Just to show you how clueless I seem to be, last chapter was very well liked. So now I'll get nervous whenever I feel proud of another one. Oh well…
In all honesty I'm so grateful for you all who have been reading and a special thanks to those of you who take the time to comment. I would have given up a long time ago if it wasn't for you. I was starting to worry that this wasn't getting anywhere but bear with me, I do have a story arc. The funny thing is that when I thought of writing this fanfic I thought the arc would be too short and now I'm hoping it won't turn into a fifty-something chapter monster.
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Annie would often torture herself trying to decide which was the blessing and which the curse: knowing one experience is your last as it is happening or blissfully ignoring it.
It had happened to her before her fall: there was the last time she kissed her mother goodbye, a last night at the cinema, a last cup of tea, a last time she felt truly loved.
After the door and her boys, she had forgotten there was a last of everything, she had been exonerated from that fate, after all, and eternity meant being past all her lasts.
But she was once more ruminating a last memory.
The trick of unknown lasts is that they're not pyrotechnic sequences edged in iron and fire. That last time hadn't been that, it was sweet and inconsequential like every last time should be: just one more link in the chain of innumerable moments that promised to never end.
It's only after you realise how naïve you were, thinking, as Auden once said, that love would last forever.
Annie longed for that last time she had felt safe.
George had never come back with the clean shirt and, so they found their way to Mitchell's bedroom. She had peeled off his body the rest of the bloody clothes, placing the ripped shirt and pants in a plastic bag to be discarded. Once she took it out to the trash she materialized back in the room; now that her hands were idle her mind was free to torment her.
She felt the abrupt hollowness of her ethereal body.
Annie sat down on the bed like a wilting flower remembering what it used to feel to have the air knocked out of your lungs.
Mitchell came and kneeled next to her when he noticed her change of demeanour.
"Are you okay?" He asked holding her hand.
"No." She said, her voice breaking a little.
"What's wrong?"
"You don't get scared at all." She cried out and suddenly he felt transported back to that day long ago when she had asked him if nothing fazed him.
"I do get scared darlin'. I'm scared about you being pulled through a door; I get scared about George being attacked again… I even get scared about something happening to Nina." He shared holding one of her wrists.
"No! Enough about us! You don't fear anything happening to you." She said touching the middle of his chest, looking for the small and round hidden scar. "Remember this?"
"How could I not?"
"I don't want to feel like that ever again…" She confessed. "How can you not worry about what can happen to you? Not to George and me, but to you? I want you to be scared, I want you to be terrified, damn it! I want you to look at me and not see me like I'm insane!"
"Oh Annie… I didn't used to… you know? Don't get me wrong… in the war… All that crap about being brave… Men in trenches trembling like little boys afraid of the dark… It's human to be afraid… When I met Herrick and Seth in that field… At first I thought they were the enemy but they turned… and their eyes… Suddenly I realised that there was a horrific world I only thought existed in my nightmares… I knew what real fear was… When he recruited me, the feel of blood leaving my body along with my life… Real unadulterated fear…"
Annie caressed his cheek while he spoke.
"After the change… I was never afraid… Blood makes you feel invincible, and to be honest, you don't think of anything besides the pleasure… Fear came when I'd sober up, so then I'd drink again… When I stopped, all those false starts… the fear would come again… But I have lived a very long life, one without much to lose… Not that I was ever suicidal… I'm bastard and the instinct to survive was there… And then… There was George… And there was you… My biggest fear is that something may happen to both of you… And yes, for the first time in a very long while I fear for myself, because for the first time I have something to live for… I'm not ready to go."
She put her hands on both sides of his face and pulled him towards her into a kiss. After a few moments Mitchell got up pulling her up with him, his arms wrapped around her slim waist. They got separated and she saw his sad eyes under a pair of too harsh eyebrows, whenever she saw him like this she wanted to run her fingertips over his brow bone until all his sorrows were gone.
"Love me." He said looking down at her face so close to his. The words had come out easily, a plea he didn't even know had been stuck in his chest god only knows for how long.
She smiled sweetly.
"You have been loved for a very long time." She said kissing him softly. Afterwards she looked into his eyes for a moment and Mitchell could have sworn he saw a flicker of his reflection in Annie's eyes. The image went away with a blink to keep her eyes dry, she sighed audibly and running her hands through his hair she continued. "And you will continue to be, for as long as I'm around."
Mitchell felt himself being punched in the gut and he gasped instinctively. He embraced his beautiful ghost, no more an echo, not a memory, but a body all warmth, texture and pulse. His fingers squeezed the flesh of her hip and nudged her to let him take her weight in his arms, and so she enveloped him with her limbs.
He may have been taking the lead but he felt vulnerable and open, his long forgotten heart held with care by her precious dainty hands.
