Title: Sometimes We All Prefer the Lie
Fandom: Being Human (UK)
Pairing: Gen, hints of Mitchell/Annie
Rating: G
Warnings: Angst. Takes place in Series 3.

Disclaimer: Being Human does not belong to me. It belongs to Toby Whitehouse (who is a bona fide genius) and all the other brilliant writers, producers, etc., who work with him. No harm was meant. I'm just playing with these guys, I'll put them back where I found them when I'm done... more or less intact. ^_~

March 15, 2013: Beware the Ides of March? *chuckles* I do so love that timing. It's entirely appropriate. Anywho, I finally convinced myself to start watching Series 3. It's the only one I haven't watched because I knew I couldn't handle/process what happens to Mitchell at the end of it. Well… I finally felt I was able to and I started watching. And seriously, guys… the writers of this show are brilliant. George and Mitchell have a moment in the last episode of Series 2 when George tells Mitchell that he can't be Mitchell's confessor, that he'd rather have the comfortable lie of Mitchell being a good man than the truth of what he'd done and needs to atone for. Which, while on the one hand is a bit unfair to Mitchell, is also completely understandable and fair from George's point of view. He didn't have to take Mitchell back at all, after all.

Now, along comes Series 3. Annie is back and Mitchell is almost frantic with the need to keep his secret - actions he feels are supported by George's inability to cope with it - until one day he realizes that with Annie, he doesn't want the lie. He wants her to know and love and accept all of him… and she shuts him down, too. I am obsessed with how they both deny him the chance to confess and atone, so to speak. Basically, right there, they're sealing his fate. Freaking brilliant. So. Fic. ^_^ Enjoy?

Sometimes We All Prefer the Lie
by Renee-chan

"I've done such terrible things. I have to tell you..."
"No, you don't. That's all in the past. This is the man you are, now. This is the man I want."

History is a funny thing. It repeats itself - it truly does - endlessly looping, replaying the same tragedies, the same horrors, the same mistakes. Over and over, around and around, like a child's spinning top... it never ceases. Having lived over a century, Mitchell knew that better than most. And this time... this time, it just might be the death of him.

Mitchell dreamed of blood, now, all the time. Rivers of it... oceans. He drowned in it, every night, glutted and starved as it flowed over and around him, poured down his throat, bathed his skin, clogged his every pore and choked off his breath. All the things he'd done in his long, squalid life, and this one thing refused to leave him, haunted him as nothing else ever had.

Why? Why now? Why this? Surely, he'd done worse in his life. He could think of dozens of things, scores of things, more brutal, more evil than this. He hadn't earned his reputation among the others by baring his fangs and flashing the Deep in his eyes. He'd earned it, paid for it in blood. This hadn't been the first time... and it was beginning to feel as though it wouldn't be the last, either. And that scared him more than anything.

...because what would Annie think? He was her knight in shining armor, now. He'd rescued her from Purgatory - but even that was a lie, wasn't it? He'd not rescued her from anything. He'd bought her life with his own death, paid for it in yet more blood... in yet another lie. They'd let him take her, no heroics involved. She'd be so angry, so ashamed if she knew...

And that was the rub, wasn't it? What had he told Adam? Find people who are good, better than you. Surround yourself with them so that when you fail, you have to face their disappointment as well as your own. Only that plan cut both ways. He never wanted to see that kind of disappointment in Annie's eyes, never wanted to see the reflection of his own evil shining out of those blue depths. He wanted to be her knight, to be the one who kept the monsters from her door... he didn't want to be the monster who stole her happiness away. And Annie well knew that. She knew how desperately he tried to be good, tried to do the right thing, knew how very badly he was struggling, and she also knew... she knew that if she heard the things he wasn't saying, if she allowed herself to read between those lines and learn the truth - the full truth - she might not be able to forgive. And what would become of Mitchell, then?

So, they hid from each other. They hid the truth. They didn't speak of it, didn't allude to it, hid their heads under the covers and lost themselves in the lie of happy "newly-wedded" bliss. It was what Annie wanted. It was what Annie needed. And Mitchell would do anything for Annie, anything to keep from seeing that rejection on her face. And because he would do anything to keep that look from her face... he would do anything to hide the truth. Graham had been the first to pay the price for that silence and Mitchell feared he wouldn't be the last, but he was in too deep already, drowning in the ocean with no way out. All he could do now was let the tide take him where it would... and pray that someone would come along and help to keep him afloat.

"Aren't you going to ask?"
"I can't be your confessor, Mitchell. I need you too much."

It wouldn't be George. Mitchell knew that too well. George loved him, too, needed him just as badly as Annie did in his own way. But, Mitchell's monster was too much even for George to bear. The depth of Mitchell's depravity, of the pain he'd caused... George was a good man. The best. And George could never live with knowing what Mitchell had done, could never let it go unpunished. It was selfish of him, perhaps, but it was what George needed. And if George needed it... well, Mitchell would do his best to see it done.

Even if it was to be the death of him.

He could see it in their eyes, sometimes, George and Annie... the fear. They were together again, now, but for how long? How long would it be until something tore them away from each other, again? Already, things were changing. George might think he'd kept it secret, but Mitchell was an accomplished spy and he had wonderful hearing. He knew about the baby. That child would change all their lives - for the better? For the worse? No one knew. No one could know. All that Mitchell knew was that it would change things. How long would George be able to pull the veil over his eyes and ignore the truth of what he'd allowed back into his home? He'd been there, seen Mitchell still covered in the blood of his victims, seen how close he'd come to giving over his soul a second time. How long would he want that near his child?

Mitchell tried. He did. More than once. Whenever Annie and Nina went out, leaving them alone, he would try. He would turn to look at George, begging him with his eyes, his hands, his slowly beating heart, anything he had at his disposal except his voice. The blood clogging his throat wouldn't allow him the luxury of speech. And George's gaze would rabbit away from his, a moment of panicked indecision flaring to life inside his eyes before he looked away, suggesting they get pissed or watch the telly - anything to distract Mitchell from asking if now was too soon, if he was to be allowed a chance to need something from George, again, instead of only the other way 'round.

And so, he kept his silence. They paraded around the house, the hospital, the town, as though everything were normal, as though everything they did was human, even when it wasn't - especially when it wasn't. They lived their lives and Mitchell curled around his secret, thrashed in that ocean of blood, dying by inches while his friends laughed in the rowboat above him and refused to reach out a hand.

It was what he deserved. It was his just punishment. It was to be his end. The means of his death didn't matter - that wolf-shaped bullet - in his heart, Mitchell knew how he was going to die...

At the hands of those he held most dear.

He was going to die because the weight of his sins and the weight of his silence were cutting him off from any chance to atone in life and that left him only one road to atonement...

Death.

And it wouldn't be Annie or George who would help him onto that particular life raft. They needed him too much and he could never deny either of them what they needed.

"You all right, Mitchell? You look a bit peaked."

Mitchell slowly turned, raised his eyes to meet Nina's gaze, voice still choked in his throat along with the blood and the dread certainty of his own fate. He simply nodded in her direction, forced a smile onto his face that barely reached his lips, much less his eyes. And as Nina's gaze met his, he knew... a wolf-shaped bullet. It wouldn't be Annie and it wouldn't be George... but Nina was stronger than them all. She could do it. She could bear the truth that no one else in their strange, little family could. She could save him... save them all.

It was enough to give him a voice, "No, Nina, I'm not... but I think I will be." He let his lips stretch wider, flashed one single fang in a humorless, skeletal grin, "I really think I will be."