first

It is 1953, and good sorts of girls don't have hair quite that blonde and roots quite that brown. This is the first thing Mitchell thinks when he glimpses the girl in the pink dress, full skirt swishing around her legs as she walks across the bar, clutching a tray of nearly overflowing pint glasses.

Without thinking he drifts towards her, all suave nonchalance and old eyes in a young face. "I've been thirsty before, but you put me to shame."

She looks at him, a flicker of something passing through her hazel eyes before she grins and replies, "Not much to do here but drink, is there?"

"You do have a point."

"I'm a keen one." She laughs, flashing pink gums and Mitchell feels like he is quietly drowning, because this girl is flushed with life, with blood, and it is two p.m. on a Tuesday and he is shaking with hunger. "I'm Rose," she continues, "forgive my rudeness, not shaking your hand. Kinda need it right now."

"Mitchell."

"Well, Mitchell, I'd love to stay and talk, but I think those blokes in the back are going to have my blood if I don't bring their drinks."

And she gives him a secret grin, like she knows, she knows that he isn't the same as all these pathetic men drinking in the grayness of a dreary Bristol afternoon and disappears, heels clacking against the grimy floor of the pub.

second

He meets her again in a car park in Edinburgh, sometime during the heat wave of the summer of 1976. For once he is glad to be a vampire and thus free from the incessant pools of sweat that seem to be plaguing the people he has seen groaning about the weather in the last month.

The sun he could do without, he is thinking, when something at the far end of the park behind him explodes and a female's voice screams, something about rules and secrecy and lasers? Mitchell turns slowly, as people sprint past him with naked fear on their faces, because well, he's got all the time in the world to seek out sudden odd happenings, and curiosity always did get the better of him.

A fire blazes merrily near the edge of the park, consuming two battered cars. He is a few meters away from the fire when something barrels into him at full speed and stops with an "oof." He looks down to see a woman in a leather jacket clutching what looks suspiciously like an oversized version of the rifle he carried during those interminable months in 1918.

"Wha--" he starts, confused, but she looks up at him, and grins like this is the greatest coincidence ever.

"Mitchell, yeah?" She asks, and he nods, not arguing when she threads her fingers through his. "Run," she continues, and using his confusion to her advantage, pulls him after her.

"What the he-" he begins, hand still clasping hers as he follows her through the park, weaving around cars.

She turns her head, looking at him over her shoulder while her hair tangles about her face. "Let's just say I'm suffering under something like immortality for now."

"Oh," he says, feeling foolish, and then, "Jesus."

Third

"I'm looking for a bloke," she tells him, sitting cross-legged at the foot of his bed while he paces the small room, chain-smoking because it's something to do with his hands while he digests this new information.

"Of course," he sighs, because she would be, wouldn't she? Fucking love. He resolutely does not think of a black-haired woman, of rain and shell craters and packets of letters that he burned while Herrick gave him a razor thin grin of satisfaction; instead he focuses on the faded and peeling wallpaper on the wall beside his head.

"It's not like that." She waves her hand in dismissal, rising on the bed to grab his arm when he passes close by, tugging him down on the bed in front of her, to lean forward and place two small hands on the cool skin of his cheeks. "You could understand. It's jagged—it's…I'm tired of carrying these memories."

He can feel her heartbeat through the pads of her fingers, warm and comforting in his ears, and he can understand her, the struggle to carry memories and dreams and desires piled one upon another until the weight of it all is too much, too heavy, and it's so easy to let it all go.

It's so easy, too, to lean forward and capture her mouth in his, so he does, and they forget about ghosts and dreams and whispers for a while.

fourth

In 2012 Annie says, "We're going to the Olympics," in her tone of voice that clearly says I'm a ghost and I'll haunt the rest of your immortal life if you don't cave, so he shrugs, says sure, and helps George pack up the car with drinks and snacks for the drive.

Of course, they don't actually make it to the Olympics; instead they join in the large and boisterous crowd of Londoners celebrating the games throughout the immediate vicinity of the venue.

In the sky fireworks burst, blending into the orange smog of a London night, signaling the start of the games, and George shouts something, voice lost in the confusion as Annie flits about them both talking to strangers. Cup midway to his mouth, Mitchell catches a glimpse of brown fabric and faded blue leather out of the corner of his eye and grins, mouth curving against the plastic lip of his cup of warm beer.

"Preventing the Mayan apocalypse?" he asks, after nudging his way through the crowd to stand behind Rose.

She turns and looks at him, friendly but wary, her eyes shifting slightly, hardening as she surveys him. At that moment a man in brown appears, clutching two sweating bottles of lager, his face tightening imperceptibly when he notices Mitchell before breaking into a wide grin.

"Oh," Mitchell says, in realization, remembering her whispering about time travel and monsters and a man she couldn't forget no matter how hard she tried, the words falling in the space between them in his rumpled bed.

"Pink isn't your color," he says, remembering the words she'd quoted back to him as they sat with their backs pressed against the chipping wall of his room, while she sucked on ice cubes and he watched insignificant black ants scurry across the street far below his window.

And he melts back into the crowd, before the other man can introduce himself.

fifth

He doesn't cry when George finally dies, after months of wasting away in a yellow room with windows that let in too much sunlight, a gray-haired man blinking up at him through spectacles and laughing his familiar laugh.

He tries, he does, but it's like his throat is stuffed with cotton and crying can't be enough, it just can't be, because it was George, with his indignant squeals and flustered inability to lie and his uncanny ability to tether Mitchell, remind him that humans were beautiful in their pettiness and insignificance, living small lives like they were the only thing that mattered.

The rent comes due, like it always does, so he returns to work, silent and without complaint, a pebble amidst a flowing sea of humanity.

On a Wednesday morning he looks up from his sweeping to see a woman clutching a cup of coffee, blond hair tucked behind her ears. The broom clattering to the floor is meaningless to him as he focuses on her, the rise and fall of her chest beneath a faded blue t-shirt, the slight flush of her cheeks.

"Come with me?" She asks, and wiggles her outstretched fingers at him, ignoring the commotion of the hospital around them. Mitchell thinks of the stench of the trenches, fireworks in the sky while men screamed in foreign tongues and Annie laughed about gymnastic maneuvers, of funerals and Annie finally walking through her door because it was that or watch George fade away and it's too much Mitchell I'm so sorry she cried, face pressed into his chest.

"Yes," he says, and grabs her hand with desperate fingers, and it is like coming home and ending, so tangled and beautiful that it makes his chest ache.

And she says that none would have her save him, and it is enough.