending shards to cut into her palm and rain onto the bar top. Rivulets of blood quickly followed, anointing the broken pieces and tinting them red.

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

Tara clenched her glass-embedded hand; pain sang from the cuts, a sharp melody that sent shivers down her nerves but it was a welcome reprieve from the torture that was manifesting before her eyes:

Pam. Her blonde hair dancing in the wind as a wicked smirk graced those edible full lips. Eyes cut from the purest of sapphires twinkled out from a face that made mortals and immortals alike weep with envy. A body that was as dangerous and as sinful as the clothes that covered it.

The grinding of Tara's teeth was almost audible as her accelerated healing began pushing out the pieces of glass from their temporary home in her soft flesh. Tara's grip tightened, delaying the process as she tried to push the glass back in; blood starburst around the aggravated wounds, dripping in steady drops from the bottom of her hand but it was a losing battle as the shards began pinging onto the bar top.

You used to captivate me by your resonating light
Now, I'm bound by the life you left behind

"Clean that shit up before youse gets jumped by Drainers," the barkeep snarled under his breath, snapping a stained and grime-crusted cloth at Tara. He watched as Tara diligently cleaned up the blood and glass that decorated the bar top before bunching the cloth in front of her. She arched a menacing eyebrow at him and he growled before slamming a new shot glass in front of her and pouring her another round.

Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
From your voice it chased away, all the sanity in me

Tara tossed back the shot, relishing the blistering heat and the smooth finish. She was about to ask for another when two presences appeared at her back, malicious intent pouring off them in waves.

"Ya know," Tara began quietly, her voice dangerously calm as the barkeep obligingly refilled her empty glass, his dark eyes flitting between Tara and the two figures flanking her from behind. "It's one thing to sneak up on a vampire." She threw back her shot. "It's another to sneak up on me."

Without so much as a warning, Tara whirled around with preternatural speed and smashed the shot glass into the left one's eye. He howled in abject agony as the glass shattered, spitting fragments into the soft flesh of his cornea. Blood leaked from his eye, twirling a lazy path down his sunburnt and stubbled cheek.

"Bitch!" The second man, with a barrel chest, impossibly broad shoulders and no neck to speak of, unraveled a silver chain from around his hand and whipped it forward in Tara's direction.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears

Tara hissed as the silver licked her cheek, slicing open her ebony skin and sending the smell of burning flesh to permeate the air. She darted forward off the bar stool, her eyes suddenly alive with rage but another thick silver chain appeared at her back and wrapped itself around her neck, immediately biting deep into her vulnerable flesh.

And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me

Tara snarled, a vicious, dangerous sound that bespoke of death. It made the hairs on the back of the barkeep's neck stand erect but he made no attempts to assist the struggling vampire.

Tara, in a move that surprised the man behind her, went slack then backpedaled into him with the force of a freight train. She snapped her head back the instant she felt his warm chest against her back; he bellowed in pain as her head connected solidly with his nose, shattering cartilage and bone, causing his nose to concave into his face.

The silver chain around her neck sagged around her as the man behind let go to cradle his damaged nose. Tara shrugged the chain off, and leapt forward to the man in front of her. He whipped the chain forward and it caught her plain across her lips, sending a spray of blood to burst from the split skin but she paid the wounds no mind as she lunged forward, grabbed a fistful of chubby fingers and yanked the man's hand down. Hard.

Bones snapped audibly and one pushed through its prison of sinew, muscle and skin only to poke its jagged edge into the open, the once pristine white bone now dipped in red. The skin around the bone puckered upwards and opened like a morning flower, weeping red nectar.

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me,
I've been alone all along

The man in front shrieked like a tea kettle as Tara further aggravated the wound by pulling on the man's fingers, exposing more of the jutting bone. The high-pitched noise gargling from the man's throat was so loud it momentarily overpowered the singer's wailing lament of sorrow. The silver chain fell from his fingers and Tara kicked out at it, sending it skittering across the floor and under a table. She closed the distance between her and the man in front and reached out to grip him by the neck, lifting him up until his legs kicked at the air.

