A/N: I smooshed the last chapter and the epilogue together, so this is it. Thank you so much to those who stuck through this one :). I should've invested in Kleenex first. I can't appreciate those who trust my HEA(ish?) promise enough, and hope it fixes a bit of the sadness.

On with it.

If I Die Young Ch 6

"I've had just enough time.

So put on your best, boys and I'll wear my pearls.

What I never did is done."

1 Year Later

Eric's POV:

The roses were perfect. Pink and orange had been her favorite. Adele's weathered hand clutched the crook of my arm on this beautiful spring day. Jason trailed a few steps behind us wearing a rather wrinkled blue suit. Honestly I was surprised he came at all, let alone go to the effort of dressing up.

We stopped about ten feet away from the granite stone, but that was more my doing than Adele's. She patted my arm fondly and continued forward to lay her own boquet of fresh dasies on the grass.

"Love you, darlin'. You know we miss you every day." Sookie's Gran had a tear in her eye when she backed away from the grave. Jason hastily plucked a small bunch of bright yellow wild flowers from a nearby bush and came forward to lay them at the foot of the headstone.

"You were wonderful, baby sis. Love you and miss you to death... er, I mean a lot. You know what I mean..."

Gran somehow managed to quietly laugh in a joyful and somber manner at the same time. "She knows, Jason." The elderly lady noticed that I was hanging back, still clutching the big boquet and staring at the grave. I didn't want to cry in front of her family, or say what I wanted to say within earshot. I didn't know what to do, or even if I could move another step.

"Come on, Jason. There's fried chicken waiting on the kitchen counter and we don't want it to get cold."

"Oh, fried chicken! Are there biscuits, Gran?" Jason asked as he was manuvered away.

"Certainly, dear boy."

I gave Adele a grateful look which she returned as she ushered Jason towards the house.

It took me several minutes to approach the grave marker even after Gran had left the cemetary to walk back home. When I finally stood before it, the epitaph carved into the granite captivated me in its simplicity. How so few words could represent the life of the woman who was the entire world to me seemed unfair.

SOOKIE NORTHMAN

July 1, 1993 – November 21, 2011

Beloved wife, sister, and granddaughter,

who was taken far too soon

to become the loveliest angel in God's Kingdom.

So few words...

All of it was unfair. Every bit of it. I felt like screaming as I placed the bunch of roses on the grass and sank to my knees.

"Min alskare, I miss you", I whispered as tears rolled down my face. I didn't bother brushing them away; they would be replaced in an instant. Trying desperately to feel like I was speaking to her and not a souless piece of rock, I continued. "I got into Dartmouth baby. Football scholarship. It's a full ride, and there was even a bit of a fight between schools about which I would go to." I chuckled mirthlessly and traced the etched letters of her name in the shiny stone.

"You would've liked it there, min alskarina. The trees are deep green and the buildings are all brick, warmed by the sunshine. After college I would have taken you to Orland. It's rainy and cold most months, but we would have gone in summer when the sky was bright and the days were long. I'd have had you barefoot and pregnant, waddling around the kitchen and cursing my name within a year."

I stopped to swallow, gazing at her name and gathering my thoughts... for my wife.

"Did I ever tell you what I thought the first time I met you, Sookie? I thought you were an angel. You were too beautiful and too kind to belong on earth. I had trouble with my english back then, but I was glad for it when I told you I loved you when you were dragging me to the school's admin office. So you see, I loved you the very day I met you... I loved you every second afterward, just as I love you now." I gently touched the dewy soft grass beneath my knees.

"... Please... wait for me, ja? I'm going to live for a while, but when I see you again min alskare, I'll have you sated and smiling for eternity."

A warm gust of wind blew on an otherwise still day, and the air carried a white petal blown from the old magnolia tree hanging above my Sookie's resting place. The elegant petal fluttered, danced and spun in the sudden breeze, and landed lightly on the top of the outstretched hand that was still touching the grass. A pair of brightly colored birds were hopping on the branches of the tree.

I looked at the petal and smiled. Rising to my feet, I shed a last, oddly happy tear at the gallavanting finches, and turned away. I placed a kiss on the petal before putting it in my pocket, and left the Bon Temps cemetary, never to return again.

My darling wife wasn't there. She never was. Her body was wrapped in pink satin on a bed of roses below that little patch of grass, but her soul was in a much better place. Sookie was busy lighting up heaven, happy and healthy, wearing the angelic innocent smile that always robbed me of speech. It might take several decades, but I would see my angel again... and that would be a wonderful day.

