So Lunar Charming (3/6) Annie/Tom PG-15
Tom had been behaving oddly all day. The slightest noise, unperceivable to Annie’s ears, made him twitchy and nervous. He was currently prowling around outside the van, sniffing the air like a dog. Finally after almost an hour he came back inside, to find Annie cooking dinner.
“Oh!” Annie said suddenly, sitting across the table from him having served his dinner. “I get it now! It’s a full moon tonight, isn’t it? I’d lost track with everything that’s been happening. It is, isn’t it?”
Tom barely reacted to her sudden reaction to nothing. She seemed to do that a lot, burst out with something out of nowhere. “Yeah. I would’ve mentioned it I just didn’t really think to.”
She wondered if he’d have just made up some excuse to go for a little walk and not come back until the next morning. She could imagine Tom trying to protect her from something like that. Could imagine his dad teaching him that it wasn’t something to talk about in front of women. You had to protect the womenfolk after all. No sex, no violence, no bad language. Well at least Annie was following the no sex rule she imagined McNair had had. “Do you know where you’re going to change?”
He nodded, keeping his head down as he finished off his steak and vegetables. “It’s all under control,” he said after he’d swallowed, not one to speak with his mouth full.
“You don’t have to watch, you know?” Tom said awkwardly, dropping his chicken on a string to the ground and pulling off his t-shirt feeling just a little coy. His dad had taught him that you didn’t just take your clothes off in front of members of the opposite sex. It wasn’t gentlemanly. He wished she hadn’t been so insistent about coming with him ‘just to make sure you’re safe’. He’d changed on his own loads of times, even with vampires around and he’d always been fine. If anything he was more of a danger to them as a wolf than he was as a man, but only just. Still there was something else his dad had taught him ‘you don’t argue with ladies. You let them have their way. It’s just easier.’ So here they were in the middle of the wood, in the centre of his chicken scented circle. He was trying not to find it strange, but he’d never willingly changed in front of anyone before, let alone a girl.
Very pointedly Annie turned her back, rolling her eyes. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen him change before. The circumstances had been completely different then of course, and she’d been much too busy trying to protect George and Nina to pay much attention to what was going on to see what he looked like until he was throwing himself at the cage she and Mitchell were locked in, but it still meant this wasn’t the first time. She couldn’t quite see why it was such a big deal. This wasn’t the first time she’d watched werewolves changing without it being an emergency either. She’d watched two very close friends do this now. It didn’t seem all that extraordinary, in the grand scheme of things. She would have offered to leave him to it but the idea of letting him out of her sight for a whole night was unthinkable. She’d just end up sitting in the van worrying about him and she hadn’t liked the idea of spying on him, though she had considered it if he hadn’t let her come with him. She just wanted to make sure he was safe. Just like she had the first time Nina had changed.
“I watched George change once,” she said conversationally, keeping her back turned, deciding against arguing with him any further. “In the house.”
“He changed in the house?”
“There wasn’t anywhere else to go. Nowhere safe at least. For him or other people.”
“What happened?” True Tom had never lived in a house himself, not that he could remember at least, but from what he’d seen they tended to be pretty full of breakable objects.
“He trashed the whole place.” Annie smiled, remembering the resultant trip to Ikea with Mitchell moaning all the way round while she and George had happily selected new furniture and cushions. She’d been visible then. Almost alive. She shook her head to dislodge the memories. She didn’t like to think about that anymore, it just upset her, even more so since she’d lost her boys.
“I used to change in the van. When I was little. I think dad was too worried something’d happen to me if I changed outside”
Again she smiled, the thought of a little puppy werewolf, though the reality was probably much less cute than the idea. The werewolves in wolf form that she’d seen had all been pretty terrifying.
“So George didn’t mind letting you watch then?”
“Well I wouldn’t say he didn’t mind as such. But I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
Tom laughed. He was standing out here completely naked with her just a few feet away. “So I’ve noticed.”
