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

This is the last fic before the new book/s. I will probably post on my LiveJournal (surprisingly under the name peppermintyrose) about various SVM/TB stuff with much less story, which is easier for me. I'll be twittering the links because Thyra10 wailed at the idea that this was my last fic, so if you don't have a journal, that's where you can see when I update. There's also stuff that impossible to make into a story, or is prompted by what I read in the fanfic universe…or possibly something about my amusing fish assassin husband.

This one is for reviewers who asked for it and I figured out how to incorporate it all together, because I'm lazy like that. :D Ooshka asked why Sookie can't feel Pam in the bond? and kitlina asked for a general update on their relationship in DITF. So here we go.

Pam dropped Jason round later last night to pick up his truck. It was the least she could do after she'd healed, and set the cleaners to work. He fed her, she brought him back to his car, which seemed like a fair trade to me. Jason was understanding after what I'd been through, and I'm sure that Eric had filled them in on what went down on my lawn. Jason knocked on my door and got me up early, so I'm making coffee and thinking about what we've been through. I don't know that he'll be going to work today, but Michelle will be happy to see him alive and well. She got a phone call, but it's just not the same as seeing him whole in the flesh, is it?

Eric had flown off last night. I didn't think Tuesday was a go, like it had been. I figure Eric won't be around for a few days. I can live with that. I could always do with some time to think things over.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

Our relationship was going great. I'd told Eric I loved him, and he was finding a place with my family and friends. Jason knew that I loved Eric, and while he didn't like vampires, he accepted that and was respectful for my sake. Sam hadn't quite got to the accepting part, but I was clear with him that I loved Eric and that I was grateful for him. Amelia of course, knew that I loved Eric. It hasn't been easy for me to admit that, and to indeed love Eric - we are so very different, and there's a part of me that resisted being in love with him because I know what he is and what he does. But I was in this relationship now, finally resolved to doing this thing.

There were still some things I had to figure out about our relationship. It was one thing to like being with Eric, quite another to make it all actually work. It wasn't something that I knew, just because I knew it. There was no handbook, no Dr. Phil, no magazine article that could tell me with any reliability how exactly we could do this. It was left up to me, and Eric. I had no trouble understanding an ordinary marriage, but I knew no other women who married thousand year old Viking vampires with dangerous jobs and killer co-workers.

I needed to find out the limits of my relationship with Eric. Not what I thought they were – but get there in the way I couldn't assume with ordinary human men. One of the things I knew is that Eric wasn't an ordinary man. I wasn't sure that he was such an ordinary vampire either. Bill had categorised him a wilful and like a rogue, he was the only vampire to survive the takeover, and Felicia had told me that Indira drew her into Eric's service because he was different from Peter Threadgill, who took liberties with the female vampires underneath his command. Eric wasn't an ordinary vampire it seemed, and he definitely wasn't an ordinary man.

After all, Eric had never acted like an ordinary man, in an ordinary dating relationship. One thing I knew about Eric is that he didn't tend to follow expected paths. It was foolish to think that he would do one iota of "what is expected". I couldn't treat it as if this was some relationship where I knew what to expect. For Eric's part, he seemed to find me surprising as well. Eric had told me in the past that I had clearer thinking than most humans could manage. He'd recently called me a startling talent.

Sure, I could throw myself into it as if it would work, but that was none too bright. Being with Eric wasn't going to be an easy thing. Twining together in bed – that was easy – but living day to day posed some serious challenges that I needed to really think about and assess. It comforted me that Eric gave me time to move slowly. He didn't try to rush me, and I wasn't too sure that he'd done something like this before. Pam had told me that he hadn't had anyone like me in a long, long time. I didn't know how long, because vampire timelines were always so sketchy. How they saw time was not how I saw it.

Eric himself had told me that other women had wanted to move into his house, but that I was the first one he offered it to. All of the other women, they'd wanted that from him, and never got it. Now, maybe he meant the house he has right now, and only that house. Eric didn't tell me everything, but he'd told me that what he did tell me was true. So going just on that house, I'd say for at least a couple of decades or so, Eric hasn't wanted to live with a human woman. I can't imagine he'd want to live with a woman that he hadn't shared blood with anyway – that would be far too unsafe for him. If Eric didn't respect a human woman as a person enough to give her his blood, then he didn't trust her enough to let her know his resting place.

But that meant that if he hadn't lived with a woman like he offered me, that he hadn't had a live-in human female companion since before Women's Liberation. Before that time, women were passed from their fathers to their husbands, and they had to go 'courting'. The women from that time didn't have to make things work - they married and moved in, and if your husband was a killer vampire, then that was just your lot in life. I just couldn't see Eric doing any of the courting required to get to the marriage part. He never took me out on dates in order to court me. It usually involved being summoned before we were together. I wouldn't classify investigating local murders as a date, or supernatural business meetings as a date. Eric's dating style wasn't old-fashioned – it was non-existent.

Judging by the amount of modern idioms Eric had trouble with, and the fact that he only learned English as a second language in the seventies, I can't see that he had much time to form relationships that didn't involve sex and feeding habits anyway. I wasn't clear how long he'd even been in America - Pam was from Victorian England, and Eric was still roaming the continent of Russia in the 1800's in order to have been at the St. Petersburg massacre to help stake Gregory. He wasn't a settled down homebody during that time, and maybe he only settled down when he got here. Here in Louisiana he put down roots to be a Sheriff, and then spent time working at his job, solidifying his political position, until came time to organise for the Great Revelation. I doubt that somewhere in there, Eric thought it was important to be out there dating women. Having sex with and feeding from women, sure, but not dating and marrying them.

I didn't have much dating experience either. What I wanted was to be happy, and just because Eric made me happy sometimes didn't mean that was the general rule. If I wasn't a telepath, I would already be married with babies, not dating someone who made my telepathy easier to deal with. If I was prepared for a relationship I wasn't happy in, I would have married a human long ago. There was nothing preventing me physically from being with a human, other than the fact that I wanted to be relaxed and happy. If I was willing to give up those things, I could marry a human man - the rare ones who had slow thoughts and weren't scared of me.

JB was a candidate for that for a while. I didn't choose JB because it would make me unhappy to have to sacrifice part of my happiness to be with him. I couldn't see the sense in keeping out of a relationship with a human man for the sake of my own happiness, but being with a supernatural creature and being unhappy. So far, happiness had turned up every so often, but so had a lot of pain and missteps. I'd learnt that more than human men, the limits to my relationships with supernatural creatures were different and wide ranging. They weren't what I expected, or what human women often dealt with.

