invisibilitea | IC CONTACT

[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.

[Guilt twists in his chest again, like it's something really living, beneath the surface of his skin, lodged in between dead lungs and dead heart.

And he knows the answer to this, too--or he hopes he does, at least, because what they have has changed it all, what he feels, that should be enough to keep her here--you saved me, she said, and she wouldn't have said that if she'd wanted to stay, and he remembers her face on the television, with Lucy's blood on his hands, but he could only think of Annie, scared and pale and alone--so he knows her answer, but he asks anyways:]

Do you still think that?

[She reaches for him, to grab a hold of him, of his head so that it's pulled close to her, because this is a lot more complicated than that but the answer is still firmly no.]

Mitchell, I thought you had moved on without me. I thought I was going to just end up a alone.

[She keeps holding him]

No. I don't think that anymore.

I know-- yeah, I know, I only--

[He swallows, hard, trying to banish some of the roughness that's crept into his tone. It goes instead into his grip, into the press of his fingertips--just a little too hard, maybe; desperate. He'd wanted to hear it, from her, again. Hearing it makes it more real. She loves him, and that helps, as long as he has her--]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry you ever thought it-- it wasn't true, Annie, even then. I needed you. [Needs, now, needs her, and that comes through in the slight tightening of his grip, pressing close to her--] You're never going t' be alone. There's nothing, no one, that could take me from you.

Come on.

[She tugs his hand to get the grip off her, because it's just a little tight]

I'm not going now, and neither are you, right? It's all right.

Yeah.

[He lets her tug him off, straightening so he can look her in the eye again. His grip has shifted back to her hand again, and he clings to it, tightly--not so tightly, not as before.]

I hope your mother-- I hope she listened. I hope she understood, what you were tryin' to tell her. It's shit, being the one left behind. But I hope she understood.

[He went to purgatory to get Annie back, but he's not forgotten what the world was like without Annie--what it was like being without her, here.]

She wanted me to know that she was sorry. But she had nothing to be sorry for.

I'm not leaving you, Mitchell. Do you understand? I love you.

[She manages a small smile, because part of her is still afraid - afraid that maybe this is back to where she was with Owen, with someone who will hurt her, or hurt people around her for her, and maybe Will Graham knew what he was talking about]

[And Mitchell--who does have something to be sorry for, so many somethings--smiles back, sadly. All the things he has to be sorry for, and he still has Annie, somehow. Doesn't deserve her, but he's got her: something to keep him good, something to save him, to give him a reason.]

I love you too--and I'm going to, always. You're the best thing I've got.

Anyway.

I've been looking for better pillows but so far all the rooms have the same pillows.

[Anyway, she says, and thank God, he can shift back into something more normal, put away all those lingering feelings and hide in this again--]

Pillows? And just what are you going t' do with pillows, you've just told me you don't sleep.

I'm bribing George. With pillows.

I might make him a poached egg, too, for tea.

[oh....]

Nah, stick with pillows. And biscuits. You know how he is about eggs, he's totally mental. No, sorry, why are you bribing him?

He is so particular-

Oh! Because then he'll spend time with me in the middle of the night when you're asleep. In the middle of the...day? Afternoon? Well, whatever, as there's no sun here.

He'd spend time with you anyways, you know, you hardly need t' go around bribing people-- or just wake me up.

I can't wake you up every time I'm bored, Mitchell, you'll get irritated.

[She walks into an empty room - through the door, naturally, and opens it from the inside]

Come on, then.

I wouldn't get-- [well, hang on...] --that irritated.

[But he smiles fondly at that rentaghosting, and follows her in to the room.]

This makes you more of a pirate ghost, y'know. Space pirate ghost.

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