[oopfsb / undarkest timeline] fretting

[stilljustandrew]

[Between this and this.]

Matt's asleep in the infirmary; Andrew's got a couple of promises to keep.

First things first. He takes a seat at the bar, orders a breakfast to replace the one he abandoned, and starts composing a warning poster for the bulletin board between bites.

Comments

[nita_callahan]

"Andrew," firmly.

"You cannot tell yourself that you're responsible for the evil other beings do. They'd be doing that somewhere, somehow, to someone, no matter what. That is not on you. Okay?"

[stilljustandrew]

"Okay," he half-whispers.

Boy, he sure sounds convinced, doesn't he.

[nita_callahan]

Ever so.

Nita gives him a worried look, but decides to let that matter drop, for the moment.

"Look," she says, more softly, "you've beaten it before, and it comes from your world. You're the best shot at beating it again. So let's focus on that. Or at least how to keep you and Matt safe until we figure the rest out."

[stilljustandrew]

"Yeah." That's a little firmer.

"I -- there's more. About the first time we faced it. But it can wait."

[nita_callahan]

"You sure?"

[stilljustandrew]

He pauses.

Lower: "It's not ... really about the First. It's about me."

[nita_callahan]

She raises her eyebrows, waiting.

[stilljustandrew]

"I was working for it. For months."

He can't look up.

"I didn't know what it was, I --"

[nita_callahan]

The first word she thinks is overshadowed.

". . . Can you clarify that?" she asks, slowly.

[stilljustandrew]

"I thought," and it's louder now, with a painful effort, "I thought it was my friend Warren. Who'd died a couple weeks before. It looked like him, and it said it was him. And that dying was all part of a bigger plan, and if I just did what it said ..."

[nita_callahan]

She's . . . gonna wait for him to finish that thought.

[stilljustandrew]

"We'd all become gods."

He rubs a hand across his mouth.

"And I believed it. Cause I wanted it to be true. Not even the becoming gods part, I just ... wanted him to not be gone."

[nita_callahan]

"Yeah," very soft. "Yeah, that's--"

Her hand lifts towards her chest for a moment, for a locket she doesn't wear anymore.

"Sometimes we get desperate."

[stilljustandrew]

He nods.

"And it's ... really good at finding that point. Where people get desperate enough to, to do something stupid."

[nita_callahan]

"Well, that's good to know."

She likes to think that if anything showed up wearing her mother's face again, she wouldn't fall for it -- but she's not sure. Not a hundred percent.

"Are you--" She pauses. "Are you worried it's going to try and get at you again?"

[stilljustandrew]

Another nod, and he looks up.

"I think -- it might be trying that already," he says miserably. "I think that might be why it went after Matt."

[nita_callahan]

That does look slightly more likely with the expanded context.

"Maybe. Evil tends to be really attracted to Matt in general, though."

[stilljustandrew]

A pause.

"I don't know if I feel better or worse about that."

[nita_callahan]

"Well, it's probably something worth keeping in mind if you're dating him," rueful.

"It's not a two-way street. I think evil is attracted to him because he's genuinely trying so hard to be good. I think that's usually how it goes." She looks down at her coffee -- gone lukewarm by now. "I mean, I know that, that striving to be good or do good, can be turned on itself, but it's not just that. There's nothing darkness craves more than light."

[stilljustandrew]

He's remembering a few lines here and there, from the books he's never told Nita he's read; he's remembering the First smiling at him with Warren's face, glowering at him with Jonathan's.

"Yeah," he murmurs.

(What he doesn't want to say: maybe that's only true in your world.)

[nita_callahan]

She raises her eyebrows at him.

[stilljustandrew]

"... sorry. I just --"

An unhappy sigh.

"It's just I know that's not what attracted it to me."

[nita_callahan]

"Bull, Andrew. Or if that was true once, it's not anymore."

[stilljustandrew]

"No, I -- " Looking up. "I meant originally."

Now I'm the one that got away.

[nita_callahan]

She gives him a wry look.

"Okay, fine, I didn't know you back then, but I'm still calling bullshit. A being whose M.O. is taking on the shape of your dead loved ones to manipulate you sounds exactly like something that'd target people who are mostly good with some flaws."