It also meant that I had to figure out what I could expect from him as far as behaviour. We hadn't talked about who Eric fed on, and I don't think we were going to, either. Out of respect for my experience in that little shack in Arkansas, Eric hadn't been biting me very much. I can't say that I wasn't ungrateful for that. I'd make my feelings a bit clearer on the subject by giving Eric a True Blood, which he choked down, pulling faces at me, but doing it just the same. He didn't question me – he knew why I was giving him synthetic blood, and he respected me enough not to badger. Eric was no fool. He didn't need it spelled out to him that a woman who has spent a horrifying hour being bitten doesn't really feel up to being bitten all the time for someone else's fun.

I could live without being a sole food source. I really didn't want Eric to come and see me because he was hungry, or have to have me glued to his side because he needed to snack while he worked. Eric didn't have a flexible schedule like Bill, and was stuck in his office in Fangtasia a lot of times. If I wanted to be his sole food source, that meant that I would need to go to him and be his personal vending machine. I didn't relish sitting in Fangtasia all night, bombarded with so many thoughts of sex until I didn't want to do anything myself except sleep. I wanted more out of my life than sitting in Fangtasia could give me. As much as other women had wanted to live with Eric and eat bonbons all day, and be his personal feed bag, that wasn't something I wanted to do. That was nothing to base a relationship on – the need to eat something. Unlike those women, I didn't want to be a vampire. I didn't intend to leave one day so that I could have a life I'd denied. I didn't want my general life goal to be "cute but cow-like meal of the Great Eric Northman".

I could live without being bitten. Fangbangers liked it, but I just took it as something vamps did, not something I sought. I let them do it because they liked it, and most of the time they made it pleasurable for me. But I didn't need to go hanging around Fangtasia while I was dating Quinn to get my bite on. I didn't go searching for Eric or Bill because I wanted someone to bite me. I didn't get off on flirting with death and the general tangled sexuality and pathos of the fangbanger. I didn't expect him to starve himself, so I took the same policy I did with Bill – I didn't ask where he was eating, and he didn't tell me about it. I wasn't naïve – I knew he would be snacking on people at his club, but just so long as I didn't have to see it or witness it, then things were fine.

I didn't see any need to go and check up on him. I had no interest in vetting any of the men and women, or concerning myself with pointing one out I thought was acceptable. Eric told me himself that he'd been with men and women - and he hadn't flinched one inch at the thought of touching other men. I'm sure he fed off men sometimes too, but choosing a man or a woman wouldn't make any difference to who could potentially seduce Eric. When Appius had turned up, I figured that Pam would select late night snacks for them, and bring them over, but I had no interest in going over and sticking my nose in, trying to control the whole interaction.

I had no interest in dictating who he ate and who he was eating with, and thank goodness, he had no interest in dictating what I ate and who I was eating with. There were no awkward conversations about anaemia, and careful modulation of how much iron I could take so that I would still suit his palate. One benefit that that did give us is that our relationship was less like cow and more like an equal relationship. There wasn't the constant push and pull to make sure that my blood stayed always within his perfect taste range, and Eric came to see me because he wanted to see me, not because he was feeling peckish.

Human food was another issue that we would seriously need to consider if it meant living closer to one another. I could feed Eric if I wished, but I also needed to feed myself when he was around. Currently, I lived in my house, where I could eat my food without fear or favour. I didn't have to cringe when I ate a sandwich, or worry that I needed to keep things clean. That would need to be something I considered when living with Eric - my human needs. Eric may not dictate to me what it was that I could and couldn't eat, and how much garlic there was in it, but that wasn't the same as being okay with food. I wasn't sure that I wanted to ask - because Eric may not tell me everything, and I wasn't sure the truth would do me much good. Eric was better with human food than Bill, he still kept the food in his house for me in the freezer. He'd never taken me out to dinner, or told me about how he'd gone out to a restaurant. When I had dinner with Niall, he didn't sit in the room, drinking blood - he left.

Truly, I didn't know if that was something that Eric would do, or want to do. The familiar ritual of eating around a table was something he'd left behind in his human life. Dinner would just be drinking out of a bottle, anyway – no need for elaborate tablecloths and place settings. When it came time to choose his business, he didn't set up Fangtasia as a restaurant - he set it up as a bar. Maybe sitting there at the table would make him feel uncomfortable, as if there was a blinking neon arrow pointing out how different he was. I sure didn't want to poke at that feeling if it was something that upset him. Maybe Eric saw it as a waste of time for such pleasantries and heaven knows he has things he can be busy with. Eric liked to be busy.

To do my part in not knowing the people he'd been feeding on, I had been avoiding Fangtasia myself – I preferred to meet at Eric's house. This was a new possibility for me, and one that shows how not ordinary my relationship really is. I am one of a small minority of women who can say "I wasn't allowed to know where my husband lived until after we'd been married a week". I bet not many women at all can say that – their husbands wouldn't see them as such a security risk, I'm sure. Maybe undercover policemen…but Eric is no policeman. Eric avoids policemen when it's not a carefully controlled setting – like say a raid. This was one of the reasons I had so much difficulty resolving to be in a relationship with Eric. He was no angel, and I knew that. I, on the other hand, tried to be a good person, as much as I was able. I tried not to kill and hurt, and a good portion of Eric's life revolved around killing and hurting.

When I'd been in a relationship with Bill, we had to break up quite a few times because he wanted to go a-killing and ditch me when the urge struck him. I wasn't too happy about that – I'm human, I'm Christian and I don't really want to be around for that sort of thing. It's just not an acceptable couples' activity to me. I not going to be sitting on the sidelines cheering on Eric torturing vampires or whatever he did. Again, I am no fool. I knew it went on. But no way, no how was I going to be included. He could be vampire…but I would be human and Christian. Acceptance of nature simply went both ways, not just all in Eric's direction.

Some of the things that I had to work out had to do with what went both ways. After all, I wasn't planning on leaving Eric, and I had to have a glimpse of my future. I wasn't going to walk into it blindly expecting that it would all work out if we really cared about each other. It hadn't worked out like that with Bill, or with Quinn, and it had never worked with Alcide. None of those relationships had worked out by just going with wherever it took me, and this time I'd resolved that I would carefully vet things and be more cautious. I wouldn't get close to the fire this time without careful consideration.

There were definite holes left in my life – but I filled them with other things. If Eric couldn't or wouldn't take me to dinner, I spent my nights going to barbeques with Jason and Michelle, being with Tara and JB, going to visit Bill or spending time with Sam. Eric was busy – and so when I felt a need to eat out, I went out with Sam. He was attached to Jannalyn and she was busy just like Eric. Sam and I preferred to be left out of supernatural politics, so they went and did their thing – for Eric, vampire politics and for Jannalyn, were politics – and we went and did what we wanted to do. I filled the time I didn't spend with Eric with something that would be for me, that maybe wouldn't interest him.