Epilogue

"Gather up your tears and keep 'em in your pocket

Save them for a time when you're really gonna' need 'em"

Eighty Years Later

Eric's POV:

I was doing well enough for a 99 year old man. It was still simple to walk around in the year 2091, and easy to feel calm, confidant and strong throughout my waning health. My decline was expected even in this day and age of medical miracles, and despite my metal parts and slew of pills, I was nearing the end.

Pamela had passed 24 years ago, but she certainly went kicking and screaming. Aging didn't suit my second wife much. Pam couldn't understand what was happening to her skin, to her body, or why her beauty wasn't revered as it had once been. I had married her in 2019, long after Sookie's passing, but Pamela always knew that she didn't have all of my heart… a dead woman did.

Maybe I married her out of spite, which was cruel of me, but we did have good times together. Pam had been Sookie's nurse in the last months of her life, and she brought me comfort and understanding after her death. Perhaps it was selfish, but my heart was in so much pain that it craved anyone who… knew what had happened to my love, and Pam was quite willing. She followed me to Dartmouth and shared my apartment while working for a local family practice. After three years, I appreciated her support so damned much that I proposed, and she readily accepted.

But I never loved her as she loved me… and Pamela knew it. My lack of affection was a frequent source of ammunition in verbal battle.

Flashback, 2032

"Why did you even marry me, Eric? I'm not HER!" She snarled for the umpteenth time.

"I know you aren't, believe me." I tried to ignore her fierce expression and wild, tangled hair that seemed to sizzle with the electricity of her ire.

"Then what the FUCK are we doing here, exactly? You don't love me!" Pamela slammed a sizzling skillet against the gourmet stove in a childish attempt to make me look at her.

I sighed, turning away from my laptop which I had brought to the kitchen table. A picture of Sookie was open on the screen, her beautiful face lit up as she smiled at me. "I do love you."

Furious tears smudged her thick black mascara as Pam huffed in frustration. I briefly wondered if she was born with that shit on – I never once saw her applying it, but her makeup was constant. "But you can barely stand to LOOK at me! You aren't IN love with me, are you? You never were!" My wife looked about to throw hot eggs in my face, so I picked up the gauntlet, reluctantly. I strode toward her and took the spoon from her hand and shut off the stove's burner before turning to loom over her slight, pale form.

"I'm sorry Pam, but you're right. I never was in love with you. That doesn't mean that I don't care for you, it's simply different."

"FUCK THAT! And FUCK YOU Eric Northman!" Pam pointed at the screen of my computer, scoffing. "You think you can just replace your beloved Sookie with the nearest available woman?"

My voice grew deadly cold as I tried to restrain my easy temper. "Don't you dare mention Sookie ever again."

A cruel glint of satisfaction shined on her venomous features. "Why not? Sookie doesn't give a shit. She's dead, Eric! Dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead DEAD!"

Red. My sight was completely tinged with a crimson, violent fury. "YOU BITCH! I WARNED YOU!" I lurched toward Pam, intending to strangle the life right out of her, but I just couldn't. Aside from it being horribly wrong, and despite what I said, I loved her too damn much. My fingers clenched around Pam's throat as my second wife looked up with resigned rage. Her chest heaved with furious, stilted breaths, and I released my light warning grip on her throat immediately. Angry, yes, but an abuser I was not. How did she manage to turn me into this monster?

Panting, I backed away. "I'm moving to Orland. I may love you, Pamela, but not in the way a husband should love his wife. I will not continue to disappoint you. Please tell me if you would like to remain here, or if you would prefer any of my other houses."

Pam lightly rubbed her neck, and shot me a look with a horrible glint in her icy blue eyes. "Really? Any of them? OH, the luck! Shall I take the villa in Antigua? Or perhaps the flat in Paris? I could easily see myself enjoying those."

I ran my finger through my hair, roughly. "They are yours to choose from, you miserable harpy."

"OH! A harpy, am I? Being the harpy that I am, I choose all of them!"

I swallowed with difficulty. "You can't have all of them, just one."

"Who says?" Pam's pretty pink lips snapped.

"ME! I SAY! I AM YOUR HUSBAND!"

Pam fell to her knees, sarcastically supplicant. The lacy fabric of her designer silk dressing gown pooled on the marble floor as she bent her head to the tile. "Forgive me, Master! I forgot my place, my lord. Please allow me to right my indiscretions."

It took several minutes before I could restrain the urge to throttle my own damn wife (AGAIN), and even more until my temper calmed to a slow, roiling boil. Without my conscious approval, a deep growl rumbled in my chest. Apparently that noise was her cue.

