An ambulance was just pulling out as they arrived, sirens starting up with a long slow breath.
Annie shivered, remembering coming here when the boys had disappeared, when her hope had gone, and the world had begun to fade around her.
Mitchell had taken a few steps forward before he realized she was no longer at his side, and he turned. "What's up?"
"Nothing," she threw it off. "Come on, let's go in."
He put his arm round her, squeezing her close and squeezing a smile from her wan face as they walked in through the automatic doors.
They went quickly to the main desk. "Hey – Shirley," Mitchell pulled the name out of god-knows where. "Have you seen George tonight?"
She looked at him from behind the glass. "George Sands?" she said, sounding muffled through the speaker. "He's still up with that nurse he's dating I think."
Mitchell and Annie looked at each other.
"What do you mean 'still' up with Nina?" Mitchell asked.
"She broke something, came in this morning, arm I think." The lady turned to her colleague who was going through some files. "James, that nurse who works in geriatrics, what did she break? Was it her arm?"
"Haven't the foggiest," the man said without even looking up.
Shirley turned back, rolling her eyes. "Well she broke something anyway, and I haven't seen her discharged so I'm guessing they're keeping her in. Christ knows why. I wouldn't want to stay in this place any longer than I had to."
"Okay, thanks," Mitchell and Annie were already making to leave.
"Third floor," Shirley called after them.
They practically ran at a flat-out sprint down the first corridor, ignoring the lift (Mitchell had seen enough of lifts recently, and instinctively couldn't bare the thought of getting stuck in an old, rusty one) and taking the stairs pantingly, two at a time for some of the way, and then a staggered one by one when that became too much somewhere around the end of the first floor.
"Jesus!" Annie exclaimed. "This is why I like teleporting."
"Yeah, you'll have to teach me that sometime," Mitchell gasped, pulling open the stairwell door, and pushing her out onto the third floor.
Trying to get their breaths back, the looked about for a familiar face.
Then suddenly, Mitchell grabbed Annie and pulled her back a bit in the corridor against the wall. "Is that…?" He peered out trying to get a better look at the person he'd seen sitting on a chair further down the hallway without making it incredibly obvious that he was trying to see without being seen. "Is that George's ex-fiancée?" He turned back to Annie, incredulous.
She snuck out for a peek. "Oh my God!" she hissed. "I think you're right!"
"Well what the hell's she doing here?"
"I don't know," Annie shot back. "Bet you it's got something to do with all this, though."
"Do you remember her name?" Mitchell asked.
By the expression on her face, Annie clearly didn't. "Uh, oh – what was it?"
"I dunno," Mitchell said. "I'm never good with names."
"Did it begin with a J?" Annnie asked suddenly.
"Could have."
"Okay," she began to list girls names. "Jane – uh – Janet – uh – Jacobah…"
He gave her a scathing look. "Jacobah?"
"It's a name," she protested.
"In this country?" he said, then had his own revelation. His eyes widened. "Juliet?"
"Julia!" Annie cried, triumphant, causing of course, Julia to raise her head and look in their direction.
Caught out and not fast enough to get out of sight, the two had to accept her scrutiny and made their way down the corridor towards her, plastering happy looks on their faces.
"I wonder if she'll recognise us," Annie muttered.
"Yes, given that we're both dead, immortal and likely to have changed significantly in the last 2 years," Mitchell muttered back.
"Hello?" Julia said, as they came up. Then recognition flooded across her face like sunlight hitting a wall on a spring morning. "Oh, you're, you're George's friends. You're the…" she indicated Annie, but didn't finish her sentence. "And you're the…" she said to Mitchell, also breaking off.
"Yeah, we're the - unmentionables," Mitchell said dryly. "Julia, what are you doing here? Have you seen George?"
"He's," wide-eyed, she glanced over her shoulder. "He's in with Nina."
"Is she okay?" Annie asked.
"As far as I know, it's not serious, not life-threatening or anything," she said, then caught Annie's eye. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"
Annie just grinned. "Don't be silly," she said. "Dead references I'm fine with."
"How was she hurt, do you know?" Mitchell asked, walking past her a couple of paces to see if he could get a look into the room she'd indicated, but he couldn't.
"I don't know," she confessed. "He wouldn't tell me in the car."
"Car?"
"From the police station. You do know he was arrested?"