She squinted up at the sky, looking for the full moon, although she wasn’t completely sure what she was looking for. It was still pretty light though, she couldn’t even see the moon. “How much longer?”
“Not long now,” he said through gritted teeth. He could feel it in his muscles. It was as if the air had changed around him. As if everything was suddenly taut and electric.
“Should I stop-” Talking. Annie’s question was drowned out by the sound of Tom moaning in pain. Chancing a look round she found him on all fours, stretched up towards the sky. “Right. Yes I’ll stop talking now,” she decided out loud turning away again. This was fine, normal. She remembered it all too well. The sounds that occupied the change. The screams, the howling, the cracking of bones and tearing of flesh. She wanted to put her hands over her ears, but was certain it was too late now, and she doubted it would do anything to drown out the horrible, organic, meaty sounds behind her. She wanted to look, but found she couldn’t. She didn’t want to see it again. Didn’t want to see his body change and mutate before her eyes. She wasn’t ready for that, not yet. That had always been the worse part, the way the face of someone you cared about changed into something else entirely. The elongation of the jaw. It all looked so painful, so terrifying. She couldn’t think how anyone could cope with that, month in, month out, let alone look forward to it as Tom had seemed to. Instead she just stood there, staring at a tree trying not to listen as if she was keeping guard for someone having a wee. Just pretend it isn’t happening and before you know it it’ll be all over with.
After a few minutes she heard him moving, the rustle of dead leaves below his paws followed by a howl that seemed to echo through the trees. It was safe to look again now then. He didn’t look like either George or Nina. He was a little larger than either of them, but somehow he still looked younger. More muscular but slightly gangly at the same time. She hadn’t had much time to look at him the first time. She’d been too busy worrying about everyone she knew tearing each other apart to focus on anything else. Looking up from the chicken carcass he’d been tearing to pieces he saw Annie and bounded over, sniffing her for a few long moments before licking her face with a long wet tongue before running off in the opposite direction.
“And that’s the closest I’ve come to a snog in a year. Brilliant,” she muttered to herself, disappearing in the direction he’d gone in.
Tom was more comfortable than usual when he woke up, stretching slowly he blinked into the sunlight, the silhouette of Annie coming in to focus as his eyes adjusted. His head was too groggy in his post-change state to think much about the fact he was stretched out naked on the floor in front of her. When he realized he leapt up as if he’d been electrocuted, both hands over his crotch.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Annie said, thrusting a mug of sweet milky tea at him as if he wasn’t stark naked. “Someone was hungry,” she added nodding towards the remains of a deer. “You’re quite…powerful, aren’t you? I watched you take it down it was…impressive.”
It had worried her just how impressed she’d been actually. This was the first time she’d watched a werewolf in its natural habitat, if there was such a thing. She’d only ever seen George and Nina caged up. It had been exciting following Tom as he ran around the wood, stalking prey. When he’d finally fallen asleep, curled up like a dog, snoring lightly, Annie had got one of the more battered looking cushions from the van and laid it beneath his head. She’d also chanced running her fingers through his fur. It was softer than it looked, not at all rough or coarse as she’d imagined it might be. She’d stayed curled up beside him like that, as if he was the most friendly family dog, until the sun had come up and he’d changed back into his human form without even waking up. She’d let go of him then, feeling a little awkward about the whole business, as if she’d almost forgotten the wolf was Tom and that it probably wasn’t all that appropriate for her to be cuddling up to him like that, no matter how right and lovely it had felt. How safe and warm she felt against him. No that was just the wolf, she really needed to not separate the two quite so much, if only for her own sanity. Not that she didn’t feel safe with Tom of course, but that was different. Somehow it was a less intimate feeling of safety. Once Tom was back to normal though she’d found it difficult not to look at him, not to take in the scars on his head and back. She’d never really noticed the ones on his back before. He seemed perfectly happy to take his shirt off when they were fighting, but in those circumstances she was generally more than a little distracted. Now though, with him sleeping peacefully, still curled up in a near foetal position, she couldn’t stop looking. In fact it was all she could do not to reach out and run her fingers over the five vicious looking claw marks that all but covered his upper back. Finally she’d had to move, sitting on a tree stump with her hands in the pocket of her cardigan just to make sure he was still safe, until he’d begun to stir a couple of hours later at which point she’d put the kettle on. Just like every other morning.
