you cannot be frightened of everythin' you don't know in this world

No, she'd screamed, and she'd keep screaming it, but it wouldn't change anything.  Still, her voice is raw and cracking, and her chest feels like it's on fire.  She's got no idea how long she stands by her car in a daze, keys dangling loosely from useless fingers, but it's long enough that people are leaving the bar and the lot is filling with headlights as she tries to come to terms with what just happened.

John's gone.  He's really, truly, one hundred percent gone.  She can't call him, can't find him, can't talk to him or reach for him.  Gran's gone and John's gone and Bill's gone, all of them taken from her by sheer, stupid, mindless, heartless fate.

She knew he'd always have to leave.  She knew that -- but she'd let herself be fooled anyway.  It had been so sweet to be with him, so impossibly sweet to be in love and to have him there, loving her right back, that she'd been sure it would be worth the heartbreak.  She still thinks it is -- was -- but not like this, not dragged away without even a chance to say goodbye.  No more soft little confessions of love, no more laughter together and silliness.  His support, his strength and confidence, snatched away without even a moment's hesitation, and she feels flattened, like a knife that's been dulled.

Eventually, she remembers that the bar is still open, that the vampires are outside, somewhere, in the night.  A full moon is shining down on the parking lot, flooding it with an echo of the pale light that took John away, and all the little details of cars and gravel and branches stand out like they've been spotlit.  She can't stay out here, no matter how impossible it seems to go back to work.

(How can she be expected to work when her heart's been pulled right out of her chest?)

The keys are still in her hand -- like a person in a dream, she puts them in her pocket.  Numbness is seeping in again, the same sort of saving neutrality that had overwhelmed her in the days after Gran's passing, but this time she pushes at it, fights it.  She doesn't want to give into it, because without John to pull her back out again, she doesn't know how she'd find her way back to the world.  It hurts, though, like there's a knife stabbing into her with each step.  Her legs feel as heavy as lead.  He must be back by now, he must have found Doctor McKay or another scientist.  At least Carson will be able to look after him, will ice his elbow and bind his wrist, but who'll be there later, in the night, when what happened here replays in his dreams?  She should still be there with him -- he needs her as much as she needs him, and she does need him, needs him like she needs sleep and food and a roof over her head. 

The first time she left him, she'd been breathing and surviving, but not really living.  How much worse will it be now?

Inside, the bar is in chaos.  Everyone's talking, but there are some who have their heads together, and they looks suspiciously at her as she comes back inside.  Arlene's by the pool table, trying to coax Terry from his spot on the floor.  The poor guy looks shattered, and Sookie watches, sympathetic, her heart aching, as Arlene tells him there was nothing he could have done, that there wasn't anything anyone could do.

"I'm supposed to," he says, in a choked whisper, and Sookie has to turn away, because John would say the exact same thing.  John's gone, though, and she's still here, still with the shards of the night left to deal with and hope she doesn't cut herself.  The anger in the room is quiet but the tension is thick, and that scares her as much as anything.  This is the sort of thing that turns into a lynch mob, and the men who are blaming the vampires now won't think to separate Bill from Malcolm and the rest.  They won't know or care that he went with them to save everyone in the bar -- they'll kill him just the same, if nobody stops them.

And they mean to.  She overhears Roy telling his buddies that he knows where the house that Malcolm bought is, and though she tries to dissuade them, they brush her off, something almost gleefully hateful in their eyes.  What's she gonna do?  She tries to think, but it's like her mind's caught in mud, and she can't even strike back at them when they start mocking her for sleeping with Bill, and all her words bounce off them like so many ping-pong balls, lacking all her usual barbs, but theirs sink into the wound left by John's leaving.  Contaminated. 

It's like she has some kind of disease.  No matter that it isn't true, no matter that Bill is only a friend and the man she loves, the man who's been sharing her bed and her life and all her joys and sorrows, is gone forever.

"Nobody cares what you think," Roy sneers at her.  "Anyone who'd screw over a member of the US military for a fuckin' fanger deserves to burn right along with them.  You're a goddam anti...patriot, is what you are."

She leaves them, then, turning to the bar to catch Sam's eye.  He's filling in for Tara, his mouth set and his eyes hard, but they soften into confusion when he looks at her.  "Sookie....?"

"We gotta do somethin'," she tells him.  "These rednecks are gettin' riled up. They're talkin' about going after the vampires."

He presses his mouth into a line, but his eyes are sympathetic.  "Don't know what we could do," he says, and Arlene, back from trying to calm Terry, snorts, shakes her head.

"I hope they kill 'em all."

Sookie stares at her, aghast, but Sam leans against the bar, forehead furrowing as he looks at her.  "You seem awful worried.  I thought you were goin' home and takin' Colonel Sheppard with you.  What happened to him?"

She turns to look at him, her mouth opening, but though Arlene and Sam both watch her, no words come.  They can't -- they're stuck behind a thickness in her throat, smothered by the sudden flash of pain that shoots through her.

"He left," she says, short, and turns to get back to work.

