Disclaimer: I own nothing except the love in my heart and the heart in this jar.

So here it is. Takes off from the end of episode 7 and will continue on from there until Annie's subsequent capture and imprisonment.

"Que sera sera," Annie sang to the baby cooing into the shallow dip over her collarbone, "what will be will be."

Annie couldn't stop the tears. She had been holding everything back for so very long and she didn't have the strength to keep the tears in. Everything had fallen apart and she had tried so hard, so very very hard to keep things together but no. She sat in the wake of a firestorm so great it not only threatened to burn up the whole world, it guaranteed it.

"The future's not," she managed to choke out but found she couldn't continue, "I'm sorry."

Eve began to squeal as Annie's hold on her grew tighter. Annie sobbed into the white fabric of Eve's onesy great heaving sobs that racked her entire body.

She wasn't just sorry Annie was just as angry if not more so. She burned inside. It was the kind of burn that didn't ever burn anything down it just turned everything white hot. And her insides were so hot that she was sure could have swallowed the entire ocean and it would be vapor in seconds.

Annie wanted to scream, just fucking scream. She sang instead.

"Que sera sera," she sang standing from her place on the couch, "whatever will be, will be the future's not our's to see que sera sera."

The infant only answered with a whine and bubble of snot. She was so blissfully unaware that it broke everything in Annie except for one piece. One tiny part of her, that had hardened to steel over the past four years from all the loss and the pain, and the fear and bitterness, that was all that was left of Annie. A piece of her that was just big enough to slice.

She bounced the baby lightly putting the little girl to sleep. Annie didn't want her awake for what was coming but she'd wake up eventually. She knew that she'd be awake the day the world ended.

"When I was just a little girl," Annie sang, "I asked my mother what will I be."

Killer, ghost, lover, poltergeist, Annie had become a lot of things since she had died all of which her mother never warned her about.

"Will I be pretty, will I be rich," she sang thinking about how she had once worried about those things.

Then she grew up. She had never noticed before but it hurt to grow up. It hurt while she was alive and it hurt when she died. Everything had hurt except for those rare rose-colored moments of pure bliss, getting her A-levels, holding her first love's hand, Pride and Prejudice with George and Mitchell, Tom's birthday. There were others but Eve would never have that. She would never have the chance to love someone who just wasn't bloody right for her, and then find that one person who was. She would never get to feel the sting of life and love.

"When I was young, I fell in love," Annie continued the song, "I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead."

Owen was what was ahead and then after that Mitchell and then nothing. She felt like a dry well. After Owen, love became violence and after Mitchell it became blood. No one had told Annie she was a battered woman, no one had ever had the chance. She was dead by the time anyone realized but somewhere over the past four years she realized exactly what she had been.

She had been a victim her whole life and now Eve would be as well. Eve would be a victim of prophecy, a martyr but not if Annie ended it. Not if Annie burned the whole stupid prophecy to the ground.

"Que ser-"

"PLEASE PLEASE," a woman said from outside the door, "PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR!"

Annie pulled Eve closer fearful that the war had already begun. She backed away from the front door already thinking of a way to escape.

"PLEASE PLEEEASE," she screamed banging her fists on the door, "HE'S DYING! HE'S- ANNIE!"

At the sound of her name she turned to flee. If that woman knew her name then that woman already knew too much. Annie didn't have any sympathy to spare a dying man. He'd probably be better off dead and on the other side with the way things were going. She had to get Eve to safety.

"ANNIE PLEASE," the woman sobbed, "PLEASE IT'S HAL, HAL IS DYING."

At the mention of the vampire Annie paused. The woman had stopped pounding and all Annie could hear were deep heavy sobs muffled by two doors and the short hallway between them. She waited for what was probably too long to be appropriate before putting Eve into her pram and running to the door.

The sight that met her outside the second door was both sickening and terrifying. A young woman sat on Annie's porch her make up running and mixing with dark blood smeared across her cheeks. Her clothes were covered in the dark substance as well and at her feet was a strange dark mass that couldn't have been a person. It couldn't have been Hal.

But it was.

"Oh god," Annie said frozen to her spot just inside the threshold, "oh god."

Alex didn't move either. She was so scared, so confused and the woman before wasn't at all what she expect but only because she hadn't had any expectations at all. The poor girl couldn't believe that someone had come to her rescue. Her knight in cotton gray.

"Annie?" Alex said wiping the tears from her face, "are you Annie? He said – he said to take him to Annie."

Annie didn't respond because she had come to the realization that the bloody pulp spread out on her porch steps was in fact Hal. Hal who sings Motown in marigolds while washing up, Hal who does origami from 1-1:50, Hal who is the most terrifying and formidable being she has ever met was the bloody pulp on her porch steps.

"Please are you Annie?" Alex said rising up from her seated position, "hullo? Are you even listening!"