“Thanks,” he muttered, as he reached for the tea she was holding out for him careful to keep himself covered. It was surprising just how easy it seemed for her to ignore the fact he wasn’t wearing any clothes, while it was the only thing he could think about.
“Do you want breakfast? Or have you um…had enough?” Another little glance at the deer. It seemed less exciting now he was human again, she had to admit. Now it was just a dead deer with its guts ripped out.
“I’m fine, yeah. Look Annie,” he looked around awkwardly, looking for his clothes, or perhaps just his sense of decorum. Seeing the cushion she’d put beneath his head he paused for a moment. His dad had always looked after him the best he could, but Annie, Annie was in a different league. Tea every morning, cooking all his meals for him, decent meals too, with all five food groups. He felt terrible but it made him miss McNair a little less.
“Yeah?”
She looked so expectant, so happy as he sipped his tea that he just couldn’t say what was on his mind. How inappropriate he found this whole thing. “Thanks,” he said instead. “Mind if I…get dressed now though?”
Annie almost pointed out the fact she wasn’t stopping him, that he didn’t have anything she hadn’t seen before but there was something so vulnerable about the look on his face she just didn’t have the heart. “Course. I’ll see you back at the van, yeah? Don’t forget the mug, or the cushion.”
Annie sat in the back of the camper van and tried to read her magazine in the dim light above. It felt so small sometimes, too small. It was okay when they were out and about, fighting vampires, shopping, just exploring where they'd stopped but at night she couldn't stand it. It was okay for Tom - he could sleep, but Annie had nothing to do. Back home there'd been different rooms, things to tidy, things to clean and sort and just generally do. Here though there was nothing other than read because she knew better than to go out exploring alone in case a vampire saw her. She was trying to distract herself, to stop herself from focusing on Tom laid opposite. She could hear him breathing, occasionally he'd snore or turn over, but mostly he was completely peaceful. She used to watch George and Mitchell sleep when they first moved into the house, Mitchell had caught her once, but they'd never talked about it until they'd got together and he told her that she could start watching him again if she still wanted to. There was something strangely comforting to her about watching someone else sleep. How innocent and vulnerable a person looked. It was difficult not to watch him, but it felt wrong. It had been bad enough being caught by Mitchell, at least there she could almost avoid him for a little while afterwards until the embarrassment had worn off. Here there was nowhere to hide.
Of course the van was so small that even if Tom did catch her he probably wouldn't realise what was going on. Being in someone's bedroom was one thing, but this was completely different. They only had one room and really there weren't many other places for her gaze to fall. She supposed she should mention it to him really. Tom was very understanding most of the time. He didn't mind when she sat opposite him in little cafes and watched him eat. He'd even let her watch him change and that was a really big deal she realised now. He wouldn't mind, surely?
Quietly she closed the magazine and put it to the side. Just for a minute, she told herself. Just for a minute. It'll be fine and hardly weird at all, it wasn't as if she was going to do anything. She wasn't going to crawl into bed with him or anything like that. She was just going to look at him. What harm could that do? It was well known that looking was perfectly fine, there were loads of sayings about it.