"I didn't mean to upset you, Eric." Pam stood and actually appeared moderately contrite, her dainty fingers held steady. Somehow she always knew just how far I could be pushed, and exactly when to stop. Her sporadically vengeful personality has perfected the nuance of my emotions to the exact precipice of my endurance for pain and the plummet into actual fury.

"Yes you did." I clipped, slamming the egg-covered wooden spoon against the iron pan.

She huffed, the illusion of repentance falling from her features like a veil. "Alright, yes I did. I got my point across though, didn't I?"

"That you did." The admission seemed to please her. Sometimes she favored the oddest things, and always even the smallest of triumphs.

Pam's, clear cornflower eyes cleared of spite and shined up at me. Waves of gold curled about her neck and shoulders, as though the absence of her electric spite had seeped out through the roots of her hair, leaving it soft and unassuming once more. She may not be my true love, but Pamela was indeed quite stunning. I reached for her, and even as my arms encircled my beautiful wife, I fervently wished for another. Min Sookie.

After a few moments, Pamela looked up at me. A tiny drip of water rolled down her cheek, creating a rare rivulet in her ever-flawless makeup. "She was quite something, our Sookie."

I smiled sadly and nodded. "She was."

"Did she love you enough for this?" Pamela cuddled against my chest. I stroked her flowing hair absently.

"You know she did… but she would've been stronger than I. She would have been stronger than both of us. Weakness wasn't something she was comfortable with. She wouldn't have liked it. You know that, too."

Pam kissed my chest. "I do", she said, "but she would have been just as broken."

"Perhaps", I sighed heavily, "but now it is a non-issue."

The kitchen was quiet for a beat. "I miss her too, you realize. I did my best."

"You did. The best anyone could have ever done. She was happy."

"Even at the end?"

"Yes, even then."

Pam absorbed my comment, squeezing my torso, before she pulled away. Her lithe, pale and shapely limbs strutted away from me, her dress shifting in enticing ways. Pamela was still upset, we both were, but she tossed the shining mantle of her glowing hair over her shoulder and gave me a "come hither" smile. Just like that, the switch was flipped.

"Come, my husband. Bring the spoon; you must want to punish me."

Love or no love, a man is still a man. I grabbed a clean spoon and followed.

That night as I lay in bed, I reached into the furthest back corner of my night table. The object hadn't been removed for many years, but when the lime green leather met my skin, my fingertips warmed. Pamela was sleeping soundly with her eyes covered with one of her ridiculous plastic masks full of frozen purple goo, but I still retrieved the journal as quietly as possible.

Even after all this time, the covers and pages fell open to my favorite passage.

May 15, 2011

Dear Journal,

Today (or well, yesterday), was the most wonderful day of my life! I married Eric, and it was everything I ever wished for and more…

A withered magnolia petal was pressed, almost sealed, to the pink ink on the pages, a petal that had floated down upon my hand at her grave, identical to another that had landed lightly on her nose as we slept that special night. The pad on my thumb drifted lightly across the white and I smiled.

For the first time in many years, I slept well.

Present Day

Eric's POV:

A fever overtook me, and my unresponsive body shivered in a dreary hospital bed. I was reminded of my Sookie's shaking in her final hours. Her smile was all I could see, even when my weary eyes were wide open. Despite the fantasy vision clouding my eyes, I could hear just fine.

"Is he in pain?" My 60 year old son Johan asked the doctor. "No", a kind voice replied. "We've given your father enough pain medicine that he should be resting peacefully." I wanted to remind my son to not disrespect me by speaking as though I wasn't present, but I did not wish to startle Wilhelmina. My son's wife was fragile, blonde and beautiful, just as my Sookie had been. I didn't want to trouble her with my death.

"Sookie", I whispered, staring at her ghostly face.

"What, father?" Johan pushed the doctor aside when I spoke. Wilhelmina was at his elbow in a heartbeat, hovering like an angel. I didn't know how to say this, but my son had a right to know.

"Your mother was not my true love, Jo. I adored Pamela, but Sookie was and is my only love. She died when I was nineteen. Your mother was her nurse, and when I lost her I married Pamela. She resented me. Your mother always knew I was in love with a dead woman, and not her. It was not her fault, it was mine."

Johan looked stunned and sympathetic at the same time. I continued.

"I see her in my eyes now. My Sookie. She is smiling at me, waiting for me. You would have loved her; she was so beautiful and kind. I saw the light leave her eyes under the shade of a weeping willow."