Alex was beyond distressed and the fact that this random woman who was supposed to help her wasn't actually doing anything just made her pissed.

"Yes – yes I'm sorry yes I'm Annie," she said fumbling over her words, "quick get him in the house."

Annie rent-a-ghosted out of the house so that she was standing at what would have been Hal's feet. She reached down and lifted his legs into her arms. Alex followed Annie's lead and looped her arms under his armpits and lifted him as best as she could.

"You're really good at that you know," Alex grunted struggling to keep Hal from falling to the floor, "better than me at least."

"I'm sorry what?" Annie said just as breathless.

"Rent-a-ghosting," Alex said before stopping and looking around in confusion, "em where are we goin' from here?"

Annie looked up and found they had barely gotten past the door. She adjusted her hold on his legs quickly before pointing out the direction of the stairs.

"Up the stairs, then," she said already regretting the notion as she spoke it, "we need to get him up to his room and…uh thanks I've had a lot of practice is all."

Annie wasn't quite sure how she was supposed to react to the other woman. Annie didn't even know her name and now this woman was in her house and going up her stairs. A million things were running through her head. How did this woman know Hal? How the hell did she manage to get him all the way here? Could she be trusted?

It made Annie feel exposed and awkward but she couldn't move Hal on her own.

Alex sighed as well at the word "stairs". How did someone weight so much?

As they made their way, their very very slow way, up the stairs Annie got a good look at the mess that was Hal's torso. Her stomach turned and she was sure if she still had a stomach she would have threw up bile. Annie knew what had made those scars she had seen them on so many of her friends. The spacing of the gashes, the depth and the ferocity at which they were made, it all pointed to one kind of monster.

Werewolf.

"It's just down that way," Annie said once they'd reached the top of the stairs.

"Where?" Alex said out of breath and more than just a tad frustrated.

"It's right – over - just go – ugh, " Annie sighed in exasperation; they weren't going to get anywhere like that, "here let's switch and I'll lead the way."

They placed the injured vampire gingerly on the ground before switching places and lifting him again. Both women let out a sound of surprise when Hal let out of soft grunt of pain. He mumbled something but neither Annie nor Alex could make anything of his unintelligible babble so they continued on.

When they reached Hal's door Annie awkwardly fought with the handle using her elbow to turn knob. Once the door was opened, the two women moved as quickly as they could to the immaculately made bed.

Annie felt just the slightest bit of regret as she placed the bleeding vampire on the perfectly made bed. Hal really did know how to keep a clean space. Alex couldn't have cared less.

The two stood in silence for a moment feeling both triumphant and helpless. Then Alex broke out into tears.

"Oh," Annie said taken aback by the sudden outburst of emotion, "uh I-I- it's okay. There there."

Annie reached out a hand to pat the other woman tentatively on the shoulder. Alex didn't notice the gesture she was too overcome by the events of the night. She was dead and Hal was probably dead. Her dad and her brothers would have to see what the bastard, Cutler, had done to her. Too much had happened that night for Alex, far too much.

"It's okay," Annie said, "it's okay we'll work this out. Hal will be okay."

"Oh sod him!" Alex said harshly moving away from Annie's reach, "he's the reason I got into this mess. He's the reason I'm dead."

Annie stood back shocked by the new information. She didn't know what she would have said if she had had the chance to respond but she would never know. A sound from Hal stopped her from saying anything in response.

"No hos- no hospitals," Hal slurred and Annie was at his side in a moment trying to calm him with soft words and her hand on his brow, "take me home, take me to Annie."

Annie's heart swelled at his use of the word home. Home, this was her home, and it was Hal's as well and Tom's.

Her boys.

Perhaps Mitchell, George and Nina had gone and maybe the world was coming to an end but she still had her boys and they still had their home.

She would dismantle that prophecy one way or another but first Hal.

"Go down the hall take the second left and there should be a door there," Annie said sounding very sure of herself, "grab a sheet any sheet, no wait not any of the one's from the third shelf from the top but from anywhere else and then bring it to me."

Alex paused for only a second looking at the two unsure of how she should react. Then she hurried out of the room and down the hall to perform her give task. Annie teleported down stairs and gathered up a bowl filled with water, a cloth, a scissors and a knife.

Hal would survive the night; Annie would make sure of that but she knew he would need more than warm water and make shift bandages. He would need blood.

She had been so determined that night, so full of resolute fervor. Seven years later in her little square prison filled with tea boxes, postcards and bitter memories, Annie thinks of how naive she had been. In retrospect Annie would have been better off letting him die.

A/N: So sorry this took so long. School has started up again but I will try to get a chapter in every week or so.

As always drop me a line, leave me a note. Tell me suggestions, ideas, predictions. Send me death threats, flames or violently worded notes of love.

I love them all.

Thank you for reading.

maluhia i waho

bri