He was almost painfully lovely, laying there beneath a quilt they'd taken from Honolulu Heights, one leg stuck out from the bottom, a grey sock hanging half off his foot. She was glad he was covered. She remembered the way he'd been just after the change, curled in on himself but naked. It had been all she could do not to reach out and touch him then. It was better if she could avoid the temptation. He looked so peaceful. She still couldn't quite get her head around how sweet he was when she knew he was a killer. Looking at him now it was even more difficult to reconcile those two parts of him. He looked so young, so vulnerable, so fragile, but she knew he wasn't, not really. He'd seen and done so many things, but it didn't seem to have affected him. He was still kind and generous and caring. He should have been hard by now, she was sure of it but she'd never been happier that he wasn't. It wouldn't have been the same if he'd let all those deaths change him. If she'd been travelling with McNair she knew she wouldn't feel as content as she did. Oh she'd have felt safe, she'd have felt completely confident that he was going to help her win the war and that he'd almost certainly stay alive himself, but it wouldn't have been the same. She liked feeling as if she was taking care of Tom, that she was protecting him just as much as he was protecting her. They were a team and she really wouldn't have replaced him with anyone. She felt bad for feeling that way sometimes. She should have wanted George or Mitchell here with her but she didn't. George had proved himself so many times, but she could see he hated it. Every time he'd had to kill it was like a little piece of him had died inside and she couldn't bear seeing that day in day out. She couldn't have watched that, she couldn't have sat beside him watching as they lost a bit of him every day and Mitchell, well Mitchell had said it himself. He couldn't be trusted. He was always going to fall off the wagon and a vampire fighting other vampires, well they didn't seem to take well to that sort of thing. They'd have gone after them extra hard if it had been the two of them. No, under these horrible, horrible circumstance she knew Tom was her best chance. The werewolves and the humans best chance.
With a deep breath she pulled her gaze away from him and teleported out of the van so as not to disturb him. She stayed beside the van though, where it was parked in a sparsely wooded area so she could still see the sky. It was funny she'd lived in cities all her life and had never really seen what the sky looked like in the country. It was completely different, blacker for a start and she could see everything more clearly, every star and constellation. She didn't know what any of them were of course, but that didn't matter. She wondered if Tom did. She'd ask him tomorrow over dinner, then perhaps they'd build a fire and sit around him and he could tell her about the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt and all the others. That sounded nice. Nice and normal. They had to cling to their own special form of normality while they could. While it was quiet and they hadn't decided where they were going to run to next. In between the battles Annie was almost happy, when she managed to ignore the knowledge that this was merely a resting period before they were found again. Still she was getting better at doing that now. She was almost impressed with herself.
“Oh!” Annie said suddenly, sitting across the table from him having served his dinner. “I get it now! It’s a full moon tonight, isn’t it? I’d lost track with everything that’s been happening. It is, isn’t it?”
Tom barely reacted to her sudden reaction to nothing. She seemed to do that a lot, burst out with something out of nowhere. “Yeah. I would’ve mentioned it I just didn’t really think to.”
She wondered if he’d have just made up some excuse to go for a little walk and not come back until the next morning. She could imagine Tom trying to protect her from something like that. Could imagine his dad teaching him that it wasn’t something to talk about in front of women. You had to protect the womenfolk after all. No sex, no violence, no bad language. Well at least Annie was following the no sex rule she imagined McNair had had. “Do you know where you’re going to change?”
He nodded, keeping his head down as he finished off his steak and vegetables. “It’s all under control,” he said after he’d swallowed, not one to speak with his mouth full.
“You don’t have to watch, you know?” Tom said awkwardly, dropping his chicken on a string to the ground and pulling off his t-shirt feeling just a little coy. His dad had taught him that you didn’t just take your clothes off in front of members of the opposite sex. It wasn’t gentlemanly. He wished she hadn’t been so insistent about coming with him ‘just to make sure you’re safe’. He’d changed on his own loads of times, even with vampires around and he’d always been fine. If anything he was more of a danger to them as a wolf than he was as a man, but only just. Still there was something else his dad had taught him ‘you don’t argue with ladies. You let them have their way. It’s just easier.’ So here they were in the middle of the wood, in the centre of his chicken scented circle. He was trying not to find it strange, but he’d never willingly changed in front of anyone before, let alone a girl.
