This is the second to last chapter, but fear not! I have another Annie/Mitchell story in the works, along with several for The Hobbit. Stay tuned and thank you for your support, dear readers!

Annie

7. Betrayed

Mitchell can't stop crying, even after he has been dragged back to his cell. He pulls himself into his corner, pressing into the shadows, trying to disappear. His muscles still jerk spasmodically from the electric currents forced upon them. He doesn't even know why he's crying.

The pain, yes. But it's more than that. He feels like a child. Helpless. Weak. But this isn't new.

What's new is knowing that he truly has no control. That his body that has spent years screaming torturous sounds in his brain has betrayed him. The flesh that wouldn't obey him no matter how hard he tried has answered the commands of his captors at the flip of a switch. He no longer owns any shred of personhood. Except for Annie, and she can't stop crying either.

He is small and broken and is dragging her down with him.

His heart is dry and cracking in the corner.

When the trembling slows, he feels her hands on his spine and leans into her. She whispers lies of comfort and he loves her for it.

"Annie does not exist."

Mitchell has bags under his eyes and the mask makes him look more inhuman than he ever could as a vampire as he drags his tired gaze to the psychologist's.

"She is a figment of your loneliness. Your guilt. You are alone."

"Liar," Annie snarls. "No one will ever love you how I love him."

Mitchell's eyes warm and settle upon her at that and she smiles. The other man merely sighs and turns the dial, and the crackle of electricity and screaming spoils the moment.

Dr. Abandonato has long since ceased to draw daily blood samples. His assistant rarely comes in with her vials, yet even so, Mitchell still offers his arm to her whenever she does. Despite Annie's scolding.

He doesn't talk about the old days anymore.

As he recovers in the corner, trembling and sweating after being tortured, he looks nearly comatose. Annie places a hand on his temple and is transported to a house from another time. If it can even be called a house. She sits on the hearth, fighting the urge to lean as close to the flames as possible because it's so damn cold and she is Mitchell as a child. A sister sits on either side of him, one older, one younger, and they are all huddled together. Their bellies are empty and clawing.

But their ears and hearts are delighted as their mother paces and sings, rocking an ailing toddler. She sings a traditional song that Annie has heard before, but Annie has forgotten what simple pleasures there are in candlelight and beautiful voices.

"Come here, Johnny," a tall, thin man says, and she runs to him and crawls up into his warm lap. Mitchell doesn't much look like his father, but there's enough of the bearded man's face in him to be recognized. He smells of pipe smoke and peat and rocks him back and forth, rubbing his back, and she feels safe and loved. The fire crackles, his mother hums, and they all pretend the youngest isn't dying.

Annie pulls her hand away and leaves Mitchell to the rolling green of another time and place. The realization that she has never asked if he ever gets homesick makes her feel selfish. She vows to do all she can to comfort him, but compared to his father, she will never be enough.

She wonders how she ever thought this would work.

Mitchell asks her not to come with him to questioning anymore, and she agrees. Then he asks her what wind feels like.

Col. Covington watches the voltage climb higher and higher and Mitchell grow quieter and quieter against the pain. No one lasts this long without breaking. So he snaps instead of the vampire.

With a scream, he punches the restrained man hard enough to knock him from the chair, his blood splattering on his boots. By the time the colonel is pulled away, he has landed several solid kicks to the vampire's abdomen. The two are hastily separated, and Mitchell is thrown, wheezing and bleeding, into his cell.

Annie squawks and blows out all the overhead bulbs but immediately regrets it for now she can't assess his injuries. Emergency lights click on, casting an eerie blue glow about the cell. Mitchell has dragged himself to his corner.

She touches his shoulder and he winces and hisses with blackened eyes and she recoils. Even after he recognizes her, his eyes don't shift back. His bruising flesh is swelling around the mask and he looks so volatile and pathetic that she is reminded of a run over dog on the side of the road that she hopes someone else will help. But there is no one else to help him.

"It's only me," she says quietly.

He shakes his head no, and for the first time, she accepts just how mottled his reality has become. After all, Annie doesn't exist has been drilled into his head for weeks.

Yet still, she holds him, and after the adrenaline wears off, he rests his head on her shoulder. She isn't sure if he really knows she's there, of he's just too tired to care, but when she touches him, she sees the pink house, and George laughing.

"I thought I might find you here," Annie says.

Herrick turns away from the rubbish bin to face her with a smile, looking frumpy in his garbage man's uniform.

"It hasn't even been a year," the vampire croons. "Yet here you are, morals be damned."

She narrows her eyes. "This isn't about morals."

"Isn't it?"

"It's about Mitchell."

"One can hardly separate the two," he says with a smirk then wipes at his forehead. "But I'm sure you didn't track me down just to hear my philosophical ramblings."

Annie steps up to him, the armor placed around her heart glistening in the sunlight. "I need your help."

"My dear." He grins. "I thought you'd never ask."

"I'm asking now."

He closes his eyes and breathes deeply through his nose.

"What're you doing?"

He holds up a gloved hand to silence her. "Savoring the moment."

She tilts her head. "Can you not be a monomaniacal twat just this once?"

Herrick snaps his eyes open with a flash of anger that Annie relishes.

"We need to get him out."

Herrick chuckles. "We don't need to do anything."

She tries to ignore the thinning of her heart's armor.

"You see, the look on your face tells me everything. Mitchell is clearly suffering. But you intended for that, so it's something more." He narrows his eyes as he peers at her. "He's retreating into his mind, away from you. You're worried he'll never come back. That the man you supposedly love is gone."

Her body is snowflakes fluttering around her armored heart under his truth. "There is no 'supposedly' when it comes to my love."

"You see, I only wanted to get Mitchell out of there to protect myself. It's clear now that he's more than willing to be our martyr. In fact, he's probably enjoying it. The fool has hated himself since his first kill." He grabs a trash can. "I find myself in the unique, glorious position of knowing that he is wasting away, dying a slow and painful death. Maybe it will take years. But if I can't have him, no one can."

The snowflakes turn to icicles. "He was your friend."

"Mitchell was many things to me. Friend he was not. Well, I'm sure he thought we were friends. Me? I just liked having him around. I planned to use him up right away but then I saw how fun his resilience could be." He shrugs. "I would've staked him at the drop of a hat if it would get me further. In fact, I did once, didn't I?" He smiles tauntingly.

She can't tell if he's lying to hide his pain or if he's telling the truth, but the way he's relishing her expression makes the latter seem far more possible.

"It may take decades," she says, "centuries, even. But one day you will realize just how rotten and hollow you are inside… and what's waiting for you on the other side might not seem all that bad. But trust me. It is. I've been there."

With an arch of the brow, she turns on her heels and pops back to the facility, leaving Herrick behind with his slack jaw.

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