Being Human Fic: Daily Grind
Title: Daily Grind
Author tearoseandhoney
Fandom: Being Human
Characters/Pairing: Annie-centric. Brief appearances by Mitchell, George, Nina and Daisy.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Character death
Prompt: Being Human, Annie, future apocalypse scenario. Everything is going to hell, and Annie can only spectate, unable to help or touch or reach the world. Written for dark_fest
Notes: Thanks to lefaym for the excellent beta.
It’s important to have a routine. Routine has kept her going through death, several trips to Hell and living with Mitchell. Annie’s day starts at eight am, time for the first cup of tea of the day. Of course, there’s no tea anymore and the little electricity that’s still being generated is reserved for essential functions. There hasn’t been any domestic electricity for years. Still it’s not like she’d be able to drink it anyway. So she fills the kettle from the canteen and puts it on the stove top. Five minutes and she pours it into a cup. Every so often, when all the cups are full she’ll pour the water back into the canteen.
Even the end of the world shouldn’t stand between a woman and her tea.
***
The electricity was out again so she was lighting candles when Mitchell came in. She tried to pretend there wasn’t enough light for her to read what was written in his face.
“Need a hand?” he asked.
“No thank you, Mitchell,” she replied, head bent over the match box.
“Annie.”
She thought he was going to come right out and say it but he didn’t.
“I’ve got you a present,” Mitchell said as he pulled a small tin out of his jacket pocket. She took it and pried the lid off. She lowered her head to the tin, trying to get more of the scent. It had been eight months, two weeks, five days and three hours since she last smelled tea. She put the lid back on quickly to stop her tears ruining it.
“Annie, please don’t. I thought you’d be happy. You like tea.”
“It’s not about the tea, Mitchell.”
She could see Mitchell steel himself to speak.
“Annie, I have to go.” She hated him, a bit, then because she knew it was true. He couldn’t sit in the house and watch the world fall apart through the windows and she couldn’t do anything but.
“I’ll come with you.” She said. She might not be able to help but she was dead, it wasn’t like she was going to get in the way.
“No, Annie. I need you to be here.” Mitchell reached out, his hands rested on her shoulders. How could a ghost be expected to bear up under that weight?
“You’re not being fair, Mitchell.”
“I know.” He looked away but didn’t move his hands. She waited for a couple of non-existent heart beats before giving in and leaning against him.
“I’ll go and make some tea then.”
In the morning she didn’t ask him to stay. She could feel the words pressing against her teeth. She couldn’t bear, though, for those to be the last words she said to him.
“Take care,” she said, holding him close. “I love you.”
***
She sets out for the grave at 10.00. Sometimes she manages to find something to take, a brightly coloured piece of broken pottery, scraps of coloured paper twisted into a flower the way her mum showed her, and very occasionally she finds real flowers. They’re probably weeds, really, but they’re bright and real and living and she hates herself a little for picking them. Still, George and Nina deserve the best she can give them.
***
Nina tossed the flowers onto the table.
“Shall I put them in a vase for you?” Annie asked.
“I’m ill, Annie, not a fucking child. If I wanted them in a vase I’d have put them in a vase. If you were going to bring a present I’d have preferred scotch.”
“Oookay.” Annie looked around the living room, hoping for a neutral subject to appear. She was careful not to look at Nina. The glimpse she’d got when the other woman had opened the door had been more than enough.
“Why have you come here, Annie?” Why had she come here indeed?
“Oh, you know. See how you were, see how you were holding up with - everything.”
Nina’s laugh sounded like a bark. “And how are you going to do that when you can’t even say it. Are you here to see how widowhood is suiting me or to see what cancer is doing to me?”
“I - Nina, I’m just worried. We both are. George would have wanted us to help you.”
“George is dead. He’s never going to want anything ever again.”
“If you just took a bit more care of yourself. The treatment’s really come on -“
Nina bounded from the sofa and strode to the window. “I’m fifty-six, I have cancer and every month my body rips itself apart so that a monster can walk around for the night. No amount of treatment can help me now, Annie. I’m dying.”
She should be better at this death talk, she thought. She’d done it, after all. It was still awkward though, denials and reassurances bubbling around in her mouth.