Very pointedly Annie turned her back, rolling her eyes. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen him change before. The circumstances had been completely different then of course, and she’d been much too busy trying to protect George and Nina to pay much attention to what was going on to see what he looked like until he was throwing himself at the cage she and Mitchell were locked in, but it still meant this wasn’t the first time. She couldn’t quite see why it was such a big deal. This wasn’t the first time she’d watched werewolves changing without it being an emergency either. She’d watched two very close friends do this now. It didn’t seem all that extraordinary, in the grand scheme of things. She would have offered to leave him to it but the idea of letting him out of her sight for a whole night was unthinkable. She’d just end up sitting in the van worrying about him and she hadn’t liked the idea of spying on him, though she had considered it if he hadn’t let her come with him. She just wanted to make sure he was safe. Just like she had the first time Nina had changed.
“I watched George change once,” she said conversationally, keeping her back turned, deciding against arguing with him any further. “In the house.”
“He changed in the house?”
“There wasn’t anywhere else to go. Nowhere safe at least. For him or other people.”
“What happened?” True Tom had never lived in a house himself, not that he could remember at least, but from what he’d seen they tended to be pretty full of breakable objects.
“He trashed the whole place.” Annie smiled, remembering the resultant trip to Ikea with Mitchell moaning all the way round while she and George had happily selected new furniture and cushions. She’d been visible then. Almost alive. She shook her head to dislodge the memories. She didn’t like to think about that anymore, it just upset her, even more so since she’d lost her boys.
“I used to change in the van. When I was little. I think dad was too worried something’d happen to me if I changed outside”
Again she smiled, the thought of a little puppy werewolf, though the reality was probably much less cute than the idea. The werewolves in wolf form that she’d seen had all been pretty terrifying.
“So George didn’t mind letting you watch then?”
“Well I wouldn’t say he didn’t mind as such. But I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
Tom laughed. He was standing out here completely naked with her just a few feet away. “So I’ve noticed.”
She squinted up at the sky, looking for the full moon, although she wasn’t completely sure what she was looking for. It was still pretty light though, she couldn’t even see the moon. “How much longer?”
“Not long now,” he said through gritted teeth. He could feel it in his muscles. It was as if the air had changed around him. As if everything was suddenly taut and electric.
“Should I stop-” Talking. Annie’s question was drowned out by the sound of Tom moaning in pain. Chancing a look round she found him on all fours, stretched up towards the sky. “Right. Yes I’ll stop talking now,” she decided out loud turning away again. This was fine, normal. She remembered it all too well. The sounds that occupied the change. The screams, the howling, the cracking of bones and tearing of flesh. She wanted to put her hands over her ears, but was certain it was too late now, and she doubted it would do anything to drown out the horrible, organic, meaty sounds behind her. She wanted to look, but found she couldn’t. She didn’t want to see it again. Didn’t want to see his body change and mutate before her eyes. She wasn’t ready for that, not yet. That had always been the worse part, the way the face of someone you cared about changed into something else entirely. The elongation of the jaw. It all looked so painful, so terrifying. She couldn’t think how anyone could cope with that, month in, month out, let alone look forward to it as Tom had seemed to. Instead she just stood there, staring at a tree trying not to listen as if she was keeping guard for someone having a wee. Just pretend it isn’t happening and before you know it it’ll be all over with.
After a few minutes she heard him moving, the rustle of dead leaves below his paws followed by a howl that seemed to echo through the trees. It was safe to look again now then. He didn’t look like either George or Nina. He was a little larger than either of them, but somehow he still looked younger. More muscular but slightly gangly at the same time. She hadn’t had much time to look at him the first time. She’d been too busy worrying about everyone she knew tearing each other apart to focus on anything else. Looking up from the chicken carcass he’d been tearing to pieces he saw Annie and bounded over, sniffing her for a few long moments before licking her face with a long wet tongue before running off in the opposite direction.
“And that’s the closest I’ve come to a snog in a year. Brilliant,” she muttered to herself, disappearing in the direction he’d gone in.
