'A girl,' Mitchell says and Ivan knows he means 'The girl'. Ivan thinks of the ghost, who flits past the windows of the little pink house, cleaning and carrying mugs of tea. He sees the way they look at each other. Maybe it's not love, not yet at least, but it's something. She rests her head on his shoulder when they watch television. He puts his hand on the small of her back when her passes her. She makes coffee before he goes off to work and tea when he comes home. He watches period dramas with her and points out all the inaccuracies in Downton Abbey. She watches old films with him and cries when the hero dies (Ivan thinks he sees Mitchell wiping away a few stray droplet as well.). They are a family and it may not be exactly human but it's perfect.
He remembers sitting watching Windsor Terrace for hours, seeing this little group of outsiders attempt to fit in, to be human. And he wants it, just a little piece of him. Not the normalcy, though sometimes Ivan thinks it would be nice to have children who he could pass on little bits of himself to (Daisy doesn't want another child, or at least she's never indicted it.). He wants the group of people he can lean on (Daisy will always be there, but nobody else, not even Mitchell and isn't that fucking ironic?), the mock stability they all so carefully enforce; paying bills, the house, getting jobs, taking delight in the mundane minutiae of life.
Mitchell, ironically, has his whole life ahead of him, he'll fall in love with that lovely ghost soon enough, George and the werewolf called Nina will have kids and he'll be named godfather or uncle or whatever it is that undead best friends get named. Ivan has found Daisy, has lived a long and fruitful life, Ivan is happy.
Ivan's seen humanity an its best and worst. He lived through Cholera, Jack the Ripper, the Russian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, two wars that ripped the world to shreds. He sees regimes rise and fall. He does not welcome death the way some do, but he does not shun it. It is an inevitability and he is so tired.
But Daisy keeps him young, keeps him from succumbing to the mundane, apathetic, fear which most of the Old Ones live in. She is his crowning gem, the protégée par excellence. Everybody needs a Daisy. But the saddest part is, he knows Mitchell will die soon and that won't happen, he'll be too wrapped up in all this vampire infighting political shit to do anything about the girl he looks at like she hung the moon. And that poor girl will be alone in a shitty eternal life, and Ivan just can't let that happen. He can't see the bounce slip out of her step or see her perfect ringlets fall limp and flat. Ivan's not in love with the ghost, rather he feels what could almost be called… paternal towards her. It thrills him that someone who was thrust head-first into this psychotic, chaotic world of their's can be dead, yet so full of life. He's heard of her powers from the other vampires, even Mitchell on occasion. She makes most of the vampires quake in their boots, yet whenever Mitchell does speak of her it is to laugh about her tea or smile about some little project she has. To everyone else she is just John Mitchell's Ghost, the one who helped kill Herrick and almost single-handedly rescued Mitchell from the Funeral Parlour.
But to Ivan, Ivan, who sees these things reflected in the eyes of others, she is the only girl to fully capture John Mitchell's heart, beating or otherwise.
Then Ivan jumps on that bomb all he can think of are Mitchell and the ghost sitting on the couch.
Ivan knows nothing of Lucy Jaggat.