I learned to do that with Quinn – fill my life with other things while he was gone. But unlike Quinn, I wasn't going to put everything on hold with waiting for too long. I'd had faith in Quinn, but it turned out that was just another way to keep me waiting. Quinn promised me time away to remedy that – time that never happened. With the regularity of crises popping up in Eric's life, I wasn't going to rely on time that never happened with him either. I'd been burned on promises meant to keep me around doing the very same thing for an indefinite period. I would make my own life outside of my relationship, and I had a nice life going on, doing human things while he did vampire things.

Luckily Eric didn't expect me to be at his beck and call. If he wanted that, he could have a fangbanger, who would be ready, willing and able to do that for him. Eric could source any number of human women who waited on him, the nights he didn't come home until the last minute, or ones who would wait all day for a half an hour of his time. I wasn't one of those women, and I wasn't prepared to be one. I didn't want to treat my human life like a hobby - I wanted to live it. This was the rest of my life, and I wasn't going to fritter it away waiting on a man, twirling my hair and painting my nails until he deemed me important enough to show up for.

Just the every day living was something I had to figure out. I had to have something to do with my days and often, my nights. During the day, Eric was unavailable and dead to the world. At night, he had his very demanding job. Most couples could spend the night together after working all day, but I couldn't do that with Eric. Night is when things happened for him. His day man took care of his days. In the past, I often had to wait until one in the morning or later to see him and then he had to go back to work. It meant working my schedule to include some sort of activity and Eric. It also had to be filled with something when Eric was just too busy to come and see me at all.

When I dropped everything to come because he asked me, I genuinely questioned whether he'd do the same. Sure, he did that when it was to come or to let me die, but that didn't mean that if I asked, Eric would turn up at my door. I wasn't going to get my hopes up based on romantic ideals that never worked out. As far as I could see, the stupider idea was just assuming that Eric could do all things, be all things, rather than considering that he couldn't give me everything. Eric is no superhero, and he couldn't be all that I needed. Just like I couldn't be all that he needed. I didn't expect that we would be intimately intertwined as if one of us wouldn't lose a lot that way.

Being vampire and being human made our lives different, and had different needs. Part of what our relationship would always be trying to find a way to come together as Sookie and Eric - a couple who enjoyed spending time together - not as owner and asset as the vampire world saw us, or as fangbanger and deader as the human world saw us. That meant understanding more about his life, and what he needed to do. Eric knew plenty about me, but I didn't know plenty about him. Eric had a thousand years of history and obligations, and the world he lived in was a lot more changeable than mine. Merlotte's had had a steady boss in all the time I'd known Eric - but the vampire state of Louisiana hadn't.

I got a taste of that when Eric up and left with Appius. Appius turns up, and off Eric goes. He didn't tell me when he'd be back, or if he'd be back ever again. I suppose Eric didn't know either. Frankly, if anyone had said it would be a week later that Appius was dissolving on my lawn thanks to the fairy blade of someone attempting to assassinate me; I would have laughed in their face. I'd had a taste of that - a man who takes off without word of if and when he'll be back, if he's coming back at all. When Eric did it to me, it wasn't new, but I could react in a new way. I didn't wait for him to get back to me - I lived my life - the one I'd built that took account of the fact that Eric may never return. I didn't know how often Eric would take off without a word, and life – or in his case unlife – would just throw a spanner in the works every time. I'd been burned that way before, and I wasn't going to do it again. I'd learnt from my mistakes, and I wasn't going to just think nice thoughts. That's what had made things untenable before and I wasn't going to repeat history again.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

I was going to try to learn from what I could see around me though. Pam gave me a good clue as to what Eric looked for in a companion. He may not have loved her – I didn't know, I only knew she didn't love him – but he chose a woman such as her to keep around for a long time. Pam's relationship wasn't something that he could drop, and I assume he'd chosen someone who fitted his needs. It taught me a lot watching Pam. She wasn't clingy – she was capable. She didn't wait on Eric. He didn't expect her undivided reverence.

The only time Pam acknowledged him as her Master is when he'd been angry with her talking to me while I was dating Quinn. Pam had gone down on one knee in the gravel and he'd ordered her to leave. But I wasn't willing to do that. I'd rather walk on broken glass than do such a thing. I wasn't interested in calling anyone Master, even if it was Eric. If Eric doesn't know I have pride by now, and a healthy amount of self respect and won't do such things, then he really doesn't know me at all. He says he loves me, and surely that means he knows me right? I haven't exactly hidden myself from him.

I wasn't perfect, I had faults. But Eric's supposed to love me – not the best version of me he can think up, but the me that's not perfect. It's all good because Eric's not perfect either. Apart from the fact that he's a vampire politician slash mob boss, Eric has regular faults. He never says goodbye on the phone, he doesn't pick up his towels, and he errs on the side of telling me virtually nothing. He makes me talk about my feelings way more than he talks about his own. I love him, and I hadn't asked him to change one thing about himself. Not one thing. I wanted to learn about him, not change him. I didn't want to change me either.

Eric didn't change the way he was for me, and I wasn't going to change the way I was for him. When I told him he was high handed, he didn't take that as a prompt to change who he was. He smiled and admitted it. He didn't apologise or swear he'd try to be different. I don't see why I needed to be the ideal woman that did everything Eric wanted. Eric certainly didn't do everything I wanted.

That was one thing that had done no good to my relationship with Bill. I don't hate Bill, we're just better suited as friends. Bill sure did want me to change a lot. Bill changed how I dressed, and made it clear when I was in Dallas that he wanted to make sure I didn't embarrass him. He chose my clothes for me when we went to Fangtasia to make sure that it sent some sort of message to the other vampires. Bill liked to show me off, but he just didn't like any other man touching me. Bill made it clear he didn't like me being so close to Sam, and so I saw less of Sam. Bill made sure that I spent a lot of time with him, until I finally had to tell him I was anaemic. Bill had me brush my teeth before he kissed me. Bill wanted me to work on my telepathy.

Eric hasn't wanted me to do any of those things Bill wanted. He didn't try to keep me as a trophy piece for other men and try to stop me from touching or talking to anyone. Eric didn't talk to me about my telepathy – not once. He treated it as another part of me, and he didn't try to suggest I do exercises to improve it. Eric didn't want a Sookie who was better dressed. No matter what I was in – pants suit, Merlotte's uniform, bruised up in a knit dress, blue ballgown, pink evening dress, Eric had complimented me. I don't think he'd cared about my clothes unless we were going on a business outing. He certainly couldn't be bothered to pick them out, not even when he lived at my house for a short time. Lucky too, or I'd go naked a lot – Eric just isn't that accessible most of the time.

Eric hasn't asked me to change one thing about myself, and I've done him the same courtesy. We were working more at a compromise. Eric didn't feel the need to dictate to me - he left me to my own devices, and I did him the same favour. That didn't mean that we had to work every aspect of our lives - because there were just some things he may never like - my human needs may not be something he can put up with. By the same token, some of his vampire shit was not something I could put up with. Just so long as I didn't try to force him to be okay and participate, and he did me the same favour, we could find a space to meet in the middle. Somewhere in the middle we found ways to be with each other, and over time as we worked at it, we'd find ways to be with each other as we both liked it. We were working towards an equal relationship where neither was the leader - the sort of relationship I'd wanted. I didn't want to lead, and I didn't want Eric to lead. That didn't mean that we had to mash our lives together, with one of us changing until they fit. In that scenario, it ended up in me changing, not the thousand year old vampire.

