There was a laugh which escaped from her lips, though it was drawn tight, thin, borne not of humor, but of sheer disbelief. That hit before the pain ever did, leaving her stunned in the wake of his words. It seemed like a remarkably human thing to say, something to say in a wash of hurt, a lack of faith in Sookie herself, in her motives. Casting doubt on the way that she felt, on her reasons for fighting, as though any of it was for her own selfish purposes, as though any of it was for the sake of validating herself.

She was fighting for the one she loved, Sookie wanted to say. The man that she'd come to know over the past year, the man who she couldn't honestly remember living without on the island, the man who had become her family in every way, her best friend, closest confidante. Was that selfish? Was it affected by a need to prove her point? A need to show the world that vampires weren't all that they seemed. It was easy, in the wash of guilt, to add other criticisms on, but the driving edge was none of that.

The last grain that tipped the scale was a lack of confidence that Mitchell had in her.

"Is that what you think?" she managed to ask, sounding defeated, rubbing the heel of her palm against her cheek, brushing trails of tears dry. "You think I'm doing this for myself."

Spoken as a statement, and not an accusation.