"Being Human" Season:	End of Season 2 (granted, we've only ended Season One...)
Rating:	T
Pairings:	(none)
Characters In Episodes:	Mitchell, George, Annie
Disclaimer:	This is a work of fiction, not for sale or profit, all rights belong to BBC.

　

“Burned out.”

George Sands said the words with a slow shake of his head, his voice dull and low as he stared out across the city landscape below.

Beside him, John Mitchell half-turned in his direction and looked at George, unable to say anything to either comfort or question him as his own silent pain crippled him.

Finally Mitchell turned to follow his friend’s gaze, drew in a long breath, and sighed out a single word.

“Annie.”

George said nothing in return. The two men stood there together, on the roof of the hospital, with the distant, fiery glow of their former residence brightening the night with a warm orange light.

Emergency vehicles of every nature surrounded the area, and their lights set up a colorful yet repetitious perimeter around the site. Mitchell swallowed, albeit with some effort. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before they lost the flat. It always been that way for him, with reality and the way of things ending whatever moment of happiness or contentment he seemed to find. Months earlier, it had seemed like their neighbors would drive them out of their home. Then he feared that his fellow vampires would be the undoing of the threesome’s peaceful lives together. Now the threat had swung back to that of man… to one man in particular… to the Professor.

George let out a strange sound and hugged the small, flat box in his hands closer to his chest. “Oh, Annie,” he managed to whisper. Mitchell put an arm over George’s shoulder and pulled him close, then wrapped both arms around him and hugged him tight as George’s paper-thin level of self-control crumbled, and he began weeping.

Mitchell eased George down to a sitting position on the roof, and they sat there together for some time until George’s tears subsided. Although he let go with one arm, Mitchell kept his other arm over George. He stared down at the roof for a while, then closed his eyes.

“I wish I could cry for her,” Mitchell murmured. "But I can't. I don't know why."

George sniffed and wiped at his tear-stained face. He didn’t have his glasses--they’d been lost somewhere, either during the struggle to get away from the Professor’s assistants (henchmen, Mitchell’s mind corrected) or as they’d escaped the fiercely-burning flat. George couldn’t make out the world around him very well at the moment; he could forego his glasses about a week before his transformation, as all his senses heightened and the glasses became unnecessary, but without them during his normal phase, he had difficulty in distinguishing the finer details of things beyond the reach of his hand.

“You fancied her.” George turned his tear-stained face towards his friend. “Loved her a bit. Didn’t you?”

“Didn’t you?” Mitchell countered gently.

George gave a quick nod of his head, then wiped at his face again and took several deep breaths.

“You did very well back there, you know,” Mitchell reassured him.

“If this had happened in another couple of weeks,” George replied in a shaky voice, “I would’ve done considerably more.”

“The important thing was that you didn’t panic.” Mitchell gave him another quick squeeze. “You acted instinctively. You used enough of the wolf to get us out of the window. If you hadn’t have done that, we’d have died for sure.”

George gave him a surprised glance. “I’d have died. You’d have been burned for some time--”

“And in extreme agony for some time…”

“But you’d have lived."

Mitchell slowly pulled back his arm and brought his legs up, then put his elbows on his bent knees and locked his hands together.

“Living. This isn’t living. This is existing.” He closed his eyes. “I wish that stake had gone through my heart, you know. Then I could’ve been like Lauren--drifting up into the sky. A puff of smoke, a bit of dust. Cut loose from this… this endless hunger. This cruel creature that I am.”

“We wouldn’t have you any other way,” George whispered with a slight smile.

Mitchell cracked open his eyes.

“You’re fine as you are," George continued. "Just as I’m fine as I am. There are worse things in this world than this. Worse… creatures… that we could be.”

George’s gaze went out in front of them again, towards the amber glow in the darkness.

“I guess there are,” Mitchell agreed.

George relaxed his arms and eased the small box in his hands onto his lap. For some time, his fingers stroked the torn paper of the outer covering, then he sniffed again and looked back at Mitchell. “So what do we do now?”

Mitchell shrugged and forced himself to his feet.

“I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Start again, I guess. Start yet again. A new town, a new flat, new jobs. Damn it!” Mitchell’s anger boiled to the surface. “My entire world is about starting over, pulling the pieces together after something else has shattered them. Moving every ten years or so, to keep people from seeing that I don’t age. Moving sooner than that when I’m found out. And I’m sick of it, I tell you!” He flailed his arms. “And now, look at this! They’ve taken our Annie! They’ve destroyed her. They burned down her home, the one place that kept her grounded to this plane of existence. And she hasn’t passed into death, either. Because Annie gave up death for us, and look what we gave her. Something worse than death. She’s discorporate now. It‘s the worst thing that can happen to a ghost. Before, she was gaining substance and growing in confidence, and now…”

Mitchell’s shoulders hunched and he walked away, his face averted from George’s concerned gaze.