“Just go, Annie. And don’t come back.”
“What?”
“Don’t you understand?” Anguish poured into to Nina’s voice, filling the hollowness that had been there before. “I can’t take it, seeing you and Mitchell, just like you always were and knowing that I’m falling away from myself, bit by bit. Let me die with what little peace I can find. Go, Annie. For good.”
***
On the bad days, the screaming has already started by the time she begins the walk back from the cemetery. Funny how both sides rely on horror film rules - during the day the humans hold the upper hand. Night belongs to the others. She doesn’t, strictly speaking, have to walk but there’s no use using the ghost-express. It’s not like she could get far enough away to not hear the screams anyway.
***
They’d made quite a name for themselves, over the years. Enough that they could still walk around in safety, as long as they didn’t go out alone. She tried to avoid it, all the same. But George had pleaded and whined and eventually Mitchell, who’d managed to get out of this excursion somehow, promised to clean the kitchen at the weekend if Annie would just go. So she went.
It was George and Nina’s anniversary and George wanted to make a proper meal, something that didn’t involve the contents of a can being slopped into a pan. Annie didn’t have particularly high hopes but George seemed to think he had some sort of special werewolf hunter-gatherer sense. Three hours after they left the house George finally seemed to accept that he didn’t. Annie wasn’t particularly please about it, though. It meant they could go home, but it also meant George collapsed in on himself like himself, like a stuffed bear with its filling pulled out. So when she saw the Iceland store she didn’t hesitate. It had clearly been abandoned but there still seemed to be working electricity and even though the looters had been in, the freezers had food in them. One moment she was standing next to George and then she was still standing next to George but this time she had a packed of frozen duck legs in orange sauce in her hands.
“You’re looting Annie! You can’t loot Iceland.”
“You wanted something for dinner with Nina, didn’t you?”
“I’m not feeding Nina with plunder .”
“Oh, get a grip, George. It’s not like there’s anyone left to care.”
George pulled a face but Annie knew she’d won the argument. She went back into the shop a few more times, stocking up on things for the house while she had the chance. She was feeling pretty good during the walk home.
Until they came to the first execution platform.
Blood was already cooling in sticky puddles. A man was kneeling in one, waiting for the blade to take off his head. The man turned to look at them. Annie though she saw recognition in his eyes. Or maybe not. Maybe the man would have reached out to anyone walking past, tried to grasp at a final, hopeless, hope.
“Help me, please.”
The executions were supposed to happen after a proper trial but Annie knew that these people had been rounded up two days ago after that attack on one of the family resettlement camps. It wasn’t likely that there’d been time for a proper trial.
“Don’t stop, Annie. There’s nothing we can do.” George’s voice was low and rough.
“George -“
“I mean it, Annie. Keep walking.” George’s hand around her arm didn’t actually mean anything, if she’d wanted to she could have stopped but she let him pull her away. They walked until she couldn’t hear the sickening soft thud of metal sinking into wood.
“What the hell is wrong with you, George?”
“I’m scared, Annie. It’s okay for you but me and Nina and Mitchell, we’re living on sufferance. It could be any of us up there, getting ready to die. So we can’t afford pity. And I’m sorry, I really am but you all matter too much for me to put some strangers, or some higher principles, or whatever above your safety.”
George was red and panting by the time he finished speaking. Annie didn’t know what to say. Sometimes, years ago, she’d thought of them as heroes in a story, fighting for what was right. She thought there were probably heroes in this story, people doing the right thing no matter the personal cost. It wasn’t them, though. If they ever were heroes, and Annie though they’d come close sometimes, they weren’t any more. The story had shifted beneath then, become strange and treacherous.
“Let’s go home, George.”
***
She manages to get back home without seeing any bodies, which makes it a good day. Of course, Daisy turns up in just after sunset. That doesn’t make it a bad day, as such-more of a normal day. Annie knows that Daisy thinks her routines are stupid. Daisy doesn’t believe in routines but then, Daisy doesn’t believe in much. Still, Annie can’t help but notice that Daisy turns up fairly regularly and always at the same time. Sometimes she turns up with blood on her mouth and Annie wishes she had the strength to turn her away. She doesn't though. Daisy’s all she has left from her old life and Annie can’t let that go.