Wanting to change and mould me had lead to a lot of fights with Bill, and I wasn't so sure Bill loved me, or if Bill loved the Sookie he'd moulded into a different shape. I wasn't so sure that Bill really liked that Sookie either. He took Portia Bellefleur to the opera. He didn't take me. Eric isn't the same. He wasn't a Confederate gentleman with a manor house who remembered my great-great-grandmother, and understood the social requirements of the South. Bill had a lot of expectations for what it was that he wanted me to do and be, and that wasn't his equal. Women in Bill's time were not equal. They were subordinate. Bill wanted a modern life that met up with that ideal - the subordinate woman who did what she was told. That just wasn't me. Thankfully, that wasn't Eric either.

Eric didn't seem to expect to tell me what to do. He came from a far distant time where nothing was recognisable in current society. He was an optimist who looked at the big picture of how people today would make sure that those starving in Africa would have food. Eric wasn't interested in traditions he'd had no role in making. He wasn't interested in staying in the past, but in moving forward. Eric had told me himself that one of the things he liked about his new Masters Victor and Felipe was that they were forward thinking. He looked forward to continuing on with such excitement, rather than hearkening back to his human life. Eric was the son of a Viking chieftain, and his house was long gone. Even if he wanted to reinstate Viking society, everything was lost, whereas Bill's house was still standing, and had always been in his family. Eric knew only my living great grandfather, and he didn't seem to get on too neighbourly with him. They had more of what you'd call a truce.

Niall didn't really treat Eric with a whole lot of deference. The last time I'd seen them together, they'd fought over who was fit to care for me. Niall hadn't asked him anything, or given me to him. He'd told the vampire to get off me. Eric called him by his race too – fairy – and there was no love lost between them. Niall had offered to kill Eric to end the blood tie. I'd never told Eric about it, but I'm sure Eric had some inkling. Niall and Eric were not friends. But I didn't ask Eric to cater to what my supernatural family wanted, or what my human family liked. Even if I did, I doubt he'd do it for me. He was who he was, just as I am who I am. I have to know him inside and out to make this work. I can't change him to suit my needs if it doesn't work out.

I wondered too if I had to respect Appius just because Eric did. After all, Eric didn't do as Niall wanted just because I did. In the end, I erred on the side of sense, and held my tongue as much as I was able. Admittedly, it made me angry, but since Appius could order Eric to kill me, and Appius could squish me like a bug, I tried to put a lid on it and back down. It wasn't easy for me, and Eric knew that. He knew that Appius made me angry, and that when I was angry, I wouldn't hold it in like a good submissive wife and just take it. Eric knew me pretty well, and his concern for my safety when he had no control is a good reason to tell me to come in under the radar.

Eric tried to convince me that Appius was a good man, even if he wasn't a good man by the standards of the values of today, but he didn't try to force me to agree because that was what he wanted. I tried to give the Ancient Roman a chance, but Eric understood well enough what my problems were with Appius. Out of respect for Eric, I didn't kill Appius. When he pleaded with me, I didn't do it. But I would have, and he knew that. I didn't hide what I was, and what I intended to do. Eric knew all that and still thought I was his dearest before he shot off into the night.

Eric leaving after the death of Appius wasn't really a surprise to me. It was just Eric. I can't remember him being the one to give me much time to heal and hang around taking care of me. When I'd been tortured, Eric took off back to his work with Pam. When I'd been beaten by weres on our return from Mississippi, Eric left pretty promptly. When he'd told me about Bill while I was in the hospital, he didn't hang around. Eric gave me some comfort, and then promptly left. He wasn't a sentimental vampire, and he didn't stay around to offer me comfort or solace. It just wasn't in his nature.

To tell the truth, I wasn't in my nature either. As much as I was kind, and did things for people, I had my limits too. I wasn't one for making a big fuss over people or being made a fuss over. When Jason had spent a week being imprisoned and bitten in a little shack in Hotshot, I gave him one nights' care and comfort, and then it was time for him to go home. When Bill was poisoned with silver, I thought of him, but I wasn't at his bedside like he'd been at mine. I didn't complain that Eric was as he was. I didn't try to change him. If he needed someone by his bedside at some stage, he'd have to rely on similar treatment he himself dished out.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

Bedside manner – or lack of it – was one big concern to me. It wasn't just learning about Eric's little faults, picking up his towels, and ignoring his feeding habits. Eric's world was dangerous. It was dangerous to him and it was dangerous to me. Fangtasia had no less than two bartenders who'd tried to kill me personally - Charles Twining and Longshadow. The first night I went to that bar and met Eric, it was raided by vampire police for unauthorised feeding. Eric's world was dodgy at best. On a good night there was limited criminal activity. It was another good reason to avoid Fangtasia if I could help it.

There were big drawbacks to being with Eric. Victor Madden was trying to kill me for one. Bruno Brazell made it clear Victor wasn't going to leave me alone. He was never going to let it go. Victor would always go for the weak link, and what weaker link could there be that a human wife? Being around a vampire bar wouldn't change that much. It didn't stop Longshadow from attacking me. It didn't stop faux Dracula from announcing to the room at large he intended to drain me dry. Some vampires, like Jennifer Cater, didn't care that they were in a hotel lobby when they made all kinds of threats. Being around other vampires didn't make any difference because they wouldn't protect me. That would require them to care that a human dies, and mostly they don't.

So Victor was my most immediate problem. I had reason to suspect that Victor was a real problem, and that Pam and Eric were very concerned for my safety. It was obvious that he'd made an attempt to kill me - Bruno Brazell had told me so. If Victor couldn't have me in Las Vegas, couldn't get me in New Orleans, get his own share of telepath, he'd make sure that no one had a share of telepath. It could happen at any time, and Pam had called me herself to let me know that Heidi was at my door, and we confirmed her identity by sight. That told me that sooner or later, a vampire could turn up at my door, and I was on the watch for if that happened without a phone call from Pam to confirm they were who they said they were, there for the reason they said they were there.

I wanted Victor to die – which was relatively new to me – the need for vengeance. But to think that Victor would be the last? Only a fool would think so. I'd had attempts made on my life before to hurt Eric – and lost my kitchen to one of those attempts. If vampires could sneakily kill me – like Charles Twining and Bruno Brazell had attempted – then they would. It wouldn't stop just because I was special to Eric – it would continue because I was special to Eric. They just had to find a way to hide it so they couldn't be blamed.