“Mitchell,” he reminded her gently, “she knew what she was doing when she turned her back to death. She made a choice to stay here and help us fight Herrick.”

“We forced her to,” Mitchell said over his shoulder. “Maybe not physically, but surely we manipulated her. She had a kind heart, and we bound her here unnecessarily. With friendship, and… with… love…”

George sighed, then nodded to himself. He stood up and walked over to Mitchell, and put a hand on his back.

“I think you should have this, then,” he said softly. “You need it more than I do.”

Mitchell kept his head down but half-turned to look at the box which George held out to him.

“What is it?”

“A reminder,” George replied. “Something so that we don’t ever forget Annie.”

With trembling fingers, Mitchell opened the lid of the thin box and tucked the lid underneath it. There, laying on top of George’s blue silk handkerchief--a good one that he’d bought for a special occasion at the hospital--sat a broken tile.

Mitchell recognized it right off. The cracked tile in his hands had been the very tile where Annie’s head had smashed after her fall down the stairs--the tile that had killed her, essentially. Owen never replaced the broken ceramic, and it hadn’t been until Annie remembered that he’d caused her death before they all understood why… because Owen didn’t care. Not about her, or the accident, or his part in it. He didn’t care about anything, not even enough to replace a simple broken floor tile.

Mitchell gently touched the smooth, sharp edges of the broken white ceramic, then eased the lid back on top and held it to his own chest, just as George had done.

“I pulled it out the floor yesterday,” George said. He bit his bottom lip and shook his head. “I don’t know why. I thought maybe we could take it to the cemetery some day. Bury it. Maybe bury some of the pain that her death caused her. At the very least, it seemed cruel to just leave it.”

“It was,” Mitchell agreed. “Only we didn’t see it like that, did we? We must’ve stepped over this hundreds of times, without a thought as to what it must’ve meant to Annie, looking at the spot that claimed her life day after day.”

They hadn’t been there to witness Annie’s death, but Mitchell, having been through war and heard the crunch of men’s skulls beneath the butts of rifles, could certainly envision it. He could sense the brutal physical force that would’ve been required to split the tile, and her delicate skull, in one blow. He felt fresh tears come to his eyes as he imagined Annie lying there, arms by her head, a blank look on her face as her life’s blood drained out on the floor around her and her spirit separated from her body. Poor Annie, who had no control over her death as a human being or as a ghost…

“Look at what they did to my house!”

George and Mitchell screamed in unison and swung around to stare at Annie, who stood with her arms crossed and her fierce, dark gaze on the distant fire.

“You… you…” George tried to speak, but only ended up gasping.

“You’re not dead!” Mitchell exclaimed.

Annie gave him an odd glance. “Of course I’m dead. What’s up with you two?”

“No, I mean--” He pointed at her. “You’re here!”

She shrugged. “So?”

George broke out in a wide grin. “So?!??” he remarked with a squeak of his voice and a slight laugh. “We thought you were gone. A wisp of air, nothing more! What else could we think?”

A strange look came over Annie’s face. “Poof,” she said softly.

“Yea.” Mitchell looked at the box, and smiled wider, then turned and gave George an enthusiastic hug, one that nearly knocked him off his feet.

“You did it, George! You saved her!”

“Wha--?”

Mitchell took a step back, then laughed and waved the box by George’s face and the pieces of tile inside clinked together. “What do you think I mean?”

“So…” George took the box and glanced between it, him and Annie. “All this time, it was just was the tile. Where she died specifically, but not the house itself.”

“Apparently!”

Annie cocked her head to one side. “You mean… I’m… not connected to it any more?”

George stepped up as Mitchell set her down and gave her a quick hug, then tucked the box into his overcoat.

“You’re free! You can stay with us,” he explained. “Now you’re not tethered to Bristol, and you can go anywhere with us, anywhere in the whole world!”

Unable to contain himself any longer, Mitchell swept forward and pulled her into his arms, and he looped his hands around her waist and swung her in several circles.

“Oh, my Annie,” he said in a breathless voice.

Annie and Mitchell stared at one another for a moment, and it didn’t surprise George one bit when their lips finally met. He watched them for quite some time, one hand resting on the thick package in the pocket of his overcoat, and his smile never faltered.