***
It was really stupid to let herself get trapped in this room. Really, really stupid and Annie really hoped that she’d have a chance to avoid making the same mistake again. She knew that she’d push it a bit, started taking chances she never should have taken but everything had been balanced on a knife edge for months and it made her want to scream. Not as much as being stuck in this room made her want to scream, though, with an exorcism being chanted and a familiar, nauseating, tugging feeling building up inside her. Suddenly, the exorcist’s voice trickled off, the last sounds wet and torn. The rest of her ambush party didn’t stand a chance. All she could do was watch as the vampire tore them apart.
“Poor, wee ghoulie out too far from home,” the vampire said.
“Hello, Daisy.”
“I think a thank you is traditional when someone saves you life.” Daisy’s voice, like everything else about her was sharp.
“Actually, why? And also, how did you know?”
“Mitchell keeping secrets again?” Annie didn’t let herself rise to the bait. “The world is waiting, like a giant Catherine Wheel. It just needs someone to like the fuse and off it’ll go, sparking and spinning into the darkness. Mitchell wants to stop it, of course. Sobriety makes him boring.”
“So why help me, out of the goodness of your heart?” Annie didn’t even try to hide her disbelief.
“Maybe I have plans for you, ghostie.” Daisy walked back towards the door. “Maybe I just want to see your pretty face when the chaos takes over,” she called over her shoulder.
***
Daisy leaves, eventually. Maybe to fight, or to feed. Maybe just to lick her wounds and wait for the sunrise and her turn to be prey. Annie sits, alone and waits for the morning. She hears the screams outside but makes no move. She tried to help, for a little while after Mitchell left. It even made her feel a little better until the day she saw a girl she’d saved in the moonlight stake a little boy under the weak winter sun. She hasn’t tried to help since. All that time spent trying to beat death and it’s had the last laugh. The world is dying around her and all Annie can do it watch it happen. No matter how much she might wish it, death won’t take her now.
Author tearoseandhoney
Fandom: Being Human
Characters/Pairing: Annie-centric. Brief appearances by Mitchell, George, Nina and Daisy.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Character death
Prompt: Being Human, Annie, future apocalypse scenario. Everything is going to hell, and Annie can only spectate, unable to help or touch or reach the world. Written for dark_fest
Notes: Thanks to lefaym for the excellent beta.
It’s important to have a routine. Routine has kept her going through death, several trips to Hell and living with Mitchell. Annie’s day starts at eight am, time for the first cup of tea of the day. Of course, there’s no tea anymore and the little electricity that’s still being generated is reserved for essential functions. There hasn’t been any domestic electricity for years. Still it’s not like she’d be able to drink it anyway. So she fills the kettle from the canteen and puts it on the stove top. Five minutes and she pours it into a cup. Every so often, when all the cups are full she’ll pour the water back into the canteen.
Even the end of the world shouldn’t stand between a woman and her tea.
***
The electricity was out again so she was lighting candles when Mitchell came in. She tried to pretend there wasn’t enough light for her to read what was written in his face.
“Need a hand?” he asked.
“No thank you, Mitchell,” she replied, head bent over the match box.
“Annie.”
She thought he was going to come right out and say it but he didn’t.
“I’ve got you a present,” Mitchell said as he pulled a small tin out of his jacket pocket. She took it and pried the lid off. She lowered her head to the tin, trying to get more of the scent. It had been eight months, two weeks, five days and three hours since she last smelled tea. She put the lid back on quickly to stop her tears ruining it.
“Annie, please don’t. I thought you’d be happy. You like tea.”
“It’s not about the tea, Mitchell.”
She could see Mitchell steel himself to speak.
“Annie, I have to go.” She hated him, a bit, then because she knew it was true. He couldn’t sit in the house and watch the world fall apart through the windows and she couldn’t do anything but.
“I’ll come with you.” She said. She might not be able to help but she was dead, it wasn’t like she was going to get in the way.