Ultimately, what happened to my erstwhile murderer was not my concern. If they succeeded, I would be dead, so it didn't matter what happened to them afterwards – not to me anyway. I needed to be able to step up to the plate realistically and acknowledge that I would need to deal with death threats from other vampires, various assorted supernatural creatures – because it's not just in the vampire community Eric makes enemies – and humans in the Fellowship. Being with a dead man meant a lot of people wanting to kill me, none of it for what I'd done, but who I loved, who I lived with.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

One of the people I also wasn't looking to kill me was Eric. I didn't want to be a vampire. Ever. That was another thing I didn't want to change. I'd made it clear to Eric that I didn't want it. I couldn't be clearer about it. That was one of the things that I had to work out. I had to know how to do this as me – the human me that there was. I don't think my dab of fairy gave me any immortality. Niall himself had told me that I had the essential spark, but he called me short lived, mortal and breakable. None of my family had lived as long as Dermot – that's if they weren't exterminated by their purer fairy kin and enemies. I wasn't going to be living for a long time or indefinitely. I'd wondered about it, but how much doubt was there if Niall thought I didn't live long enough for him? No fairy had told me different. Niall didn't have the magic to take away my telepathy, so I doubted he had the ability to take away my mortality either.

If I was more selfless, more concerned with how Eric felt than how I felt about my own life, I could offer to turn to make his time easier. But I wasn't arrogant enough to believe that my death would break Eric without repair. Eric had lived through the death of his brother, his wife and three of his children. He had left three of his children behind when he'd become vampire, and still he hadn't despaired. Everyone he knew from his human life was so much dust, now. People he loved and chose to be with - people he made with his wife - people he had purposefully brought into this world in a way he hadn't with me. Eric had lived through Appius' death - his one constant for a thousand years, and no matter how twisted it was, Eric loved him as much as he hated him. Eric had lived through more death - and caused more death - than I could imagine, and yet he had continued.

Maybe there was a part of Eric that, like me, didn't see death as a big thing. After all, it had happened to him already. Eric might be avoiding his second death, but he wasn't so horrified by death that it put him off living on. I wasn't going to believe the romantic fairytale that Eric wouldn't be able to live without me. Bill survived the deaths of his family, Niall survived the death of Einin and Claude abided the deaths of Claudine and Claudette. None of these men were broken - they were sad, without a doubt, but not broken. But there were no guarantees in this life that I would survive on anyway as a vampire for as long as Eric needed me to be around.

Even if I did survive in a world of vampires killing other vampires - and they got a headstart with me already - how long would that last? The only vampire that had the special power to keep her children with her forever was Sophie Anne. Eric didn't have that ability, or Pam never would have gone to Minnesota. Eighty years most vampires seemed to force their children to be with them. Eric could force me to be with him eighty years. It was considerably less time he had with Pam, because she told me he wasn't interested in forcing her. I wouldn't die, but Eric wouldn't have me anyway within a century.

I'd return to him after a time, I'm sure I wouldn't be anything like the woman I was now. In the short time I'd known Bill and Eric, they'd both been tortured. I didn't know about Pam. When Mickey had resisted the call to his maker, Eric had said that he would be tortured as long as he resisted. Eric had talked about torture to me lots of times. Pam had told me that Thalia knew better than to step out of line underneath Eric's command. So too did Clancy. Even Felicia said he was no softy. Torture was a form of currency in the vampire world. Eric took it as something that he did, something that happened, and an unchangeable fact. Before he caught himself, right after the fairies caught me, he'd called it having fun. This was a casual event to Eric and it happened all the time.

I knew I'd changed after an hour of torture by two skilled fae twins. I wouldn't be the woman I am now after a few hundred years. I'd be just as cold and calculating as I could be, just as ruthless as I could be so that I avoided that torture. There would be no switching it off to go back to the old Sookie. She would be destroyed under the onslaught of all that torture. Parts of me hadn't come through the experience last time, let alone what would happen after the fifth or sixth time. My torture had stripped me down, and I have no doubt that I still have feelings to strip off me still.

Did I really want to have a reason as to why Eric got to torture me for resisting doing what he told me? I knew my faults – it was sure to happen. I wasn't willing to have him as my Master, and I didn't expect him to make special rules for me. He didn't make them for Pam, otherwise she wouldn't have gone down on her knee. Pam knew when to heel, when to obey, and that just didn't appeal to me. But Pam didn't love Eric either, not in the romantic sense, and maybe there was a reason for that. I did love him, but how twisted would that love become if he had to punish me and force me into line as his vampire child?

Eric could make special rules for me, of course. He'd never given any indication that it would make for one fine ride of all night fun if I was a vampire. What he had said was that I would make a decent vampire…right after I said I wanted to kill Lorena for betraying Bill. But I'd still need to be in a world full of vampires where other vampires were. A whole heaping of vampires who had no interest in making special rules for me. A whole heaping of vampires that didn't mind what happened to me, ones who thrived in the vampire world and I'd met plenty. Vampires like Andre survived well. Vampires like Jennifer Cater were ruthless enough to survive until they were killed by a craftier and more ruthless vampire. I would have to live in the same world as them, swear fealty to them, do as they told me to do.

If Heidi's maker wanted her away from her son, away from the things she cared about, and off working on what he thought was best, that's exactly what Heidi did. When she'd come to track the fairies around my property, she'd told me that she had a son called Charlie. No one made special rules for Heidi to go and care for her son, put him in rehab. They'd ordered her over to the other side of the country so she wouldn't be distracted by his eventual death from drug overdose. I didn't really believe that if I was made vampire, I would be allowed to do what I wanted. There would be no caring for descendants from Jason or Hadley - who left her own son out of that world for good reason - hiding the lock of his hair in a safety deposit box.

I'd seen too the games that vampires played with the lives of people you loved. It would be but a flick of the wrist for some vampire to try to force Hunter into their service in order to control me. To do something to Jason or Michelle, or Amelia, or any of the vampires I cared about. First they'd go for the humans, the ones less able to defend themselves, the ones vampires had no use for. When Quinn hadn't wanted to give information out about Louisiana, they'd offered for him to give his sister to them to be a blood donor or whore for visiting vamps. I didn't really want to go into a world where it was nothing to force a woman to work off a debt for her mother on her back, even if it was a woman I didn't like much. That wasn't my world, and I didn't want it to be.

Even if I could ignore it when it came to Eric - that he lived in a world with such cruelty and injustice, that didn't mean that I wanted to be part of that great machine. I didn't want to become part of that the night I'd made my deal with Eric, and nor did I now. I just didn't want to treat humans as if they didn't matter. I didn't want to be what the Fellowship always told people women like me were - race traitors. I wasn't going to turn my back on humans at large as if they were nothing like me. I didn't have the benefit of the lie of vampire superiority - and I didn't believe in it anyway - not in the face of evidence to the contrary. Vampires were no better or smarter than us - they were just stronger and more ruthless. That's what I would be - stronger and more ruthless - not better as a vampire.

