Disclaimer: Yes yes we know I'm a poor loser who has nothing GOSH rub it in why don't ya.

Takes place just after A Specter Calls.

"I just want something good for a change," she said after he offers to bare his darkest deeds to her, his soul. Or at least what's left of it.

He had been sad and offended at the time. Hal was offering her his shame, his horror and all of his secrets and she just turned him away, refused to hear him out. But later on he only feels sympathy for the girl. Hal knew what it was like to want something good. He knew what it was like to see everything just go to shit and have to pick up the pieces, sharp and reflective little things. And it is not that you want to but you must. Those pieces is all you have left and it's can do from falling even further to pieces..

"Well he is compared to –" she said but stopped.

What was she going to say? He wondered afterwards.

Sure she had been looking at him but she could have been thinking of someone else. So he made to ask her about it.

"Was it complicated with John?" he said as they sat in together in the living room.

Tom had decided to go to bed after a slice of cake and their weekly episode of Antiques Roadshow. Annie had explained to Hal early on that she didn't sleep often and after all the excitement neither he nor she were too keen on the idea of sleep.

"John?" she said confused at first but then realization hit, "ooooh you mean Mitchell."

"He was your lover and yet you called him by his last name," Hal said and although the idea was a bit strange it seemed like a very Annie thing to do.

"Oh well everyone called him Mitchell," she explained smiling fondly over the memory of her dead boyfriend, "I imagine even his mum called him that."

"But he was your lover," Hal said still confused unable to grasp the idea, "are you not supposed to be closer to him than everyone else? Even his mother?"

"Oh. Well," Annie said a little loss for words, "we weren't really lovers I suppose not in the traditional sense, the physical sense. You know me being dead and all-"

"He was dead also," Hal interjected, "couldn't he see and touch you?"

"Well yes," Annie said her mind racing trying to figure out a way to explain Mitchell to someone who had never met him, "but it wasn't like that with him and me. We didn't…you know…I mean we tried but it just wasn't there."

"You didn't want to have sex?" Hal said.

"Well I did," Annie said quickly, "he was a dish!"

An awkward moment passed as Annie's cheeks flushed. Hal's eyebrows crunched together as he stared at Annie with that universal expression of TMI.

"Not that you really care about that," Annie said fumbling to regain some kind of semblance of grace, "it was just that Mitchell didn't want me like that. I guess he just wasn't attracted to me that way."

"You are attractive, though," Hal said he never did like it when people were self pitying it annoyed him though on Annie it was almost endearing, "you are aesthetically very beautiful."

"Thanks…Hal," Annie said suddenly feeling a bit uncomfortable with the conversation, "but for Mitchell sex always translated to violence. It always came down to blood and he didn't want that with me at least that's what he told me."

"You didn't believe him?" Hal asked unable to hold back his curiosity.

He had never met another vampire who had given up blood. He had never had the chance to speak with anyone besides Leo and Pearl who had lived with a dry vampire. Hal wanted to know who John Mitchell was and what better way to find out than from the woman he loved.

"I'm not sure," Annie said and then she was suddenly very different.

She seemed older as she remembered that man, the man she had loved. Gone was the shy, bumbling Annie and in her place was a woman, a melancholy woman who had lost so very much.

"Things were strange in the end," she said, "Mitchell, he…he lied about a lot of things and I – I didn't really mind that. I've been lied to before. Boyfriends, mum, dad, everyone lies. But Mitchell's lies they caught up to him in a big way."

"Is that what made the relationship complicated," Hal asked, "his lies?"

A look of concentration came upon Annie's face as she searched for the answer. She wanted to know just as much as Hal if not more so.

"No, not only that" Annie responded speaking quickly afraid that if she didn't get out her answer quick enough then she would lose hold of it, "it was a lot of things. A lot of different terrible things and I – I was willing to stand besides him through it all. I would have sat with him for eternity in a jail cell, or cave or bloody public restroom stall if that was what would satisfy him but it was just..."

She trailed off a pained expression this time gracing her features. She didn't want to say it. It hurt to say it.

"It was just that he didn't want to," Annie said finally coming to terms with the facts, "he didn't want to keep living. He said we were for eternity but that's not what he meant. Mitchell said a lot of things he didn't really mean."

She couldn't stop the tears this time. One fell and then another; they rolled down her cheeks and then down to her chin where they fell and hit the couch only not really. The couch remained unchanged; there were no tear stains or wet spots. She left behind no evidence of ever even being there. Such was the curse of being a ghost.

Hal wanted to comfort her. He really did. He wanted to reach out and pat her on the back or touch her shoulder; he wanted to make contact but he couldn't bring himself to do so. Hal didn't like being touched and he liked touching even less. Nevertheless he wanted to make her stop crying.

"He sounds," Hal said feeling around for the right word, "he sounds very human."

Annie laughed. It was a strange sound filled with mucus and tears but a laugh.

"Yea," she said still half choking and half laughing, "he was probably the most human person I ever knew."

He knew the conversation was over then and he said no more. They sat in companionable silence each lost in his and her own world.

Annie thought about a pink house in Bristol and IKEA couches. She thought about light blue scrubs and a blond woman with a sharp tongue. She thought about Nina the only girl friend she ever really had or liked. She was so strong and stubborn and pretty. She was everything Annie wanted to be. She remembered George and not as he was just before the end but as the man he was before. Smart and kind and funny and thoughtful, always had something to add in he did, a quip waiting in the wing, that's the George she remembered. She remembered him as one half of their vampire fighting team, the gayest ninjas ever. She remembered him as the poor lost soul broken by tooth and claw that rose again to live and build a life with Mitchell and her.

And she remembered Mitchell. Oh did she remember him. Annie had come to terms with the fact that she'd probably never forget him. She remembered his smell: aftershave, soap and a hint of sweat. She remembered the way he spoke stretching out the sounds of his vowels so that everyone knew he was a proud Irish man. That beautiful man, he was dead and gone and yet he still managed to make her breath hitch.

She remembered him so very well every line and detail stitched and sown into the very fabric of her being. Annie would remember them all until the day she melted away into the air or walked through her door. They would never be dead as long as Annie walked the Earth.

Hal thought of many things as well though his trail of thought was perhaps not as pleasant or uplifting. Hal thought about everything he had heard about John Mitchell and the first time he had ever met Herrick. It was like shaking hands with a snake. Hal thought about Leo and how very much he missed his friend.

Hal remembered every horrible sin he committed and every lie he told. He would have told Annie all of those things, laid out his dastardly deeds in detail all before her eyes but now he wasn't so keen on the idea. Why? He didn't know. All he knew was that he didn't want for her to think of him the way she thought of John Mitchell.

Hal didn't want to be the ghost of the man she had loved and lost.

"I wish I could have known him," Hal said interrupting Annie's memories, "I think I would have liked him."

He was telling the truth. Although she didn't often use it, Annie did have a good judge of character. If she had loved John Mitchell really honestly loved him then he must have been a good man. Hal couldn't help but feel just the slightest bit jealous. To be thought of as the most human person a person like Annie had ever met, to be loved so deeply and purely, Hal had never known what that was like not in the whole of his existence.

Hal would have liked to have known the man capable of having all that.

"I would have liked that, Hal," Annie said smiling at him her eyes just a tab bit puffy and completely red, "I really would."

A/N: Okay kiddies you know the drill. Tell me what you think. Am I mucking up your show and your fandom? Is my writing shit and I shouldn't quit my day job?

Tell me anything you like, good, bad I don't mind. Just let me know you're out there.

Much love,

Bri