Andrew's notebook

He goes back to his own cell, after the exorcism. And lies down, after a while.

Nita's okay. She'll be okay. There's no reason for him to feel this shaky.

Except there is. Oh, there is.

He's trying not to think about it.

The thing about a road trip is: you need roads.

No one's been maintaining this particular stretch of highway for years, which means there are places where they have to maneuver slowly around pitted and cracked surfaces, around fallen trees, around the abandoned wreckage of less fortunate cars. One such heap looks a little too deliberate, according to Kali, and they go back to detour wide around that one for fear of ambush.

There's an enclave somewhere around here, she says, calls itself Nowhere Special. Human, which doesn't mean friendly; there's every chance the ambush was theirs. Or of some enemy camp looking to take over their territory.

It's late afternoon, somewhere between misty and drizzly, when they pull up to the long-abandoned gas station.

[The morning after this.]

There is a note with Bar, for anybody who might inquire after Andrew Wells, saying that he is currently staying in the cells for his own safety.

No one has told Bar anything about people who maybe shouldn't get that note, even if they ask.

It's been about two days.

Nobody's come for him.



Andrew's lying down, staring at the far wall.

[After this: 1, 2, 3]

It's late, at least by his body-clock. There's nothing else he can do, so he may as well take a nap.

The cot feels unreasonably exposed; he spends a few minutes wrangling the thin mattress onto the floor, at which point the framework obligingly vanishes to give him a convenient place against the wall to lay it down. He takes off his shoes and socks and his button-down shirt, and lies down in his jeans and undershirt, and stares at the wall.

A week. Maybe in a week he can convince them that he isn't a danger to anyone and they'll let him go.

In the morning Matt gets examined again, and given one more round with the device that stimulates bone regrowth for his cracked rib, and released from the infirmary with strict instructions to go back if he finds either the rib or his head giving him any pain.

Andrew's been talking to Security while this is going on, and returns to hover around the infirmary entrance while Matt's being discharged.

(He feels like he should be feeling less afraid, after a night's sleep and a definite course of action. Somehow he's not.)

It's a brisk clear day in early fall at Milliways. Perfect for a picnic by the lake, especially by the Caribbean inlet where the lake has been made to think it's an ocean and the warmer tropical air blends with the cool crispness of autumn in Scotland.

Andrew's been intermittently eyeing the picnic basket Matt's carrying as they make their way toward the shore.

"So can you bring me up to speed?" is the first thing Dr. Millman asks him, once they're settled in one of the infirmary's consultation rooms. "Nita didn't give me too much of the context."

Previously on Milliways, he thinks (with what he really wishes were more genuine humor), and takes a deep breath. And plunges in.

The first time he met Matt, trying to read auguries in the fragments of a broken teacup. How quickly he'd warmed to him, talking shop about different magic systems; how he'd offered to show Matt the Council Library sometime.

"And that's not something I should have even considered with a guy I just met, you know?" he adds in an aside. "I mean there's sensitive stuff in there, information that could be seriously dangerous in the wrong hands ... I don't think he took anything but the point is I didn't know, I -- god," he groans, "that was so irresponsible."