(But she already explained the thing she needed to learn today, tonight: She wants his danger and she is learning her own darkness, just like he doesn't want forgiveness but can't seem to get away from her. They're fucking in the wreckage; they have their hands around each other's necks and they can't let go. No one's getting out.

Not even sure if they want to, or if they should. No matter how much you love someone, even yourself, I don't think we're built to look that animal in the eye, that rattlesnake. The whole point of culture and civilization is that we don't have to. The whole point of dating a vampire is that, suddenly, you do.

But it's a two-way street, and Sookie's twice as far as anybody -- besides, as usual, her brother -- in figuring out this essential and very difficult, gross secret. Tara too, of course, but for Sookie the time has come; it is now required.

Because without understanding her own darkness, she's never going to be able to truly forgive anybody else's. Or, to put it another way, the show can only buy back last week's violation if it puts Sookie in the driver's seat. Specifically her body. And not just cowgirl style this time: She has to write that pain on Bill's body, the same way he did on hers, for them to ever be right again. And even if they are never right again, for her to be right again -- With her history? Are you kidding me? -- she needs to tell his body it's okay, and she needs to believe it.

It's the difference between putting on an animal mask, and being the animal itself. It's performative, human-minded, warm-blooded, not the near-unforgivable thing he did to her in that van. Do you see where I'm going with this? If what he did had been sexual, by the rules of this show, it would be over over. But because of the floating metaphor, it's just barely not sexual, which means once again Sookie's better off working through this on her terms instead of just staying in the hospital and saying goodbye forever. And by that same metaphor, she can accomplish it by doing whatever she was going to end up doing anyway.)

There's a fruitless argument about whether or not Sookie knows "the real Bill," which the second Tara says that Sookie realizes that this conversation is not at all worth having -- and that in fact Tara is only being an asshole because she doesn't want to talk about anything real -- so she goes all rational and logical and wonderful again: "Tara, I don't wanna fight with you. You've been through a lot. I can see you're in pain. Let's talk about it." Tara takes off for work and away from the telling of it once again, cutting the visit short, because not even Sookie is ready for her story of I Was A VAMPIRE BRIDE and all the things it made her do.