It didn't seem that I'd liked the small taste I'd gotten so far. Quinn had told me when I first bonded to Eric that this is what vampires did to people they were going to turn. I'd gotten a hint of some of how it worked when Appius was here. It meant all kinds of rules about invitations - Appius could walk right into my bedroom due to the bond. Eric didn't think anything of it - but he'd lost his right to privacy a thousand years ago - so he didn't think it was all fired important to tell me that I'd lost mine. Between maker and child there were no boundaries. Not only that, but I knew that I'd lose all control of the situation - over my own life and body. Not only did it mean that Appius had an all access pass into my house through our bond, but he could also give orders through it to me. I'd felt him tell me to move from Colman's blade being thrown at my back. Eric had said you couldn't resist, and that would be me if he turned me. How much would I hate Eric if he did that to me, so I obeyed him without thought of what I wanted to do? Eric was bothered more by the mental aspect than he was by the physical control, so I couldn't see any reason why I would like it if he didn't.

How long would I continue to love a creature who could order me to kill other people I loved, and who I obeyed without thought? It took a lot for me to give up the control I had so that Eric could glamour me in Mississippi. Even though I gave that up that one time, being vampire was an all access pass to that - not something for special circumstances. The idea of the amount of power Eric would have over me chilled me to the bone. Sure, he could be trusted to use it rarely, just as Appius hadn't controlled my every move, but that didn't mean that I wanted to be assimilated into Eric and the bond. If Eric made special rules for me, to make it different for me than it had been for him, would I work at Merlotte's for the rest of my undead life until Sam was long gone? Being vampire meant leaving everything I loved behind. It meant doing as my Masters told me.

Eric didn't only have one Master. He had his actual direct Master, and that was Appius. But he called Felipe and Victor his new Masters. Eric had told me that they had to go to the board of the zone they lived in and get approval to do new things. I hadn't met a vampire that didn't have a Master. None of them were free of Masters, but for the ones whose Masters I'd killed. I could kill whoever turned me, but since that was likely to be Eric, that just wasn't allowed. Killing a Master meant that there was an immediate solution to one Master, but it didn't mean you had no Masters at all. It didn't make Eric really and truly free any more than it did Bill. For Bill there was still Eric, and for Eric, there was still Victor and Felipe. I couldn't kill enough Masters to ever make them really free.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

Sometimes Eric's unlife weighed heavily on him – he'd finally let me in to see when that happened to him – he'd finally dropped his cold, hard façade to see him as a vulnerable man without a plan. Of course, I'd felt his despair through the bond as well. The bond had given me a few problems. I'd never seen it as something that was a good thing – I know for sure that Andre didn't intend to do me any favours in that hallway – but it'd been a real drag with Appius and Alexei around. I felt them from first nightfall until they went to sleep, and it was draining. Even Dermot had said that dead things were pulling on me. Maybe it was that Appius was the centre of gravity – bringing all those vampires together made of his blood meant that it created some kind of vortex.

That was new to me – the presence of others in the bond. I'd felt the same thing when I was around Lorena too – of course, I didn't realise what it was until I felt it the second time. So much about the bond was just stuff I waited to find out about my own body. Like the effect of having Appius and Alexei close to me. Even Eric didn't know what was wrong with me, so I couldn't look to him for all my answers. I'd just have to feel it out, which is fine, because I have to live with it – not anyone else.

I'd never felt Pam in the bond though, so I gave it a bit of thought – as to why I couldn't feel Pam when I could feel Appius and Alexei in the bond. For a start, the only time Pam has been away from Eric, I've been with her. I don't know that I've ever not felt Pam in the bond. But I don't realise it, because she's around all the time. Since I've bonded to Eric, Pam hasn't been further away than Shreveport, and most of the time Eric's with her or with me. When Pam was away from Eric, I was with her. But maybe it made my friendship with her easier. I would never really know though unless Pam left the state and didn't come back, which is not something I hope for.

I'd felt that same feeling when I met up with Lorena too. I didn't feel it around Judith, and I think it has to do with the amount of blood from each vampire. I didn't know if Bill's blood had worn off. It was still strong enough in Rhodes that he could draw me to him under the rubble, so the bond with Eric didn't cancel Bill's blood out. Bill really needed me that day, so I didn't resent that he called me to him that way. I couldn't find any other vampire that day – and I was glad that Bill was still around. He'd saved me from Lochlan and Neave, and I was grateful for that.

Bill and Lorena were together for about seventy years, by how I'd put the story together. That's a long time for a couple – even Eric remarked that it was an intense relationship for vampires and a bit unusual. I can't imagine how much of Lorena's blood that Bill had had – and I'd had lots of Bill's blood before I ever made it to Mississippi. Bill was turned by Lorena, so maybe that made the blood connection more intense too. All of Bill's blood came from Lorena, and they had a long time together, sharing blood and binding themselves closer together.

I'd had a lot of blood from Eric recently and of course, Eric and I had a bond. We hadn't been exchanging blood recently – not since just after the fairy war. I can't say that I was unhappy about that. Sometimes it was exhilarating to be tied to Eric so closely, and sometimes I felt trapped. It also had downsides, like being tied to Eric and anyone Eric was tied to – like Appius and Alexei. I really didn't want to be tied to a whole heap of vampires, personally. Eric was fine, but everyone else Eric shared blood with? No thank you.

So why did I feel Alexei and Appius when they were around? Appius had said that it took Eric a hundred years to get to call him Master. Eric was over a thousand years old, and he seemed to have spent time with Appius after he was turned. Sure, there might have been thirty year gaps in their relationship, but they'd been in Russia at the same time, and they talked about the Crusaders as if they were both in the same area then too. Appius had shown no signs of leaving when he was here, so I'm sure he popped up in Eric's life for the last thousand years, even if it was every couple of decades.

Appius also seemed to view Eric as a potential sexual interest as well – he'd admired Eric with his shirt off, and I'm sure he wouldn't have a problem with being with Eric, if everything was cleared up with Alexei. That meant that Eric had had probably the same amount of blood from Appius as Bill had had from Lorena. Just because it wasn't one long stretch of time didn't mean that they didn't have a long standing relationship. Plenty of time there to do a substantial amount of exchanging blood, as well as the fact that Appius was Eric's maker.

Appius was Alexei's maker too – so they had the same connection. Alexei had been with Appius for eighty years, so he'd had a lot of Appius' blood too. In any one of the vampire men who'd given me blood, they'd each had long standing relationships with other vampires I could feel in our bonds. Bill had lots of Lorena's blood; Eric and Alexei had lots of Appius' blood. As Appius said himself, my senses were confused by the similarity of the blood.