The rest of that night is awful.  As soon as she gets the chance, she ducks into the back room and dials Bill's number, presses the phone to her ear and prays he'll answer, letting out a noise of frustration when his voicemail picks up instead.  "Bill, you have to leave, now," she says, and hangs up only to stare at the dim screen that says he isn't calling her back. 

Not Bill, too.  She can't lose Gran and John and Bill, too, it's too much, but he doesn't call and doesn't call, and when she goes to his house, he isn't there, not anywhere that she can find. 

She stays there all night, sleeping on Bill's couch once exhaustion overcomes her broken heart and her worried mind.  She can't face going home, can't face the bed they slept in together, the sheets that will smell like him, the borrowed guitar sitting in the living room.  John's ghost haunts her house as surely as Gran's does, now, and she can't stand the thought of being alone there, not yet, so she doesn't even stop by the empty place, sleeps in fits in Bill's living room until she wakes up to the sound of sirens.

Sirens.

Adrenaline pushes her up and out into the brilliant sunshine, and she runs to the car to follow the noise, finally pulling up at a house about four miles from Merlotte's, where the air is rank with thick black smoke and she coughs at the smell of sulfur and burnt flesh.  In a panic, she runs towards the house, where Mike is pulling out scorched coffins, but Andy Bellefleur stops her, tells her they found four bodies -- or what's left of them.  "<i>Four?</i>" she says, feeling faint, and runs past him to see, not caring that he tries to stop her, but what she finds at the top of the driveway almost makes her retch.  The coffin is full of bubbling, bloody, melted flesh.  There's nothing left that's even remotely recognizable.  She stares at it, and the world tips sickeningly around her, and then she's off and running back to the car, gravel scattering beneath her sneakers and her tires as she drives for home like she thinks John will be there, like she thinks Bill or Gran will be there.

The kitchen is light and bright and empty, and she falls into a chair, taking out her phone to dial Bill's number...but it goes straight to voicemail, and she closes it again with a sensation of absolute hopelessness.  That's when she looks around, really feels how quiet the house is, how empty.  She's gotten used to John being here -- but John's gone.  He's gone, and, trying to stop tears from pricking at her eyes, she looks back at the door she'd left open, only to see the mud she'd tracked in.

Well, great.  She gets up to fill a bucket and gets down on her hands and knees to scrub the floor clean, but the mud keeps flashing red in her eyes, and the water looks like it's filling with blood: she pauses, only to be assaulted by such a strong memory of Gran lying there that she thinks she could reach out one shaking hand and touch her cold one, only for it to flash away again into the muddy smear left from her attempts to clean.  "<i>Shit!</i>" she swears, throwing the brush -- it bounces off the cupboard and clatters across the floor, but though she wants to just lie down there on the tile and give up, she doesn't.

Who else will clean it up?  And when the floor is clean, she notices that the counters are looking a little dingy, that the fridge should be cleared out.  Cleaning is good, it gives her control, takes her mind off the fact that John is gone and she won't know what happened to Bill until sunset.

(Summer days are so long.)

So, she spends the day cleaning.  She scrubs and waxes the floor, washes the drapes, disinfects the bathrooms.  John's aftershave and razor are sitting on the sink -- she puts them in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror and shuts them away.  The only rooms she doesn't touch are the attic room and her own.  His things are still upstairs, but she can't bear to look at them, so she cleans instead.  She's head and shoulders inside the oven, a mask over her nose and mouth, when she feels a hand on her shoulder pulling her out.  For a half a wild heartbeat, she thinks John!, but it isn't John, it's Tara, and the disappointment is more than she can take.  She's not even sure how she ends up yelling at Tara, but there it is, her voice rough and raw.  "Do you have any idea what I've been through today? A friend would ask!"

"Don't tell me how to be your friend," Tara tells her, affronted.  "I'm the only one you got, goddamn it!"

"Lord's name in vain," she whispers to the floor, but Tara's having none of it, and her voice raises as she swears at Sookie, snapping her last vestige of self control.  "Get out of my house!" she screams.  "I've gotten very good at losing people lately, and you are only making it easier for me!"

"Bitch, I don't even wanna be here! If you are hell-bent on bein' alone in this world, I ain't gonna stop you!"  Tara leaves with a slam of the door, leaving Sookie alone and shaking with reaction, a sponge clutched and crushed in one trembling hand.  Losing people.  Being alone in the world.  She wasn't alone with John, he was always, always there for her, but John's gone.  Maybe it's better this way, to drive people off before they can leave.  Maybe he was right about avoiding hurt before it comes.  She'll never know, because she fell in love with him without ever looking back, and then she lost him and her whole life is shattering into fragile shards around her because nothing in this world makes sense anymore.  Gran murdered, Bill murdered, Jason blaming her, John gone...

Her jaw tightens so hard she's afraid for a moment that something there is going to snap, but it doesn't, so she turns back to the stove, tries to slam it closed, but it takes a few tries before the door finally sticks and she can run her hands up over her hair, like that could stop her headache, like that could make her forget.

By the time darkness falls, the house is pristine.  Outside, the muggy day has dissolved into thunder and lightning and rain, and she can't help but think of lying in bed with John, listening to the rain fall on the tin roof.  If he were here, they'd curl up together on the loveseat out on the porch, would watch the lightning flash and laugh at the way the thunder rumbles.  She misses him so much it's like she can't even breathe, and the cooler air doesn't help.