Tom was more comfortable than usual when he woke up, stretching slowly he blinked into the sunlight, the silhouette of Annie coming in to focus as his eyes adjusted. His head was too groggy in his post-change state to think much about the fact he was stretched out naked on the floor in front of her. When he realized he leapt up as if he’d been electrocuted, both hands over his crotch.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Annie said, thrusting a mug of sweet milky tea at him as if he wasn’t stark naked. “Someone was hungry,” she added nodding towards the remains of a deer. “You’re quite…powerful, aren’t you? I watched you take it down it was…impressive.”
It had worried her just how impressed she’d been actually. This was the first time she’d watched a werewolf in its natural habitat, if there was such a thing. She’d only ever seen George and Nina caged up. It had been exciting following Tom as he ran around the wood, stalking prey. When he’d finally fallen asleep, curled up like a dog, snoring lightly, Annie had got one of the more battered looking cushions from the van and laid it beneath his head. She’d also chanced running her fingers through his fur. It was softer than it looked, not at all rough or coarse as she’d imagined it might be. She’d stayed curled up beside him like that, as if he was the most friendly family dog, until the sun had come up and he’d changed back into his human form without even waking up. She’d let go of him then, feeling a little awkward about the whole business, as if she’d almost forgotten the wolf was Tom and that it probably wasn’t all that appropriate for her to be cuddling up to him like that, no matter how right and lovely it had felt. How safe and warm she felt against him. No that was just the wolf, she really needed to not separate the two quite so much, if only for her own sanity. Not that she didn’t feel safe with Tom of course, but that was different. Somehow it was a less intimate feeling of safety. Once Tom was back to normal though she’d found it difficult not to look at him, not to take in the scars on his head and back. She’d never really noticed the ones on his back before. He seemed perfectly happy to take his shirt off when they were fighting, but in those circumstances she was generally more than a little distracted. Now though, with him sleeping peacefully, still curled up in a near foetal position, she couldn’t stop looking. In fact it was all she could do not to reach out and run her fingers over the five vicious looking claw marks that all but covered his upper back. Finally she’d had to move, sitting on a tree stump with her hands in the pocket of her cardigan just to make sure he was still safe, until he’d begun to stir a couple of hours later at which point she’d put the kettle on. Just like every other morning.
“Thanks,” he muttered, as he reached for the tea she was holding out for him careful to keep himself covered. It was surprising just how easy it seemed for her to ignore the fact he wasn’t wearing any clothes, while it was the only thing he could think about.
“Do you want breakfast? Or have you um…had enough?” Another little glance at the deer. It seemed less exciting now he was human again, she had to admit. Now it was just a dead deer with its guts ripped out.
“I’m fine, yeah. Look Annie,” he looked around awkwardly, looking for his clothes, or perhaps just his sense of decorum. Seeing the cushion she’d put beneath his head he paused for a moment. His dad had always looked after him the best he could, but Annie, Annie was in a different league. Tea every morning, cooking all his meals for him, decent meals too, with all five food groups. He felt terrible but it made him miss McNair a little less.
“Yeah?”
She looked so expectant, so happy as he sipped his tea that he just couldn’t say what was on his mind. How inappropriate he found this whole thing. “Thanks,” he said instead. “Mind if I…get dressed now though?”
Annie almost pointed out the fact she wasn’t stopping him, that he didn’t have anything she hadn’t seen before but there was something so vulnerable about the look on his face she just didn’t have the heart. “Course. I’ll see you back at the van, yeah? Don’t forget the mug, or the cushion.”