But the two vampires I didn't feel – Pam and Judith – they'd had different relationships with their makers. Not the same sorts of relationships that Bill and Eric had with their makers – which wasn't in their control. Pam had told me herself that she was only with Eric for a short period of time, and sometime in the past, had moved to Minnesota. She hadn't returned to Eric – that she'd told me – so I don't think they would have exchanged that much blood. Not to the extent that Appius and Eric would have, over a long term sexual relationship.

Judith too, hadn't had an intense relationship with Lorena. Judith had told me that Lorena made her as a present to keep Bill happy. So Lorena hadn't given Judith the same amount of blood that she'd given Bill. Judith told me that she did her level best to avoid Lorena as much as possible. I don't think that Lorena exchanged blood quite as often with Judith as she did with Bill. The relationship wasn't the same - but one designed to keep Bill longer.

Overall, both Pam and Judith had had far less of their maker's blood than Bill, Eric and Alexei had had. I was tied to Bill and bonded tightly to Eric – he'd told me himself that he was binding us closer to each other before the fairy war. I'd had lots of blood from Eric, and lots of blood from Bill, and that meant that I could feel them more. When I was in Mississippi, I knew on the staircase at Russell's that Bill was there in the compound. Of course, I could feel Eric now all the way in Shreveport, an hour's drive away. But I felt that feeling when I faced both of their makers.

I felt them more because I had more of their blood. I had a lot of blood from both vampires - I was no V addict, limited to what I could get out of a small vial. I had had enough vampire blood to change me for good - make my hair thicker, my skin clearer, and I was never sick any more. I also wondered if the way the bond dragged on me had to do not only with how much blood I'd had from my vampires and their respective makers, but also my fairy heritage. I'd started noticing lots of things about my fairy heritage – little things I'd always discounted before – but stuff Claude did that stood out to me - things I didn't realise about myself.

One of the things I noticed was that while vampires loved the smell of fairies, Claude commented on loving the smell of vampires. I'd thought the same to myself too – I loved the dry smell of vampire. I'd relished it when Eric was over at my house, and out the front of Fangtasia, before the meeting for Rhodes. Maybe there was something in my fairy heritage that drew me to vampires already. There had to be a reason why fairies didn't smell a vampire a mile away and take off. Claude too, was drawn curiously to Eric during the daytime, while he was in the hidey hole. A fatal attraction of opposites – but since they'd gone to war with each other, it didn't always have to be a nice attraction, and I took no risk with Eric's safety when he was defenceless.

Now, of course, I wasn't a full fairy – not by any means. I only had a dab of fairy in me. It wasn't identifiable in my blood but for fairy "specialists" like Andre, and the knowledge of who had figured in my family tree. I might have the essential spark, but Niall had called me mortal, fragile and breakable – being part fairy wasn't going to give me anything more. I was glad for that, or I don't think I could be too drawn to vampires. That proved fatal for some fairies, and I couldn't defend myself the way they could. If I could, I wouldn't have to put up with half of the stuff from vampires, Bruno Brazell would have been toast and I wouldn't have to worry about Victor Madden again.

The other thing I noticed about Claude – and all fairies – was that they were very touchy feely. When I felt terrible after my time in that shack, Niall kissed me. When Dermot was bespelled, touch healed the spell. My own recovery from my time with the two fairy torturers had started going uphill when I'd hugged Bill and spent some time with Jason – who had fairy blood too. I'd felt refreshed spending some time in bed with Dermot and Claude, and Claude had told me he wanted to spend more time with me because of my part fairy nature. Pam said I was a fool to believe Claude, but I had lots of circumstantial evidence in my life that being around other fairies helped me feel a little better. Touching others – even if they weren't fairy - made me feel better too. Bill said that touching me had made him feel better.

It occurred to me that maybe Appius and Alexei, being that they were both feeling down enough to visit Eric, drew on me through the bond. Neither Appius nor Alexei were souls at rest – not like Eric and Pam were most of the time. Appius was worried about Alexei, and Alexei was in a whole heap of pain. So they drew on the nearest source of life and happiness – which happened to be me. It made sense. Both Appius and Alexei showed some interest in Jason too – who was starting to recover from Crystal's death, with a boom of life. That's what vampires were – dead things preying on the living – extending their life force by using the life force of others.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

I didn't want to be bonded, when it came down to it. I'd had a fine relationship with Eric without the bond. I didn't need any more input, or the feeling that maybe yet again, I was being tricked by a vampire. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. I knew that Eric was a master manipulator. I could tell myself all the time that I needed to watch out for him, to be mindful of what he is, but it didn't always lead me to good conclusions. I couldn't be expected to accept he was a vampire when it came to his instincts to drain my family, but ignore that he was a vampire when it came to how he treated me. What he is, is a thousand year old vampire who has killed more than his fair share and is very good at what he does. He's not perfect and always right, and Eric is no superhero, but he's better than me at all this stuff.

Eric has shown that he can outfox me, and it's only once I've done what he wants – once I've been had – that I realise he's gotten what he wanted, which may not be the exact same thing I wanted. Maybe I wanted something different. Maybe I didn't think Eric knew best, and he'd clearly shown me and admitted himself that he didn't always take the best course. Somewhere along the line, Victor Madden had found out about my fairy heritage, and it may have occurred to him to start looking after Eric had threatened him the night of the takeover. Maybe I didn't want to be manipulated into every situation and have things change on Eric's whims. But it had happened to me again and again.

Just because it happened didn't mean I had to like it. This was my life - Eric had his own. I didn't hate Eric for his choices, but I wasn't obliged to thank him from taking my choice out of my hands. I wasn't obliged to do what he wanted because he wanted it, and I wasn't going to fake happy and change to make him feel better. One bone of contention between Eric and I is our marriage. He'd tricked me into handing him a ceremonial knife. Now that meant he called me his wife, and I refused to just accept it, with good reason.

All of my previous experience with Eric told me that until push came to shove, he wouldn't follow expected lines of behaviour. Eric didn't wait until I was single to make his moves on me. He didn't date me before we were married. We didn't have long candlelit dinners, or long talks about our feelings. We had short talks about my feelings, as much as he could get me to tell him, and even shorter ones about his. If he could work it so my mind wasn't working properly, so that he could get information out of me before I got it out of him, he'd do that. Just like he waited until I was, ah, distracted to ask me how I felt about him, to ask me if I loved him.

After I admitted it, he told me that he felt the same way. Before that, he hadn't said a word. Eric told me himself that he may not tell me everything. If he could keep something from me, he didn't need to lie to me. Like the idea that he owned me after he left my house when his memory returned. Eric didn't feel the need to tell me I was his. He didn't even talk to me on the phone or face to face any more, but he still thought I was his. He told the whole supernatural community – even Charles Twining thought I was Eric's. But he didn't tell me, sitting in my house, working at my job, where he was free to come and pursue me in a normal relationship. He waited until a man who wasn't afraid of him turned up at my door to take me on an actual date to inform me that I belonged to him. To tell me that I wasn't allowed to date because he owned me, and should go back to sitting in my house being his, without any dates.

