Hal had finally met another clean vampire. Well perhaps the word clean was not the term he would use to describe Adam. Twat or perhaps as Annie had called him, knob.

He was a little bastard for sure but he too had chosen to get off blood. He had chosen not to kill, not to feed, to go against his very nature.

"Show me the lute?" Adam said and Hal complied.

Hal sat the younger vampire down and went grab his lute.

"So did you know the others?" Adam asked before Hal could even start the basics.

Hal rolled his eyes at the eternal teenager's attempt to stall. If he didn't learn now how to focus his murderous intent that boy would never be able to suppress the cravings.

"Adam if you're not serious about this then its best if you just-"

"Look don't dance around the question," Adam said harshly and Hal was startled by the boy's sudden change in demeanor, "she doesn't look right anymore, Annie. She looks like a severed limb or something just walkin' about like she's okay. "

Hal was surprised at the vampire's astute observation. Adam had for the first time in Hal's presence shown the intellectual fruits of his 40 or so years. It was jarring.

"No, I didn't get a chance to meet them," Hal said once the shock wore off, "but you knew them?"

Hal thought of Mitchell instantly but then also about the two others faceless beings who were always around, always watching. He hardly knew anything about them, even Tom had had some kind of connection to the werewolves having met and known them before their deaths.

"Yea but only for a bit. George and Nina," Adam said a great sadness falling over the vampire as he spoke the names of his fallen friends, "they were really something, even Mitchell, though he was sort of a prick."

"And Annie?" Hal said suddenly very curious about the old regime.

"A right nice piece of –"

"All right that's enough," Hal said taking up his lute but before he could get down to the task of teaching Adam the basics the younger vampire had not finished yet.

"She doesn't look right," Adam said echoing his earlier statement, "without the others. I don't understand why she's still here can't she just – you know poof her door or something?"

"No, she can't poof her door; it doesn't work like that," Hal said irritated by his crude comments, "besides she has Eve and Tom and me."

"Yea but can you imagine-" Adam began but Hal cut him off.

"I don't have to," Hal said effectively silencing the other vampire, "I know exactly what that feels like but I'm still here because – because I have Annie, Tom and Eve now.

"And that's what people do, Adam. When they lose everything they find something else, they find someone else. That's what you will have to do one day because nothing and no one stays forever. It's just the natural order of things. We keep on. Annie isn't just going to abandon us because she's sad. She wouldn't do that. She just wouldn't."

Adam sat in astonishment. He didn't exactly get what just happened and where the elder vampire's outburst had come from. In fact he had been confused from the moment he showed up and Hal had told him the others were dead. He couldn't understand how it had happened. Sure those four had a lot of shit thrown their way but they always managed to get out of it. George, Nina, Annie and Mitchell, they seemed so strong, indestructible the last time he saw them but seeing Annie walking around all on her own was harsh reminder that nothing was forever. Nothing ever lasted as long as you hoped.

"Look," Adam said after a while, "I don't know what's going on with this house anymore. It's not really my place to say anything about your situation. Maybe you should just get on with teaching me the glute- "

"The lute," Hal corrected.

"Yea yea sure just teach me will ya?" Adam said desperate to diffuse the situation.

Hal assented and the two got on with playing the lute. Much to both the vampires' surprise Adam wasn't shit at the lute in fact he was quite good.

"I am actually going to miss him you know," Annie said as she stood at the bar lost in thought, "Adam is a perverted little twat but he does mean well."

Hal couldn't understand her seniment. He would definitely not be missing the vulgar little arse but he couldn't shake the feeling that he had missed out on an opportunity, to do what he didn't know.

"Really does bring back memories," she said trailing off to go and find her friends somewhere in her memories.

Hal wondered briefly with all the time that she had all alone in that house just how much of her time did she spend off in her memories. Did she always visit her friends there the way he visited his victims? Did she say sorry like he did? Or did she see John Mitchell? Or perhaps something else entirely?

Whatever she did during her free time Hal wasn't about to let her drift off at that moment.

"I put the furniture back in all the right places, upstairs I mean," Hal said effectively disconnecting Annie from the past, "I'm sorry about all that I just didn't want to do anything – reckless."

His dream had been terrifying. The thought of harming Tom or Eve was unspeakably disturbing but somehow Annie barely even made an appearance. She had been so utterly unaware of everything in his dream.

It scares me thinking about what you've done and what you could do…

…so I'm choosing to ignore it.

It still stung a bit but it made sense. Annie was very sad but he and Tom had decided to ignore it because Annie ignored it and he supposed it had worked. But he was beginning to fear that her method of ignorance and avoidance wouldn't work for much longer. What if she did leave? What if it was just he and Tom and little baby Eve? No more rota, no more tea and grey cardigans.

"Adam said something earlier," Hal said once again dislodging Annie from her thoughts, "he said that you didn't look right, he said that you looked like a severed limb without the others."

The Others that's what he had taken to referring to them as. They seemed so distant and strange to him. A choir of furies to remind him constantly that there was still so much he didn't know.

