invisibilitea | IC CONTACT

Well I don't really, you know. Sleep.

[She can sometimes close her eyes and time passes but it's not really sleep]

Yeah, I remember that from that whole waking-up-and-finding-you-watching-me-sleep revelation, from when you first got here, but-- I don't know. Some things are different on this ship, thought maybe that might be one of them.

No-

[She gives a shrug]

Still dead, still unable to sleep.

All right, yeah, sorry. Thanks for the update.

[He glances down at their hands, their fingers, twined together. There's that cold prickle at his palm, same as always when he's got her hand.]

It's-- weird. I've been having these... really good dreams.

Oh!

Well, that's not bad is it?

Yeah, I'm not complaining. I'm just-- saying.

[He shrugs, a bit sharply, like he's trying to shrug it all off.]

Ah, I don't know. D'you know what I hate, I hate when people start goin' on and on about their dreams, like you even care. It's worse small talk than the weather.

[Pause]

I kind of like it.

Do you want to talk about your dreams?

[He snorts.]

Oh, yeah, of course you'd like it. No, I don't, thanks--after I just said I hate when people talk about their dreams?

What does that mean, of course -

[Mitchell, honestly]

Are you saying I'm boring?

What?

[oh shit]

No! You're not boring, I meant-- you're genuinely interested in people.

Well, I don't dream anymore, it's been a long time. It's nice to remember, sometimes.

[oh hell now he can't refuse her--]

They're not all that interesting. Mostly dreams are just-- boring shite, forgetting your keys half a thousand times and then you end up back in a house you haven't lived in for years. Those are the ones everyone has all the time, they're nothing t' write home about.

What about the good ones?

[She wants to know the good dreams, too.]

Ah, I dunno--

[He swings her hand again, stalling for time, but--]

They're not much better. Really disjointed, just... there was this hill, and everything was really far off. And a fire, just a campfire. And it was really quiet, so you could here some music off, in the distance, like there was a party goin' on, or a carnival, or something.

[Quickly, he shrugs.]

See? Nothing that you're missing.

Do you ever think about your parents?

[Yes she realizes he is over a hundred years old well them's the breaks.]

[That question sobers him a little; he looks down at their hands again, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.]

Not really, no. Definitely don't dream about them.

I saw my mother-

[She begins, but then she goes quiet]

[He glances up at that, surprised.]

When?

[She didn't tell anyone. They weren't all talking, everyone was so caught up in their own problems, it was so complicated.]

Before everything went wrong. She came to this performance. Of a man who could see ghosts. I saw her, and I suppose - I tried to speak to her.

Through the medium?

[He tightens his grip on her hand a little, a comforting squeeze.]

Had she come looking for you?

[She nods]

She wanted to tell me that she should have been there for me. That she should have known, about Owen.

[So much has been reminding her of him the past few days - conversations with Will and Sherlock not helping]

Oh, Annie--

[He stops so he can put his arm around her shoulder, first, kissing the top of her head--and that seems inadequate, and so he puts both arms around her instead, pulling her close.]

She couldn't have known, that was-- [And this sort of patter is familiar, he wants to tell her, people say this sort of thing all the time, to those that they loved, who are dead--regrets, there's oceans of it, out there--but none of that will help her now.]

Did you manage to talk t' her?

[She nods a bit and, well-]

That's why I asked for help to pass over.

[Sorry, Mitchell.]

[There's a numbness that comes over him at that--somewhere beneath it is that same twisted feeling that he gets when he thinks of the facility, of Lucy and Kemp and Annie, screaming, dragged away from them. It would take only seconds to call up the anger he feels over that.]

Oh, Annie, you should've said-- why didn't you tell us?

[But he knows that answer--because layered in there too is guilt. Her answer dates it, and he knows what he was doing when Annie was considering this, when she was dealing with all of this, alone. I'll be around more often, he'd told George and Annie both, and it had never happened, there was always something else, and then something else more important--keeping the vampires clean, keeping the deals together, trying to hold up all of fucking Bristol, alone, and manage his own hunger on top of that, and it wasn't enough, even then--]

What did you say to her?

Everyone was so busy. You were doing...whatever it is you were doing, and there was Lucy, and George moved away, and I thought, well everyone else has moved on and it's time I should, too, isn't it?

[It's the silences that will kill them]

I told her that I was all right. I made her this rose out of tissues, and I told her that it was all right, that she needed to move on, too.

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