Not only that, but he didn't even tell me about how it all worked out from his side. Eric didn't ask me to give him some time to come to terms with the whole thing. He kept that heart's desire thing all to himself for a mighty long time. Eric could say "Mine" long before he could say "Love". He was willing to claim me as part of his retinue and obligation, when he was at my hospital bedside in New Orleans; and to vaguely admit he had some affection for me after Catfish and the men of Merlotte's had dispatched Charles Twining. But that was as far as Eric went all by himself - and I wasn't the one cursed to search him out - he was cursed to search me out.

I remember all too well that at the time Eric told me that he didn't have to hang around me to show me that he cared for me. He still didn't really think too differently, because he'd disappeared for months after he got his memories back. If I was looking for an accessible vampire who hung around all the time, reassuring me of his love and regard, that vampire wasn't Eric. If I wanted flowery tributes of love, Eric was not that man. He did what he needed – the very bare minimum of romance and sentiment to show me how he felt. Eric didn't write sonnets, he saved me from death rather than from beatings, and the one time he took me out to dinner, he waited in the car.

If Eric could get away with marrying me, in his office, and then calling me his wife, then he would. He would make no further effort, because he wouldn't see that I had a need for that effort. If I accepted that I was his wife, that's all I would ever be likely to get. It was, at this point, the very last thing I was going to yield on. In all truth, I may never have a white wedding, or a wedding other than the one I'd had, but the very least I deserved was a husband who admitted he'd married me for reasons other than politics. I wasn't going to let him get away with calling me his wife until he actually made it clear that it meant something more to him.

Eric had told me that he may not tell me everything, but that what he told me was true. So far, he'd told me that Felipe wanted me, and that was it. From there he went onto wife. Eric had been ordained as a priest with the Church of the Everloving Spirit. He knew all about modern marriages. He knew all about the rings. He knew about the ceremony – he'd been a celebrant before in the wedding of Bart and Russell. That's why he got the job for their wedding. Eric was a priest. He'd given his human wife gifts - he laid her best brooch on her breast in her tomb. He was no stranger to human women needing tokens to show that they were cared for. He had done it willingly for his human wife in her death when she couldn't appreciate the gesture, but he hadn't done it for me, who was still alive, very human and needed such a gesture. The fact that he didn't give me a ring, even though he called me his wife – that meant if I just went along, I'd never get more than I had right now.

When Eric was cursed, he'd come the closest out of any of the men I'd been with to offering me marriage – but that consisted of staying with me always and working to help me. Since that's what he'd offered me now, albeit he offered for me to come stay with him and he wasn't going to quit work, I couldn't think that a bit of paper and a ring meant a lot to him any more. But I didn't just want that. I didn't want to jump from girlfriend to wife without any token gesture from a man supposed to love me. It meant something to me though, and I wasn't going to let him get away with wife until he did something more than claim it was a politically driven ambush.

Eric had said to me that I was his wife in the only way that mattered to him. I didn't know what that meant. It could mean any number of things. But it could mean that Eric wasn't prepared to do anything more than he'd already done. In light of the fact that we'd had harsh words over my "belittling" the marriage, then that may be all I ever got – a marriage in an office, with Victor standing there waiting to whisk me off to Vegas. I'd given up trying to stop Eric from talking about me as a possession – it had gone from "mine" to "my", but there was no way I was going from "girlfriend" to "wife" without something more.

We'd been pledged for a few months now, and I had seen neither hide nor hair of anything more – Eric wouldn't even admit he'd married me for anything other than politics. He didn't say that he married me because he loved me. I may not want much, but that's not much to want. If he couldn't give me that, then he wasn't getting me to agree that I was his wife no matter how bitterly he complained. I prodded him over it every single time, giving him the opportunity to talk, telling him not to call me his wife because he'd just done it because Felipe wanted me. Since he'd made the decision to marry me, on his timetable, according to his customs, he could be the one to tell me it meant something more than a strategy to keep me in the state.

The fact that Eric must know what I wanted, and still didn't do it, meant something to me. Eric didn't mind that much if he got what he wanted, and if I wanted this enough, it would be a battle of the wills. We both knew he was avoiding telling me that I meant more to him than a political marriage. I hadn't married him by my customs and timetable, so it wasn't my job. Eric was just too stubborn to say it, and thought he could outfox me into being a wife without being asked or acknowledged as something he wanted to keep, rather than something he didn't want to lose. Until he shifted his stubborn attitude on telling me that it meant something more, I wasn't going to give him something that meant something to me - wife.

.*° o O 0 * 0 O o °*.

I had learned that while we were going great, and things were working for us, there were still things that we had to work out. I was slowly coming to abide by the bond, but if it was broken, then that was one less confusing thing in my life. If it stayed around, I was getting what Tara recommended I get - time to figure it out. I had yet to work out how a vampire and a human could make a life together and make it work, rather than end up in ruins and ruination in five years. Unfortunately, I can't turn on a dime and decide to be romantic as if these things are nothing. This is my life, and I loved it, as small as it was. As silly as it seemed to others, I liked working at Merlotte's and I liked my house. I was happy, and while that might not mean much to others, it's what I had, and it was more than what other people had. I didn't want to throw away my life like so much garbage.

If I was going to spend the rest of my life with Eric, I would have to give up more things than he would. I would need to give up my house – Eric wasn't going to limit his time at work with an hour's worth of commuting that's for sure – if I wanted to live with him. I had more time to travel - he had a twelve hour day, limited by light, which never stopped me. I had days off, and I hadn't seen Eric have many of them. If we could live together in a house where I would do fundamental human things like eat, and my food wouldn't be able to be kept in his freezer. Where everything was the history of Eric, not the history of my family, where I would have to leave everything I'd ever known behind.

Whatever I wanted to bring with me, I needed to work out how they would fit into Eric's life. He'd made space for me – some space – but not a lot. It wasn't our joint lives that we'd built together, and I wasn't holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Eric was stuck in the habits of a long life, and I had a long history in my house, my town and my job. I would need to give up everything that went along with my house, like friends and neighbours I'd lived around all my life. I could come back to visit, but that's just what it would be - a visit.

I was willing to see how it was that I would fit into Eric's life. What would be required of me, what he would need and what I would lose? I was willing to go with what Eric wanted on some of it, but not on all of it. More importantly, I wanted to move forward in a way that wasn't all for Eric, but a team for both of us, where neither lead. Where he could admit that I was his wife because I was dearest to him, not because Felipe forced him. I loved some of the things I had now, and I loved Eric too. Some of those things had been around longer than him, and I wasn't willing to ditch them so that I could have him. Eric wasn't willing to ditch his entire life for me, and I didn't want less than he had. I had to work out all of my attachment to the things I loved.