"He said what," Annie said now fully invested and just a little bit pissed, "he said I looked like a what that little twat I swear if I ever see him again I'll-"

"He was right though, Annie," Hal said stopping her mid-rant, "you walk around here sometimes like you're some kind of a-"

"Ghost?" Annie said finishing his sentence for him, "That's what I am, Hal. I'm a ghost, ghosting is what I do."

"But you're not just a ghost, you're a mother," Hal said and although Annie began to protest he continued, "you are Annie, that little girl is going to look at you one day and call you mum. And you're important to Tom and me as well. You've given us a home and a family. You aren't just a severed limb to us, Annie."

Hal stepped closer as he spoke but not too close, never too close. He retreated and sat down on one of the cushioned chairs in the parlor.

"Hal why are you bringing this up all of a sudden?" Annie said feeling a bit uneasy about where the conversation was going.

"I'm bringing this up because I'm," Hal started but he suddenly felt unsure of what he was about to say, "I'm scared Annie. I'm scared that if you keep going on this way one day you'll just wear yourself down and disappear."

A look of shock sat upon Annie's features as she listened to Hal's confession and then shock gave way to sympathy. She moved around and out of the bar to go to him. She wanted to comfort him, but she didn't know how. Hal had made it quite obvious in the past that he didn't like to be touched. So she opted to just be by his side as a way of assuring him that she was there.

"I'm not going anywhere," Annie said by Hal's side her hand hovering over his shoulder, "I've still got you lot to take of don't I?"

Annie didn't know if she should just touch him. Hal had always made those strange faces, faces of utter and complete discomfort when she had touched him before. Hal had his hands on his knees gripping the fabric covering them like they were lifelines. His eyes were squeezed shut and Annie could only think of one way to comfort the poor man.

"I'm not going to leave," Annie said placing one hand on his shoulder gingerly gauging his reaction, "I promise."

Hal let out a soft breath of air as her hand made contact but he showed no sign of discomfort so Annie let her hand slide around to his other shoulder pulling him into a one-armed hug. She was surprised when she felt a hand softly squeeze her hip and then another grip the edge of her gray cardigan.

"Hal what have you been doing to yourself?" Annie asked suddenly fearful for whatever was going on with Hal must have been huge if he was letting someone touch him.

Hal didn't know how to answer her question. It had become an obsession his need to understand the old patrons of the house, to understand John Mitchell and everything that brought about his demise. Just like his obsession with dominoes and the placement of spoons on the counter he had used it to distract him.

They used to be harmless, his obsessions, in fact it was his dedication to those obsessions that had kept him in line all those years with Leo and Pearl but now they had somehow managed to break him.

"I don't know what I've been doing, Annie," Hal mumbled his ear only just pressed against the soft cool of Annie's stomach, "I've been trying to understand, I've just been trying to understand."

"Understand what, Hal?" Annie replied her voice very low and soft.

"Understand how we keep going," Hal said pulling back away from her to look her in the eyes, "I don't understand how we're still here. Tom, you and I we've lost everything Annie even Eve has lost her parents but we're all still here."

Annie looked into Hal's eyes and saw what she had been trying to avoid ever since Nina, Mitchell and George had gone. It was the question, the ultimate question.

Why are you still here?

"I don't know Hal," Annie said ghosting her fingers over Hal's ear, an intimate gesture of comfort, "I don't know why didn't just go up in smoke the moment George walked through his door or why didn't just go with him. I don't know why I didn't just die the moment Mitchell crumbled right in front of my eyes but it must mean something. It must mean that I've still got something to do here. So I guess we keep going because we have to, Hal. We have to."

Her answer seemed to strike a cord within Hal. His hand dropped from her hip and he let go of her cardigan. His eyes dropped down to the floor as he processed the new information.

Was that it? They kept going simply because they had to? Because something, some invisible force was behind them pushing them forward. Is that what he had to believe to be content, to be happy.

That's when a cry broke the silence and moment was ruined.

"Oh! I better go check on her," Annie said but did not move she hesitated and then added, "Hal will you be all right?"

"Of course," he said not all there at first but then he snapped out of whatever daze he had been in, "I'll be just fine."

Annie smiled at him before turning to walk towards the stairs. Then a thought hit Hal and he realized that he really did want to say it this time. He wanted to tell her and mean it. He wanted her to know that he meant every word.

"Annie," he said and she stopped and turned to look at him, "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you, Hal," Annie whispered hoarsely suddenly overcome with a sense of loss and longing, "And I'm sorry as well, I'm so sorry for everything."

Hal nodded and Annie went to Eve leaving him alone with his thoughts. She had been just a little gray ghost to him at first. Then after he had found out about John Mitchell he saw her simply as the woman who had loved John Mitchell but Hal was slowly changing the way he looked at her.

Not only was she the woman who loved John Mitchell but she was the woman John Mitchell had loved. She was the woman who had lost her entire family, her home but had managed to create a new one. Hal was beginning to see her not only as some woman who had loved and lost but as his friend. He was beginning to see as just Annie.

A/N: So there it is guys. As I go on its is getting shippy-er and shippy-er. ahahahhah I have yet to watch Puppy Love but it seems that Hal has been given a new love interest. Not sure what I'm going to do with that yet but I suppose I better get on it.

r&r you lovely people

maluhia i waho

bri