Sookie shakes her head, confused, and asks what the fuck he means. How can any of this work itself out to mean anything more than horror? "...I ain't sure yet? But I do know that I'm meant to do something important with my life. And soon as I find out what that is," he says willfully, beautiful and strong for a moment: "I ain't gonna fuck it up." She grins, loving this new Jason, and he kisses her forehead. "I love you, Sook. And I'm gonna take good care of you from now on. I promise." Once there was a little boy.

"How about you just take care of yourself? And stay out of trouble?" Jason begs her not to worry about him anymore, and speeds toward the door. He makes it two steps before crashing against the coffee table, stumbling, nearly falling, but he stays upright; you can hear the smile in the shout he leaves behind: "I'm good!" Sookie laughs as he bursts out into the night, intent on becoming a man, because she just remembered a very important fact most of Bon Temps forgot: Jason Stackhouse is totally awesome.

Lafayette, grumbling to himself again, picks up the garbage someone left beside, not in, the bin, and heavy is the head that wears the insane turban, and why is everybody so nasty when it takes seriously no more effort to open the thing and put the trash inside, and how can you grow up with zero home training... He hears it before he sees it, and whirls: something coming at him, fast as a fanger, fast as any of the ten types of lightning he's called down on himself, and neither filibuster nor a silver cross will save him this time. He scrambles to the top of the garbage heap, screaming for God as he goes.

Once there was a little girl, who told herself she was a princess when nobody loved her and she was all alone in the world. Abandoned by her family, deprived of love, deprived of even the memory of silence. And then one day, when things were darkest, her father appeared to her again. "Daddy. Oh, Daddy. It is you. I found you. I found you. They said you were dead. But I knew you weren't. Daddy. Hold me close..."

Bills zooms toward the Stackhouse place and rings the doorbell nervously. When Sookie shuts off The Little Princess and answers, he looks nothing so much as amazed by her. He always looks amazed by her. "You're alive?" Bill, who has learned a bit about irony since we first met him, makes a bashful face. "Well, technically no. But I am healed." He's a bit guilty: for the first time in a hundred years, he has fed. He admits it, adds it to his shame, but she can't even hear him: too amazed by the fact of him, back from the fire once again. She invites him in and shoves the door madly shut behind him, to keep the dream from waking. She holds him so close: she's black and blue, but since when did pain preempt their embrace? He can't hold her close enough. She smiles, because the pain is worth it, and touches his face. He sees her wounds and nearly gasps; she's embarrassed by them, and tries to kiss him, but he pops out his fangs and goes for his wrist, to heal her. She refuses. "Without my blood it'll take weeks for you to heal!" Sookie nods. "I don't care. After everything, I... Just need to feel human right now." Bill, nearly dying from the pain, the evidence, the horror of it: "I failed you," he says, because of course that's how he would see it: she nearly laughs. "You were willing to sacrifice yourself to save me." Bill complains with this and that, if he'd been faster, if it had been cloudier, and she shushes him, calms him, hands on his face: "My life is too short for all that." There is a place for joy on the white page of their lives. He kisses her bruises, one by one.