"You must come from the land of Stupid," she growled at him, her voice incendiary, her eyes flashing murderous rage. She reached for the protruding bone and applied pressure, watching with absolutely no sympathy as the man screamed, a primal sound that echoed off the dirty bar walls and made the bar patrons flinch.

A movement behind her. Without even looking, she kicked out a booted leg behind her, smiling sinisterly as the flat of her boot came into contact with a soft belly. The man behind her let loose a great "oof!", which was quickly followed by a howl as his internal organs were pulverized. Blood vomited out of his mouth and he choked on the liquid as he tumbled into a nearby table, hit its corner and was sent spinning to the floor. He lay in a fetal position, coughing and spluttering blood, the pallor of his skin fading to a sickly gray with each mouthful of blood he retched out.

"See your buddy there?" Tara sidestepped so that the man she was currently holding in a death grip by the neck could see. "He's dyin'." She nodded satisfactorily as she tightened her fingers around his neck, another frightening smile gracing her blood-strain lips. "As we, well, I, speak, his heart is slowing, his pulse growing sluggish." She leaned in and the almost manic expression painting her face caused the man to lose control of his bowels.

The scent of piss, warm, salty and pungent, filled the air around Tara. It was punctuated by the sound of the liquid dripping onto the battered hardwood floors.

Above them, the song had reached its crescendo, the heavy beating of drums shattered intermittently by the wailing of an electric guitar. The combination of instruments, aided by the singer's mournful echo of the last lyric caused an atmosphere of indescribable pain and grief to blanket the bar. It sagged onto Tara's shoulders, seeped into her veins and tugged at the strings of her heavily scarred heart before it moved to slice open parts of her soul that were still heavily bleeding.

Drip. Drip. Drip

The sound of the man's urine leaking out from under his jeans relieved Tara of her internal struggle and for that she was grateful.

The vampire returned her feral eyes at her prey, smiling over deliberately elongated fags as her quarry whimpered. She chuckled when she caught sight of his soiled jeans, the sound anything but friendly. "Now, isn't that embarrassing." She lowered the man back onto his unsteady feet and released the grip she had on his neck. She watched as he staggered away from her, clutching his damaged wrist, his eyes wild with fear, his mouth hanging open as he tried to suck in much needed gulps of oxygen. She shook her head and blurred up to him, this time grabbing him by a more intimate and sensitive area. He yowled in a pitch that was decidedly unkind to human ears as she made a twisting motion before her fingers squeezed down on the sensitive flesh.

"I want ya out of this shit hole, ya hear?" Her voice was low, steely with ill-omened intent. When he failed to respond she tightened her hold; tears flowed like twin rivers from his beady eyes and his entire face became pinched with pain.

"Answer me!"

The man nodded frantically, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he attempted to swallow the saliva that was pooling in his mouth.

Tara released a disgusted sigh. "Get the fuck up outta here." She let him go and watched him scurry out of the pockmarked door, not even bothering to help out his partner, who was still writhing on the floor, though his movements were becoming less noticeable.

Tara turned to face her audience; the bar patrons who littered random corners of the bar were frozen to their respective seats, fear and panic fairly wafting from their pores as they awaited what Tara would do next.

"Anybody else?" She turned in a circle, holding her arms out. When nobody came forward, she nodded grimly. "I thought so."

But you still have all of me

"Turn that fuckin' music off!" Tara hissed as she reclaimed her seat in front of the bar and snagged a handful of tissues from behind the bar to wipe off her hands. The last thing she needed was music to tell her that her life had become a cesspool of misery and pain. Behind her, people were slowly reanimating themselves and the more wily ones immediately zeroed in on the man on the floor, emptying him of his wallet, his blood-stained coat and the gold chain around his wrist. Nobody bothered to check for a pulse.

"Barkeep, pour me another," Tara demanded, her eyes reverting back into a smooth stillness that was unnervingly inhuman.

"I think you've had enough."

Tara's back went ramrod straight, her hand hovering over the freshly poured shot. When the owner of the voice slid into a seat next to her, Tara reached down and wrapped supple fingers around the glass. She brought the drink to her lips, tipped it back and let the mixture of alcohol and blood scorch a path down her throat.

Setting the shot glass back down, she smacked her lips and turned her head.

"Hello, Eric."

TBC