All she wants is to see him again, to see his face, touch his hand, press herself up close to his chest.  Her heart is limping in her chest, fluttering like a wounded bird, broken, she suspects, beyond repair.  She'd imagined that they had some kind of life together, that they had some kind of future, but that bright hope has been trampled on today, and she doesn't even know where to begin putting herself back together.

It rains for ages.  She sits on the porch, watching the drops pour down, before heading inside.  There are fresh flowers on the kitchen table: she takes a few of them out, finds a candle and lights it, setting it by the front window.  It's a signal, of a sort: for John, for Bill.  Keep the porchlight burning, says Gran's voice in her head, but will anyone come to the light she leaves for them?

Once the first downpour is over, she takes her few flowers and walks out into the darkness, mud and grass cool against her bare feet.  Bill's plot in the cemetery isn't far, and she finds it easily enough, kneels there to clear the stone and lay her flowers down.  Tears mix with raindrops on her face.  It's well past sunset -- if Bill were all right, he'd have come by now.  He's gone, too, just like John, just like Gran, so she lets herself weep, for him and for herself, for the life and love she'd wished and hoped for so much, but tears don't stop the smothering misery inside or calm the ache there.  How could they?  Her heart is gone, lost to another universe.  She'd loved John with her whole soul, and now he's gone, and he's taken the things she needs to work with him.

She's feeling as dull as ever when she stands to go home, but adrenaline surges through her system when something bursts through the ground and grabs at her foot: she trips, falls screaming and kicking as the thing wriggles up from a grave to pull at her.  She screams again, fights to get away, but the thing grabs at her with dirt on its hands, and rasps out her name in a familiar voice, making her stop, stunned.

"Bill?"

"Please," he says, and she scrambles to sit up, watching him with wide eyes: he looks terrible, he looks sick, and she swallows, hard.

"What --"

"There's no time," he tells her, voice rough.  "Sookie, please.  I need to -- I must feed, or I will surely perish.  Please.  If you ever felt anything for me, I -- I need your help."

John would never forgive her.  John would see it as the ultimate betrayal, proof that she hadn't learned anything.  John would tell her no, and get between her and Bill.

But John is gone, and he isn't coming back, and if she doesn't do this, she'll lose Bill, too.  She can't let that happen.  She hesitates, then offers out her wrist, slowly, unsure -- but when Bill moves, it's fast as a snake and the pain is quick, making her gasp before it melts away into something very like pleasure.  It hurts, but it feels good, too, like all of the horrible things that have been pent up in her are flowing out of the wounds and into him.

Afterward, they sit in the living room while she binds her wrist as Bill looks on, apologetic.  "My blood could heal that for you," he offers, but she shakes her head.

"No.  Thanks, but I don't think I mind havin' a few hurts on the outside, for a change."

He watches her in the dim light of that flickering candle: she hadn't bothered to turn on lights.  "You're hurting."

She sits back, curls her legs up on the couch, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes on the candleflame.  The porchlight is burning, but who will come back?  "John's gone," she says, finally, and he says nothing at all for a long while.

She's not sure why it all comes out, eventually, but it does, like letting him have her blood also means he's become her confidante, but over the course of the night she spills all of her hurts and fears and pain to him: the way losing John makes her feel like she's lost a lung or an arm, the emptiness of the house without him and Gran, how much she loved him, how angry she is at everyone for no good reason, except Jason, because he hit her and because of Uncle Bartlett and because he's too damn dumb for his own good.  Bill tenses, momentarily, but he says nothing, so she just continues, spilling out everything that's been weighing on her heart and mind.  His cold hand strokes her hair, his shoulder is under her head, but he does nothing except listen as the words come tumbling out.  "I don't know what to do without him," she says, and then she's crying into his shirt and he's got an arm around her.  It's not like sitting with John, she doesn't feel whole, but at least she feels safe, for now, though eventually she has to leave him and go upstairs to the quiet bedroom, while he promises to stay until dawn.

Her room.  She's been sharing it with John since the day of the funeral, and the marks he'd left behind are subtle, but there: a t-shirt in her laundry basket, an indentation in the pillow.  She sits on the mattress after slipping on a tee of her own to sleep in, runs her fingers lightly over his pillow before sliding under the sheets and pulling the pillow into her arms, closing her eyes and breathing deep.  It smells like him, and for a long moment, she can almost believe he's still here, if not for the tears that keep coming and the sobs that pull at her throat and chest.  She curls into the pillow as if it were his chest, imagining his arms around her, holds it tight, breathes it in, the scent comforting and aching at the same time.

It's not him.  It will never be him, she'll never hold him like this again or wake up to him or laugh with him or tell him how much she loves him or hear his silent voice in her head when he responds.  I love you, she thinks, with all her might, as if that thought might slip through the cracks in the universe and reach him, and she's still thinking in when weariness and exhaustion takes over and she falls into fitful sleep as dawn creeps over the edges of the trees.

He is not absent from a single one of her dreams.