"Yeah, he left me a message, that's why we're here. How do you know?"
"He phoned me as well. I posted bail. But I think they've dropped the charges now anyway."
"What charges?" Mitchell exclaimed. "What was he arrested for?"
"Look," her body language screamed awkward. "Maybe you should ask him that."
"Sure," he said, happy to be turning away from her.
Annie for her part was more sympathetic, giving Julia a quick hug before following him.
She joined Mitchell at the door of the room. Inside on the bed, Nina was asleep, looking small and delicate. The puddle of a bruise seeped across her closed eyelid, and her forehead was bandaged. One arm was wrapped in a sling and rested across her chest. Beside her on the bed, George was folded carefully around her, protectively, his eyes also closed.
Mitchell reached up and tapped lightly on the glass, not expecting any reaction, but was rewarded instantly with George lifting his head from the pillow and looking towards them.
They both held up their hands in silent greeting, and he gave them a resigned smile. He leaned down and kissed Nina lightly, then carefully extracted himself from the bed without waking her. He pushed his way through the door, looking rumpled and creased.
"Hey," he said quietly.
Annie enfolded him in a hug, and he squeezed her gratefully. Mitchell settled for putting a hand on his shoulder.
"You alright man?"
"Well, I've had better days," he admitted.
"You want to get some coffee?" the vampire asked, firmly believing in the healing powers of the bean, whatever the situation.
"Sure," he said, glancing back at Nina's sleeping form. "She'll be fine as long as we're not gone too long."
"Sure," Mitchell said, moving out the way.
George turned to go, then stopped still, as Mitchell's change of position had brought Julia into view.
The other two saw his face tighten, and he turned swiftly, walking the other way along the corridor. Mitchell and Annie shared a look, then followed him, Mitchell frowning slightly as he noticed the fresh stitches in the back of George's head. What the hell had been going on for the past two days? .
None of them talked en route to the cafe, Mitchell biting back on his impatience and curiosity until they were all sitting round a table, their hands curled around three polystyrene cups of coffee, even Annie had one (she'd insisted on 'fitting in' given the surroundings).
George looked down glumly at his, not even attempting to drink it.
Eventually Mitchell could stand it no longer.
"So what happened?" he asked. "Why were you arrested? And why do you have stitches in your head?"
"Mitchell!" Annie protested. "Let him tell the story in his own time!"
"If we let him do that, we could be here all night," Mitchell pointed out.
George sighed at his criticism and leaned forwards. "We had a fight," he said.
"What?" Mitchell was surprised. "Who did? You and Nina?"
"Was this over Julia?" Annie put in, hoping their guesswork might make things easier.
He nodded, not looking at them. "Julia came to dinner yesterday and things got a bit emotional. After she left, Nina and I fought about it. It got quite heated."
"And you broke her arm?" Mitchell exclaimed incredulously.
George's response out-decibelled him easily. "Of course I didn't!" he screeched.
"Then what happened?"
George sighed dramatically, and pushed his cup away. "She was like that when I woke up this morning," he said. "We went to the room and we were still fighting, but we had the gate shut between us. We changed, and when I woke up afterwards, she was unconscious, and there was all this blood on her face."
"God," Annie said sympathetically. "Do you think the wolves got in together somehow? That you fought?"
George shook his head emphatically. "No the door between us was still firmly locked," he said. "But it was – damaged, bent, like something heavy had impacted upon it. I think – I think her wolf tried to get at mine while we were transformed, because she was so angry at me."
"Because of Julia," Mitchell broke in.
He nodded. "She was pissed because – well, lots of reasons. Mostly because I hadn't told her I think."
"You didn't tell her you were engaged before?" Annie exclaimed.
"Well how was I to know they would ever meet?" he protested. "I didn't think I'd ever see Julia again after that morning. I didn't think she'd come back."
"What did you do?"
"I got dressed, I tried to help her," he said. "But when she wouldn't wake up, I just picked her up and took her to A&E."
"How did you explain it?"
"I said she'd fallen down the stairs," he said sadly, looking at Annie.
She smiled faintly, and reached out to put her hand over his.
"So why were you arrested?" Mitchell was starting to get confused now.
"Well what I didn't tell you is that we were attacked by vampires the day before yesterday," he said.
"What?"