Annie felt her aura expanding, her eyes were closed but she could see the colours dancing behind her lids, the hard wall that surrounded Mitchell finally appeared to have been taken down and, even if just for a night, she felt they were at last on the same ground, the same fears and the same hopes shared.
They weren't new lovers any more, Annie found herself thinking: in the dark they anticipated each other's movements. Whatever doubt in his head was cleared; he knew that this was the place to which he belonged when she'd greet his body. It'd make him feel ecstatic and sad all at the same time, just like he imagined coming home to Ireland would have been if he had survived the war.
Mitchell felt once more that overwhelming feeling when he entered her. When she so lovingly received him within herself. He was inside her and yet he could feel her in his mind. It was her growing within him, rushing through his veins like stolen blood had done before. She was consuming him, running wild inside him, and suddenly she was everywhere, inside and out.
At once strength and softness; at once drive and embrace.
His woman of violence and peace.
He had to admit that there was some physical need of having their skins touch, a bond between their minds formed; a way in which they spoke to each other without the need of words.
And they laid in silence for the rest of the night, their limbs as intertwined as their thoughts until Annie's eyes closed and he felt her mind drift gently into a calm sea.
Mitchell knew that often Annie would look at him while he slept, for all purposes dead to the world. To his knowledge, Annie had only slept a couple of times after dying. She was in his arms peacefully asleep, her still and cold beauty frozen on his chest needing only a glass coffin to stay preserved.
He looked at her gentle face peaceful against him, her unruly curls darkening part of it. A sudden thought made him dread the hollowness he'd feel when day came and she was no longer in his arms, and the notion was edged in stone: wherever he was without her, that would be the place, the sorrowful place where she'd be missed the most.
The fear nestled once more in thoughts. His eyes looked over to his dresser, where his wallet rested.
A bit of paper sticking out mocking him.
A couple of newspaper clippings has been left in an envelope on the windshield of his car. Two pieces of paper left there to haunt him: one from Scotland's 'Daily Record' detailing a bizarre and lethal animal attack and the other one from the obituary section of the 'Bristol Evening Post'. Both with the sad photographs of before the tragedy: Smiles of broken lives, oblivious and frozen forever, painful reminders of a future that never was.
Annie stirred a little in his arms and his heart ached. He had let himself get comfortable once more in her peace, but the threat had been made, and this time it was one that truly frightened him. The ante was upped and this time it was something he was too scared to lose.
The message had been clear.
He knew what he had to do.
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Annie had woken up in his arms still, to his secret smile and olden eyes looking intently at her and. A lazy morning spent in bed, with him listening at her account of all the things that had happened to her the days before, those days in which she missed him dearly but she walked the streets talking to him in her mind, a constant dialogue with someone who's far away.
This was the bit of heaven he allowed himself to enjoy, knowing what was to come. Carefully preserving each memory for the lonely nights ahead.
They had spent a late breakfast with George and Nina, the three of them making plans that Mitchell listened to as if they were fairy tales.
Nina had left for her flat and there were plans for a feast to celebrate they were all together.
The opportunity came far too easily.
George was going to the shops and Mitchell had offered the whole night to be his treat. He asked Annie to go along and bring the best tea and coffee she could find.
They had gone unsuspecting.
Annie was eager to come back though; she didn't wait for George to open the door and she rent-a-ghosted inside not caring if she was being rude to her friend.
She stood at the door of his room, leaning on it, looking at him unaware of her presence while he fussed about something on his bed. His bare back was to her, and she drank, unapologetically, the spectacle of his tensing muscles. Her own shoulder was bare; her grey cardigan replaced by a grey loose vest with a strap having slid off her.
Her clothes were more revealing than usual and she didn't care: they felt like water sliding off her skin. It appeared that her emotions flowed sensually and her clothing showed it. Now that she was thinking of it, if she ever thought of her non-corporeal body as air she couldn't anymore, for she felt liquid now, both body and emotions were untameable sea waves.
He moved away from the bed putting on his shirt, and she saw the object that he had been fussing about: an open duffel bag full to the brim with his clothes.
She knew what it was, but she didn't want to accept the reality hitting her hard on the face.
"Are… Are we going on holiday?" She asked, her voice faltering.
"Annie…" He said surprised to see her back so soon.
She wasn't supposed to be there. They were supposed to take longer.
"No."
"Why are you packing then?"
Her desolate voice was tugging at his heart, but he knew he had to remain stoic.
"We are not going anywhere Annie."
"We're not?" She asked in response already knowing where they were headed but terrified of getting there.
"I am… Not going on holiday… I need to move out… For a while…" He said walking ever so carefully to her.
"No!" She felt sick to her stomach.
