"No!" she screams now. She doesn't shove him away, with her body's new strength; she retreats into it, while he stares on. What if he was right? What if your body is the enemy after all? She knows it just grew back -- vampire physiology, everything heals, she knows this -- but that's not what she's screaming now. There's a part of her asking, What if he was right? Hoyt tries desperately to fix it, anything -- "It's gonna be beautiful," he says sweetly, unsure: "Every time will be like our first time" -- and she nearly spits. "It'll hurt like hell. I'm a fucking deformity of nature. I'm gonna be a virgin forever." Just like daddy always wanted.

Jessica buries her head in the doorframe, and he watches her silently, afraid, knowing that whatever he says next is the most important thing he will ever say. How can he tell her that she's perfect, when everything conspires against it? The stretch of her neck, her white shoulders like wings, bending to the curve, like a song, every muscle under the skin, made for love. Beautiful, perfect, just like this? How can he remind her what they just taught each other tonight, that their bodies were made for love, when every nerve is screaming out? How can he welcome her back to that strange, lovely territory they discovered together, claimed together, when it's turned so perfectly hostile again? How can you look at someone's Eden, grown thick with thorns, and say anything at all? How can you bear witness to somebody else's apocalypse, and not fall alongside them?

Bill grabs Eric's arm in a hallway, which they both acknowledge is unpleasant, and Bill tells Eric for approximately the millionth time that Eric must cease all contact with Sookie, immediately. Eric laughs at him. "Calling in my maker because you couldn't win Sookie for yourself? It's feeble and desperate, even for you." Eric grins, sexy and scary and overjoyed: "Are you picking a fight?" Bill swears that she'll never be his. "And there is nothing you can do. In this, you are powerless. Accept it." He then pulls out a red flag and waves it in front of Eric's face, while making chicken noises, and slaps him across the face with a satin glove, just in case Eric was thinking of leaving it alone. Oh, Billy.