"Yeah, right outside the hospital, cheeky bastards! They gave her a right smack, that's where she got the black eye from, and where I got the stitches and a bloody headache. But obviously two injuries in two days flags up some kind of warning in the system, or maybe we've just got really over-reaching staff in this hospital, I don't know," George said. "All I do know is that one moment I'm sitting there with her tearing my hair out with worrying about if she's going to be okay, the next hospital security is in the room asking me to leave."
"I'm guessing you didn't take that very well?" Mitchell said.
George looked a little sheepish. "I hit one of them," he admitted. "They just wouldn't listen!" he protested. "And I was so worried about her and worked up. There they were dragging me away, like I was the one who'd broken her collar bone and bashed her face in! I kept telling them it wasn't me, and that I needed to stay with her, but nothing went in. So I tried to fight them off, and one of them just got hit somehow. I don't even remember doing it, it just happened. And of course, that looked even worse."
"Jesus," Mitchell exclaimed. "That's just – how could they treat you like that?"
"Well they have to be careful," Annie said, acting devil's advocate. "In case he had actually hurt her."
"Yeah, but he didn't though, did he, Annie. And they know him here. They know he wouldn't do that."
"Nobody knows what goes on in a relationship when it's behind closed doors," she said frankly, making the two of them uncomfortable, knowing that she was referring to Owen.
Mitchell decided to stay well away from that one, and turned back to the werewolf. "So how did it work out?" he asked.
"I got locked up," George continued his story. "I rang you, you weren't there, I managed to get another phone call, so I took a chance that Julia was still in town and rang her. She came and posted my bail about 3 o clock or so. When I got back to the hospital, Nina was already awake."
"How had she explained her injuries?"
"She just said she couldn't remember what happened. But I believe they dropped the battered woman thing right around the time she threatened to stick the 'abusive partner' leaflet she was being offered right up some doctor's arse. Nobody's said anything about it since then, so I guess they've given up on the idea. And I apologised to the security guard, so I think he's going to drop the assault charge. He said he knew how I felt."
"Which one was it?"
"That dark haired guy with the big mouth? Looks like he could eat an entire donut in a oner."
"Oh him, he's a laugh. Yeh, you don't need to worry about him."
"So you're okay now?" Annie wondered, concerned.
He smiled at her. "Doing better," he said. "Just frustrated. It never seems to end. If it's not vampires it's old boyfriends or girlfriends or some other crap. When do we get a break? When do we get to have a normal life? Oh, how did your slaying of the mad scientist go anyway?"
"Fine," Mitchell and Annie said at almost exactly the same time. Then they looked acutely embarrassed, glanced at each other like a pair of guilty teenagers, and tried to cover it up by babbling.
"He's all dealt with, so nothing to worry about there," Mitchell said.
"And Mitchell was really well behaved," Annie put in. "Didn't kill anyone or anything."
"And Edinburgh was nice."
"It really was actually," Annie agreed. "I've never been, and it was just really – nice."
"Yeah, nice."
"And the train journey, phew!" Annie said. "Don't even get me started on the…" she cleared her throat. "Yeah, well…"
George looked between then, his face creasing in confusion, his lips open to ask a question.
Then he shut his mouth. They all had secrets, all of them. They were all creatures of darkness and unpredictability. If something had happened in Edinburgh that they didn't want him to know about, then he'd just have to live with that until they changed their minds. Whatever it was, he hoped it was good for them. In fact, judging by the way they were trying not to look at each other, and the fact that Annie was blushing, it looked like it had been very good for them.
He hid his smile by picking up his neglected coffee cup, and taking a sip of the tepid liquid, grimacing. Anyway, he had enough to think about with Nina.
"When will they discharge her?" Mitchell asked.
"Tomorrow probably. She's fine really, they just wanted to make sure, y'know with the head injury and everything."
"And you? Stitches?"
He nodded, his hand going to the hard little bumps. "Bottle to the head," he said. "I got three of them though."
"You 'got' three of them?" Mitchell said incredulously. "Jesus, George, you couldn't even handle Lauren when she attacked you a year ago, now you're getting three of them?"
"Yeah, well Lauren wasn't hurting Nina was she. It's amazing what an incentive that can be. But we wouldn't have gotten out of it, I don't think, if it hadn't been for the chaplain."
"What the skinny guy with the red hair?"
"He saved us," George expounded. "Or according to Nina he did anyway, I was too busy bleeding on the floor to notice."