“No, Annie. I need you to be here.” Mitchell reached out, his hands rested on her shoulders. How could a ghost be expected to bear up under that weight?
“You’re not being fair, Mitchell.”
“I know.” He looked away but didn’t move his hands. She waited for a couple of non-existent heart beats before giving in and leaning against him.
“I’ll go and make some tea then.”
In the morning she didn’t ask him to stay. She could feel the words pressing against her teeth. She couldn’t bear, though, for those to be the last words she said to him.
“Take care,” she said, holding him close. “I love you.”
***
She sets out for the grave at 10.00. Sometimes she manages to find something to take, a brightly coloured piece of broken pottery, scraps of coloured paper twisted into a flower the way her mum showed her, and very occasionally she finds real flowers. They’re probably weeds, really, but they’re bright and real and living and she hates herself a little for picking them. Still, George and Nina deserve the best she can give them.
***
Nina tossed the flowers onto the table.
“Shall I put them in a vase for you?” Annie asked.
“I’m ill, Annie, not a fucking child. If I wanted them in a vase I’d have put them in a vase. If you were going to bring a present I’d have preferred scotch.”
“Oookay.” Annie looked around the living room, hoping for a neutral subject to appear. She was careful not to look at Nina. The glimpse she’d got when the other woman had opened the door had been more than enough.
“Why have you come here, Annie?” Why had she come here indeed?
“Oh, you know. See how you were, see how you were holding up with - everything.”
Nina’s laugh sounded like a bark. “And how are you going to do that when you can’t even say it. Are you here to see how widowhood is suiting me or to see what cancer is doing to me?”
“I - Nina, I’m just worried. We both are. George would have wanted us to help you.”
“George is dead. He’s never going to want anything ever again.”
“If you just took a bit more care of yourself. The treatment’s really come on -“
Nina bounded from the sofa and strode to the window. “I’m fifty-six, I have cancer and every month my body rips itself apart so that a monster can walk around for the night. No amount of treatment can help me now, Annie. I’m dying.”
She should be better at this death talk, she thought. She’d done it, after all. It was still awkward though, denials and reassurances bubbling around in her mouth.
“Just go, Annie. And don’t come back.”
“What?”
“Don’t you understand?” Anguish poured into to Nina’s voice, filling the hollowness that had been there before. “I can’t take it, seeing you and Mitchell, just like you always were and knowing that I’m falling away from myself, bit by bit. Let me die with what little peace I can find. Go, Annie. For good.”
***
On the bad days, the screaming has already started by the time she begins the walk back from the cemetery. Funny how both sides rely on horror film rules - during the day the humans hold the upper hand. Night belongs to the others. She doesn’t, strictly speaking, have to walk but there’s no use using the ghost-express. It’s not like she could get far enough away to not hear the screams anyway.
***
They’d made quite a name for themselves, over the years. Enough that they could still walk around in safety, as long as they didn’t go out alone. She tried to avoid it, all the same. But George had pleaded and whined and eventually Mitchell, who’d managed to get out of this excursion somehow, promised to clean the kitchen at the weekend if Annie would just go. So she went.
It was George and Nina’s anniversary and George wanted to make a proper meal, something that didn’t involve the contents of a can being slopped into a pan. Annie didn’t have particularly high hopes but George seemed to think he had some sort of special werewolf hunter-gatherer sense. Three hours after they left the house George finally seemed to accept that he didn’t. Annie wasn’t particularly please about it, though. It meant they could go home, but it also meant George collapsed in on himself like himself, like a stuffed bear with its filling pulled out. So when she saw the Iceland store she didn’t hesitate. It had clearly been abandoned but there still seemed to be working electricity and even though the looters had been in, the freezers had food in them. One moment she was standing next to George and then she was still standing next to George but this time she had a packed of frozen duck legs in orange sauce in her hands.
“You’re looting Annie! You can’t loot Iceland.”
“You wanted something for dinner with Nina, didn’t you?”
“I’m not feeding Nina with plunder .”
“Oh, get a grip, George. It’s not like there’s anyone left to care.”
George pulled a face but Annie knew she’d won the argument. She went back into the shop a few more times, stocking up on things for the house while she had the chance. She was feeling pretty good during the walk home.
