chosehumanity | Bristol, Mitchell's UK, Tuesday Morning (Reply)

(Where do I belong? Where do I fit? Who are my people? Where do my loyalties lie?
Last night, Mitchell stands in the city center of Bristol, watching the cars flash by in the dark, the people. After his time in Rapture, he didn't stay in Fandom a moment longer than he needed to. And now he's thinking.
We all choose our tribe. It's that need to belong, to live within boundaries because it's scary on the outside, on the fringes. Some labels are forced on us.
Vampire. Bloodsucker. That whole debacle with Raven.
Set us apart till we're like ghosts, just drifting through other people's lives. But only if we let the labels hold.
Thought of Kate, he did. Her relentless drive to keep the future at bay, to play the part of the lost, uncaring teenager. Thought of Chloe and her fears, the people who'd chased her.
You can piss your whole life away trying out who you might be.
He'd been a lot of things.
He finished his cigarette and tossed it to the floor.)

("It's when you've worked out who you are that you can really start to live.")

---

He'd liked to have been able to run away forever from this, but it had been made abundantly clear to him that even in Fandom, there was only so much running away he could manage. On early Tuesday Morning, Monday Night to some, he stormed into the funeral parlor with a clear mission.

Seth couldn't stop him; nor could any other number of minions. If they'd bothered to try, but they didn't.

"Where are you hiding her?" he barked at Herrick, who looked blase and relaxed behind his desk. "Where's Lauren?!"

Herrick sighed, and dropped his pen. "He never rings, he never writes," he drawled, infuriatingly.

Mitchell pointed one digit at him. "Go and get her," he snapped. "She's coming with me." He'd have to set her up in Fandom, or something like it, but-- dammit. He was going to take care of her.

"I'm sorry, Mitchell." The calming smile on Herrick's face was as false as anything. "But that won't be happening."

He stepped forward, unconsciously threatening with his stance. "You don't get to decide that, Herrick."

"Well, I do, actually," the small, dumpy policeman said, conversationally. "Because you just keep hurting her, Mitchell." His expression twisted. "You just keep hurting her! You recruit her, that's fine. But then you just leave her! She wakes up with us, she doesn't know where she is, she's calling for you..." He straightened his posture out. "So, fine, we pick up the pieces best we can, but then... Jesus Christ! Then you try and take her bag." He looked up, catching Mitchell's eyes, and Mitchell had to flinch at a sudden onset of guilt. Couldn't let Herrick play him, now.

"She's the one who came to me," he said, steeling himself.

Herrick simply snorted. "Where else is she gonna go? She couldn't exactly call ChildLine, could she? When I recruited you, I didn't abandon you. I took care of you. Do you know why?" He hammered his finger down on the desk. "Because it was my responsibility."

Mitchell's head jerked sideways in a shake. "I was helping her," he snapped. Helping her drag her way out of this fucked-up mess the vampires had made of themselves over the centuries.

"What, by getting her to buy into this ridiculous..." Herrick bit his lip, before correcting himself. "...your fad?"

What had he just called it? "My what?" Mitchell asked, incredulously.

"This thing you're doing with you and your furry friend and your little school." Leisurely, Herrick lifted himself out of his seat, cracking his back. "Raiding the dressing-up box, pretending to be human. It's a game!"

...

This much pain, this much torment every single day, in a good cause-- "It's-- it's not a game." Why was he letting Herrick throw him off-balance again? He'd thought this through, dammit.

"Meeting in hotels like you're what? Lovers?" Herrick seemed to think this was hilarious, and grinned accordingly. "You rip her mortality away then you try and patch it up with these... scraps of human behaviour. That is cruel, Mitchell. Why can't you just let her be the thing you made her?"

By the time he was finished speaking, Mitchell was thrumming with it. Angry. Confused. A mixture of the above. "And leave her to the likes of you?" he asked, his voice wobbling more than he would have liked.

"At least we're consistent," Herrick pointed out. Ow.

"Herrick, you forced her to screw a man, then kill him while you filmed it," said Mitchell, metaphorically grabbing himself by the bootstraps and hauling himself back up into form.

"Oh, so you watched it, then?"

Only to feel his insides crumbling again, with quickly-building guilt. (Herrick, Herrick was good)

"Well, I didn't know what it was, did I?" he said, defensively. "Till the end." Watched it. Again and again and again and again.

"What was that?" Herrick said. There was that triumphant note in his voice. He knew he had Mitchell in a vice. Fuck. "You watched it. To the end. Where the guy died."

"Like I said, I didn't know what it was," Mitchell snapped. Too fast, this time.

Herrick sank back behind his desk. "Mm, yes," he said, smiling knowingly. "How... thorough."

With that, Mitchell had lost this one. Lost it completely. He knew it, the feeling in his stomach knew it. Shit.

"Look, you go and do your thing," Herrick continued, picking up his pen again. "Maybe you need to get it out of your system. You go and do your thing, teach your kids, prance around in the sunlight, whatever it is. And once it's flushed out, come on home, yeah? There will always be a place for you here. Just like there was for Lauren."

And with that, Mitchell had lost his attention; had lost utterly and completely, and he wandered out of the funeral parlor feeling sick and confused and guilty, and with Lauren nowhere in sight.

[[ nfi, nfb, ooc-okay, and tbc later today. Taken from Being Human 1x04 AKA 'The Mitchell Episode'. Things are gonna keep rolling from here, folks. Warning for mentions of sexual assault ]]