Johan and Wilhelmina grabbed my hands as my body suddenly seized. "We would have loved her, dad", Wilhelmina smiled with a tear leaking down her pretty young cheek.

Amidst the wispy ether, Sookie reached out to me, her lovely face backlit with white rays of blinding light. 'Come, my love. I have waited long enough.'

I gasped and jerked as my body tried to go to her. My only ground was the firm hands of my child and his wonderful wife… but I wanted them to let me go to her so desperately.

I gathered the last of my strength and looked at my son's face, a mirror of my own many decades ago. "Johan, Wil? I love you, and my gorgeous grandchildren. You chose well, my son."

Johan, strong man that he was, had tears leaking from eyes that were identical to mine. "You are the best thing I ever achieved, and I will go on knowing that you are happy."

"I love you min fatha."

Wil hugged my shoulders gently and her tears fell on my cheek. "I love you too, min fatha."

I smiled weakly. "Don't be sad, mitt barn, I am on my way to reunite with my love. It will be a wonderful eternity. Bury me beside the grave of Sookie Northman in Bon Temps, Louisiana. Please."

Sookie smiled at me, waving eagerly, and I knew she was bouncing in a white eyelet lace sundress and laughing. "Come on! Come on!" My love giggled.

"Of course, dad." Johan and Wilhelmina held my withered hands tightly, but I couldn't see them. I saw only Sookie.

"I love you dearly", I mumbled distractedly. "I have to go, she's waiting." With that my eyes slid shut and my sight was replaced with a blinding bright light… and a delicate hand reaching out for mine. The stunning white shimmered against a familiar small diamond ring on the hand of…

"Sookie?" I whimpered in awe.

"Yes baby, it's me. Come on. I've missed you so much!" She grabbed my suddenly youthful hand without another moment of hesitation, and I was pulled, ecstatic, into the light. The most beautiful white world met my eyes, and a wave of utter peace enveloped my entire being.

My body looked exactly the same as it had when I was nineteen, and I was draped in the shirt mama bought me in Stockholm and my low-slung jeans. I was astounded, and even more so when Sookie's tiny hand pulled me towards our weeping willow in the glittering mist. A glassy blue serene lake appeared as we sat down on an old, familiar blanket. Sookie's smile eclipsed the setting sun.

My sight devoured her beloved features as I frantically ran my hands over her cheeks, her arms, her waist... Memory had truly not done her loveliness justice. With the strength and passion of many decades past, I kissed her deeply like a desperate man lost in an endless desert and she was a miraculous oasis.

Her warm lips on mine felt like peace and sunshine, and my heart exploded with joy. Nearly speechless, I managed to stop nearly crushing her long enough to mutter against her lips: "Is this forever?"

I reached into my pocket and gently retrieved a delicate magnolia petal. Through the course of my life the petal had withered, dulled and died. Pressed between the pages of my Sookie's words for eighty or so years, the bit of flora had become brittle, but when I pulled it out of my pocket it was fresh and new… exactly like it had been as wept at my wife's grave so long ago.

Sookie was stunned, and her beautiful eyes overflowed with tears. She touched the petal lightly, cradled it gently.

Healthy and ethereal, Sookie held her open palm up and let the temperate breeze carry the petal away, taking our memories of sorrow along with the wind. Her lovely eyes danced with happiness when the weight left our souls, leaving us alone in the lush grassy idyll below our tree. A faint E + S was scratched into the bark, encircled in a lopsided heart.

"Yes my Eric", she whispered. Sookie held my large hand against her chest, directly over her hot and beating heart. "Forever and ever."

Only then did I realize that I truly was in heaven.

The End

Yo: What could be better than eternity together?

Yo-Yo: Infinite thanks and love to ganoo (aka Min Cartwheeling Eileen), storiesforevy (aka Worship Worthy Genius Junkie), dazed-rose (aka Witty to my City, aka Honeycakes), Kleenex boxes the world over, and last (but NEVER EVAR least), my twin syster and beloved beta stephie8869 (aka Mistress, aka Superwoman, aka Dream House Roomate-o-Fuckawesome, aka Mrs. JF).

To them, and to everyone who read and reviewed - you are the Yo to my Diggity, darlins!

This one wouldn't be complete without an epic thank you to my heroic oncologist Dr. Yates (my personal un-douchey Beel), FP Dr. Warwar (my dude-Gran with a medical-plan), and my bestie RN Julie (my fashion loving nurse Pammy).

Love life, my darlins. It's pretty damn awesome while we've got it!

Now quit reading and go get laid. *viking giggles*

*Heavenly Ever After Hugs*

Shanny/Yo