Until they came to the first execution platform.
Blood was already cooling in sticky puddles. A man was kneeling in one, waiting for the blade to take off his head. The man turned to look at them. Annie though she saw recognition in his eyes. Or maybe not. Maybe the man would have reached out to anyone walking past, tried to grasp at a final, hopeless, hope.
“Help me, please.”
The executions were supposed to happen after a proper trial but Annie knew that these people had been rounded up two days ago after that attack on one of the family resettlement camps. It wasn’t likely that there’d been time for a proper trial.
“Don’t stop, Annie. There’s nothing we can do.” George’s voice was low and rough.
“George -“
“I mean it, Annie. Keep walking.” George’s hand around her arm didn’t actually mean anything, if she’d wanted to she could have stopped but she let him pull her away. They walked until she couldn’t hear the sickening soft thud of metal sinking into wood.
“What the hell is wrong with you, George?”
“I’m scared, Annie. It’s okay for you but me and Nina and Mitchell, we’re living on sufferance. It could be any of us up there, getting ready to die. So we can’t afford pity. And I’m sorry, I really am but you all matter too much for me to put some strangers, or some higher principles, or whatever above your safety.”
George was red and panting by the time he finished speaking. Annie didn’t know what to say. Sometimes, years ago, she’d thought of them as heroes in a story, fighting for what was right. She thought there were probably heroes in this story, people doing the right thing no matter the personal cost. It wasn’t them, though. If they ever were heroes, and Annie though they’d come close sometimes, they weren’t any more. The story had shifted beneath then, become strange and treacherous.
“Let’s go home, George.”
***
She manages to get back home without seeing any bodies, which makes it a good day. Of course, Daisy turns up in just after sunset. That doesn’t make it a bad day, as such-more of a normal day. Annie knows that Daisy thinks her routines are stupid. Daisy doesn’t believe in routines but then, Daisy doesn’t believe in much. Still, Annie can’t help but notice that Daisy turns up fairly regularly and always at the same time. Sometimes she turns up with blood on her mouth and Annie wishes she had the strength to turn her away. She doesn't though. Daisy’s all she has left from her old life and Annie can’t let that go.
***
It was really stupid to let herself get trapped in this room. Really, really stupid and Annie really hoped that she’d have a chance to avoid making the same mistake again. She knew that she’d push it a bit, started taking chances she never should have taken but everything had been balanced on a knife edge for months and it made her want to scream. Not as much as being stuck in this room made her want to scream, though, with an exorcism being chanted and a familiar, nauseating, tugging feeling building up inside her. Suddenly, the exorcist’s voice trickled off, the last sounds wet and torn. The rest of her ambush party didn’t stand a chance. All she could do was watch as the vampire tore them apart.
“Poor, wee ghoulie out too far from home,” the vampire said.
“Hello, Daisy.”
“I think a thank you is traditional when someone saves you life.” Daisy’s voice, like everything else about her was sharp.
“Actually, why? And also, how did you know?”
“Mitchell keeping secrets again?” Annie didn’t let herself rise to the bait. “The world is waiting, like a giant Catherine Wheel. It just needs someone to like the fuse and off it’ll go, sparking and spinning into the darkness. Mitchell wants to stop it, of course. Sobriety makes him boring.”
“So why help me, out of the goodness of your heart?” Annie didn’t even try to hide her disbelief.
“Maybe I have plans for you, ghostie.” Daisy walked back towards the door. “Maybe I just want to see your pretty face when the chaos takes over,” she called over her shoulder.
***
Daisy leaves, eventually. Maybe to fight, or to feed. Maybe just to lick her wounds and wait for the sunrise and her turn to be prey. Annie sits, alone and waits for the morning. She hears the screams outside but makes no move. She tried to help, for a little while after Mitchell left. It even made her feel a little better until the day she saw a girl she’d saved in the moonlight stake a little boy under the weak winter sun. She hasn’t tried to help since. All that time spent trying to beat death and it’s had the last laugh. The world is dying around her and all Annie can do it watch it happen. No matter how much she might wish it, death won’t take her now.