In some way, he thinks Annie's always held him together. It's hard for him to think there was, or ever will be, a time where she's not mocking his rigid lasagne-making routine, or leaving a thousand cups of cold tea about. He's known Mitchell longer, but his relationship with Annie has always seemed more complex, less easy to explain. She's not a sister or a girlfriend, and she's not just a friend either. He loves her in a way language can't quite explain. She knows the dark, the mundane, the Jewish guilt, the guilty pleasures, knows every corner of him in a way, in the same way that Mitchell knows what he's thinking without knowing everything about him. She knows the facets of him that he's not sure anyone else will ever know. Which is why the thought of losing her, of never seeing her again shakes him in a way he can't really define or understand. It feels like the day he was first bitten - he's lost something, that much he knows, but he can't quite place what or realize how serious the whole situation is. He eats less, stares sullenly at breakfast foods and cold liquids now, like because she's not there to prepare them for them all, toast and PG Tips should suddenly stop existing.
Another thing he's realized in the aftermath of this whole thing is just how fucking insane he sounds.
They all proceed through life a little quieter, Nina angrier, and he feels caught between the two emotions. He's angry at Kemp, at Jaggert, at Mitchell, even at Nina - it feels odd to have her back in his life again. She's made peace with her life at the same time that he feels like his has gone upside-down again. Maybe this is what they're perpetually cursed for - every time one of them has something figured out, the other person is on the other end of the situation. It's too dark, too late, too early, too rainy to think about these kinds of things because, well, because Annie - because he knows that the one person who can stabilize him in these kinds of situations, who can place a hand on his shoulder and tell him some ridiculously inane and inapplicable story about how her Nan had once crocheted the fucking parable of Noah's Ark or something in two-tone yarn, and have it somehow ease the burden he feels on his shoulders, isn't here.
The whole scenario he's concocting in his head is impossible.
So the tension winds up from his spine, his shoulders into his neck like the vines that covered the house in the Madeline stories he remembers reading to Molly. And he thinks, fuck, when the hell did his life get so out of control because he had moved in with someone entirely different, gotten her to change her life to fit him in it, and now, and now where the fuck is he? They've moved. They've moved and it's not about cups of tea or Hugh or you're working at the pub? It's about living in a place he can't stand with people he is beginning to feel himself growing resentful at because she's not here and she should be here and it is all grief, he knows, it is all grief because he's fucking gone through it before but it shouldn't be like this, he shouldn't have to go through this again and a-fucking-gain when some people walk through life with it all rainbows and butterflies. And yes, he's being unfair because this is just what unfairness does to him, turns him cold and hard and it, at least, is a welcome contrast to the growling rage of the wolf when it comes.
She should be here, and she isn't. That's what the whole situation boils down to.
She's already escaped death once, more than once, and to have her defeated by, by a fucking priest, of all things?
stranger things have happened rings in his head, just the way his mum used to say it. stranger things have happened, george, stranger things have happened except no, stranger things haven't happened. He tried to beat up a vampire with a chair, and he lived with a vampire and a ghost, and now, and now, he's lost her, he's really lost her, and he can't imagine his life without her in it so what the hell is he supposed to do?
Nina takes his hand and kisses him and tells him things like she knows she can't really understand, but she is here for him.
And he is glad for it. He is. He is, except he doesn't know what to tell her because he doesn't know what to say to Mitchell, doesn't know what to say to her, if anything at all, because he feels like his greatest confidante has just vanished, poof, from the earth.
She will never click her tongue against her teeth and look at him like he's crazy, never talk about Colin Firth with that slightly mad look in her eye, never laugh, never dip biscuits into cold tea again, never talk about the progression of her pursuit of mundanity.
And he feels her loss still, he feels the pangs of it when he wakes up and groggily rubs at his eyes because it all reminds him of her, everything, and it still feels fresh (like every month when he changes, there is no familiarity to this pain, it just is and is and is) and he just wants her back. If his life can suddenly feel like Buffy, he wants a Willow with this whole deal - can Nina just start learning magical spells or something, Celestial Beings Who May Or May Not Be Listening? - because, because, because he wants someone to bring back Annie from the dead, from the administrative hell she's trapped in (literally), because he can't see himself going on without her. Not in the same way that he had been before. He is not George without Annie. He cannot remember what George before Annie was like.
He is George, like the color black is black, except George loses definition when a value is missing, black is somehow darker or lighter depending on the absence of a shade variant, and he knows he's rambling and he sounds fucking crazy, but he needs her, don't you see, he needs her here with him, right now, and if there was ever any justice in the world, he wants to cash in all of his Jewish guilt and everything nice he's ever tried to do for anyone out of the goodness out of his heart, and he did donate to Red Nose Day once or twice, so couldn't those donations, couldn't his, what, like two hundred quid go towards something redeemable, something like feeling better, like bringing back someone who has grown to become one of his best friends in the world?
He doesn't see himself ever recovering from this. He doesn't, because how can he? He can barely fucking look at a teacup.
He almost marks his times of the month now, ticks it off on the calendar, because he needs to not think about things for once, for once, because now that is all he does, think about things, and the wolf doesn't think, it just acts, it just lashes out, and he needs that to happen so badly because he cannot lash out at Nina or Mitchell; they are all just one step closer to breaking completely.
When the moon goes full, he loses himself to the transformation; he does not think about people, about guilt, about his nakedness.
In the night, the wolf howls with grief.