"You weren't supposed to be here." He said.
"You were just going to leave? And what about us? Were we supposed to figure out you were gone? Like a bad tenant that decides to leave in the night to avoid paying rent?" Her disappointment was palpable and cold.
"I was going to write you a letter."
"A letter?" She said incredulous. By now George was coming up the stairs having heard Annie yell.
"George! George! Mitchell is moving out! Did you know about this? Did you talk about it? 'Better take Annie away because you know how hysterical she gets?'" She could feel herself unravelling, the house trembling along with her.
"No. Annie I didn't know…" George told her looking into her eyes wanting her to see he was telling the truth. And then he turned to Mitchell: "I cannot believe you… You told me you wanted to do something nice for both of us… I would never do that Annie." George came closer to Mitchell his own fury evident.
"He didn't know…" Mitchell said coming closer to Annie and holding her hands. "I didn't know… okay? I just… There's no other way."
"What are you talking about?" George asked.
"You're not safe."
"So you'll leave us to fend for ourselves?" His friend added.
"No! I'm weak… You saw me last night. I can't protect you anymore… I couldn't protect you George. I need to go."
"Do you have any idea of how stupid that sounds?" Annie asked feeling old wounds reopen.
"You just don't understand." Mitchell said looking down to the floor.
"Make us please… Because I just can't…" She demanded.
"I got an envelope… a couple of days ago…"
"Like the fangs?" George asked.
"Worse… It had a couple of newspaper clippings. It was about your attack in Scotland… And… Annie's death notice… It's just not about me anymore… Whoever he is… He's coming for you… if I stay here, he'll come for you… I need to go."
"It has always been about us… All of us." George reminded him.
"So you're just going to go? Where?" Annie asked.
"To the funeral parlour."
"They made a clear point that you weren't welcomed there." His best friend said.
"My ways weren't… I could stay if I… complied."
"Are you switching sides now?" George said in rage and disbelief.
"You're going to kill again." Her words were not questioning, but uttering a painful prophecy.
"No! I just want to protect you. And I can't as long as I live here."
"Are you sure it is the only way?"
"Yes George."
Annie was pacing, there was thought fighting to come to the surface. She hadn't notice that she was shaking her head.
"You knew you were leaving. Since yesterday you knew." She finally said.
"It was the only way." Mitchell added knowing what she meant.
"And what about last night? Was that goodbye? One for the road?"
He knew her well: she'd say words, not to hurt him, but to hurt herself.
"Annie…"
"No… Don't speak anymore. Not unless it's to say you're not leaving. You promised me. You said you wouldn't leave me."
The scene before George was excruciating.
"I'm sorry. I need to do this. I'm not leaving you."
"And how come it feels like you are?" She asked defeated.
"It's for the best."
"Don't. Please." She said coming closer to him and holding his hands in a feeble attempt. "I'll beg if you want me to. I won't nag you anymore." She was now begging.
"Annie… Don't do this. I'm going… I don't want to leave you like this." He said looking sadly into her eyes.
"Are you sure about this?" George finally spoke.
"Don't let him do this to us. Please George stop him!" Annie yelled turning back to him and holding on to his flannel shirt. "Tell him he's wrong. We need him. Please… We can stop him, you and I… I'll lock the door… The full moon is close, you are stronger than him…"
"We can't make him stay Annie…" George said tears threatening to make an appearance with his hands cradling Annie's already tear-stained face.
She felt betrayed by both of them and broke free. Mitchell came then and placed his hand on her shoulder.
"For you… For George and for you Annie… I need to be there to protect you. I need to leave."
"So leave! Leave now!" She yelled turning back. "But not with my blessing. I know what that place does to you. And I'm not going to be around to pick up the pieces… to have you take all that evil out on me… It's over…If you leave… "
"I will come back. I promise." He said.
"You're my best friend, don't forget that. Be safe. For us." George said coming to him and hugging him.
"Keep her safe. Keep both of you safe." Mitchell said to George.
"You'll ring, right?" George asked.
"Of course."
Annie looked at both her boys no longer stifling her sobs. When both men parted Mitchell came to Annie and pulled her to him not waiting for her approval.
"What are you doing? No! Let go! I don't want a hug! Not like this!" She yelled trying to push him away. But soon it was too hard and she left herself sink into his arms.
"I know… I know, love… But I need it…"
Soon after he had let her go, George taking over him supporting her body.
Mitchell grabbed his bag and his keys, and left them both there without looking back.
"He'll come back. He has to. It's all for us… However wrong he may be, it has always been about us."
Annie desperately tried to hold on to the hope George was offering her, but something deep inside her pulsed ominously.
After that day she would often torture herself thinking of that last night spent together. The last moment she had ever felt safe.