Mitchell blew out a surprised breath. "Well, good for him. But I'll have to have a word with those bastards. I explicitly told them to leave you alone."
"Clearly your influence is far reaching and respected," George said, his sarcasm proving that he was starting to feel more like his old self.
Mitchell smiled.
"We were so worried about you," Annie told him, squeezing his hand.
"Yeah, she thought you'd eaten someone," Mitchell dropped in, picking up his cup.
"Mitchell!" she protested in a harsh whisper. He just shrugged.
"Well, it's not out of the question," George said resignedly.
Annie looked at him with sympathy. "What are you going to do about Julia?"
"I dunno," he admitted. "I suppose I should talk to her."
Mitchell was curious. "And you really don't know why she's come back?"
George sighed. "She wanted us to get back together," he confessed.
"Seriously!" Mitchell said. "After what she did to you, did she seriously think you'd go back to her?"
"I didn't exactly treat her like a fairy princess," George defended his ex reluctantly. "And this situation hasn't been easy on anyone. But I've told her I'm with Nina and I'm not going back."
"Would you?" Annie wondered. "If you could? Would you go back?"
George tilted his coffee cup, considering the question. "I don't know," he said honestly. "Would you, if you could go back to your old life?"
Annie looked surprised at the question, as though the very idea had never occurred to her. "I'm not sure," she said, slightly uncomfortably and glancing at Mitchell. "I suppose a lot of my life before this was – well pretty much a lie, and I was just getting on with things without thinking about them. But, what we have now seems to work for me. It would be nice not to be dead, of course," she smiled. "But, if this hadn't happened, I would never have met you two, and I don't think I'd have ever really appreciated the important things, y'know? I would have just gone on. And Owen was never going to be right, and if he'd left, there might have been another Owen and more misery. I was just living in a dream world. And somehow, it's only now that I've woken up."
George nodded. "Yeah," he said, then they both looked at Mitchell.
"What?"
"Would you go back?"
Mitchell thought for precisely 10 seconds about what he'd been before Herrick: scared, lonely, ignorant. Innocent. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips. "In a heartbeat," he said.
The other two looked uncomfortable for a second.
"Look," Annie said to George. "You go and talk to Julia. We'll sit with Nina."
"Really?" he said gratefully.
"Sure," she said. "You go, we'll be up in a few minutes.
"Thanks," he said. His eyes wandered to Mitchell's face, but getting no response, he pushed back his chair and got to his feet.
Annie turned on Mitchell the moment he was gone. "What was that?" she demanded.
"What?" he said.
"That you'd go back? In a heartbeat?"
"He asked me a question," Mitchell said stonily. "I answered it honestly."
"So you'd rather all this hadn't happened to you?"
"That's right," he said, then finally looked at her and rolled his eyes. "Jesus Annie, I don't mean you and me! I mean everything I've done! I'd love to go back to the man I was, to have – died when it was my time rather than to have drifted throughout the 20th century like some minor celebrity that keeps popping up in the tabloids when you think they've finally been put to rest. I have killed hundreds of people and that's never going to be right. I'm not like you and George."
"Yeah, you're just an old cynic," Annie said grumpily, resting her head on her hands.
Mitchell watched her, a small smile playing on his lips.
"But it doesn't mean I can't appreciate what I do have," he said.
That perked her up. "Really?"
"Really," he confirmed.
"Oh, well – that's better," she said.
"Yeah," he was grinning now.
"So," she toyed with her full coffee cup. "What do you have?"
His grin widened. "I have you," he said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
She looked up and met his eye, blushing and smiling like a teenager who'd finally managed to gain the attention of the neighbourhood hunk. "So, are we – going to tell George?"
Mitchell sat back in his chair. "I have a feeling he might already know," he said, looking over at the door, as if expecting George to be standing there giving him the thumbs up. He wasn't.
"Really?"
"What, the way we kept it together when he'd asked how our trip went? He may be the most socially inept man I know, but he's not completely blind."
"Well, we should tell him," Annie said. "That it's not what he thinks. I mean it's not like we can… you know… I mean it's not like that."
Mitchell closed his eyes and shook his head. "It doesn't matter what he thinks, Annie. Let's just be content, okay. Nobody's died. Today," he added. "We're still together. The world is still turning."
"Yeah," she said, nodding. "How about that."