Annie sat in the back of the camper van and tried to read her magazine in the dim light above. It felt so small sometimes, too small. It was okay when they were out and about, fighting vampires, shopping, just exploring where they'd stopped but at night she couldn't stand it. It was okay for Tom - he could sleep, but Annie had nothing to do. Back home there'd been different rooms, things to tidy, things to clean and sort and just generally do. Here though there was nothing other than read because she knew better than to go out exploring alone in case a vampire saw her. She was trying to distract herself, to stop herself from focusing on Tom laid opposite. She could hear him breathing, occasionally he'd snore or turn over, but mostly he was completely peaceful. She used to watch George and Mitchell sleep when they first moved into the house, Mitchell had caught her once, but they'd never talked about it until they'd got together and he told her that she could start watching him again if she still wanted to. There was something strangely comforting to her about watching someone else sleep. How innocent and vulnerable a person looked. It was difficult not to watch him, but it felt wrong. It had been bad enough being caught by Mitchell, at least there she could almost avoid him for a little while afterwards until the embarrassment had worn off. Here there was nowhere to hide.
Of course the van was so small that even if Tom did catch her he probably wouldn't realise what was going on. Being in someone's bedroom was one thing, but this was completely different. They only had one room and really there weren't many other places for her gaze to fall. She supposed she should mention it to him really. Tom was very understanding most of the time. He didn't mind when she sat opposite him in little cafes and watched him eat. He'd even let her watch him change and that was a really big deal she realised now. He wouldn't mind, surely?
Quietly she closed the magazine and put it to the side. Just for a minute, she told herself. Just for a minute. It'll be fine and hardly weird at all, it wasn't as if she was going to do anything. She wasn't going to crawl into bed with him or anything like that. She was just going to look at him. What harm could that do? It was well known that looking was perfectly fine, there were loads of sayings about it.
He was almost painfully lovely, laying there beneath a quilt they'd taken from Honolulu Heights, one leg stuck out from the bottom, a grey sock hanging half off his foot. She was glad he was covered. She remembered the way he'd been just after the change, curled in on himself but naked. It had been all she could do not to reach out and touch him then. It was better if she could avoid the temptation. He looked so peaceful. She still couldn't quite get her head around how sweet he was when she knew he was a killer. Looking at him now it was even more difficult to reconcile those two parts of him. He looked so young, so vulnerable, so fragile, but she knew he wasn't, not really. He'd seen and done so many things, but it didn't seem to have affected him. He was still kind and generous and caring. He should have been hard by now, she was sure of it but she'd never been happier that he wasn't. It wouldn't have been the same if he'd let all those deaths change him. If she'd been travelling with McNair she knew she wouldn't feel as content as she did. Oh she'd have felt safe, she'd have felt completely confident that he was going to help her win the war and that he'd almost certainly stay alive himself, but it wouldn't have been the same. She liked feeling as if she was taking care of Tom, that she was protecting him just as much as he was protecting her. They were a team and she really wouldn't have replaced him with anyone. She felt bad for feeling that way sometimes. She should have wanted George or Mitchell here with her but she didn't. George had proved himself so many times, but she could see he hated it. Every time he'd had to kill it was like a little piece of him had died inside and she couldn't bear seeing that day in day out. She couldn't have watched that, she couldn't have sat beside him watching as they lost a bit of him every day and Mitchell, well Mitchell had said it himself. He couldn't be trusted. He was always going to fall off the wagon and a vampire fighting other vampires, well they didn't seem to take well to that sort of thing. They'd have gone after them extra hard if it had been the two of them. No, under these horrible, horrible circumstance she knew Tom was her best chance. The werewolves and the humans best chance.
With a deep breath she pulled her gaze away from him and teleported out of the van so as not to disturb him. She stayed beside the van though, where it was parked in a sparsely wooded area so she could still see the sky. It was funny she'd lived in cities all her life and had never really seen what the sky looked like in the country. It was completely different, blacker for a start and she could see everything more clearly, every star and constellation. She didn't know what any of them were of course, but that didn't matter. She wondered if Tom did. She'd ask him tomorrow over dinner, then perhaps they'd build a fire and sit around him and he could tell her about the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt and all the others. That sounded nice. Nice and normal. They had to cling to their own special form of normality while they could. While it was quiet and they hadn't decided where they were going to run to next. In between the battles Annie was almost happy, when she managed to ignore the knowledge that this was merely a resting period before they were found again. Still she was getting better at doing that now. She was almost impressed with herself.