stilljustandrew | [reverse darkest timeline] if i'm not beyond repair

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[reverse darkest timeline] if i'm not beyond repair

Composing the note takes him the better part of an hour, and a great deal of cross-outs and scribbling.

Brix,

I was wondering if y
It's been a
How hav
You said if ~~There's been some stuff and I wanted to~~

If you have some time to talk could you let me know? ~~I'm doing~~ I think I'm still doing better but something happened and ~~I'm not~~ I wanted to tell you about it.

Thanks,
Andrew

He writes out two clean copies of the note, leaves one at the Security desk and one with Bar.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yes," gently. "It shows real wisdom to know that you aren't, yet. But neither are you where you were when we first met."

"Oh," and there's a sound that might be a laugh or a sob, "I'm really not. I know I'm not. I just ..."

He meets her gaze.

"I feel so much worse. And I know that means I'm doing better. And I hate that."

"How did you feel when you finished the spell? When you exorcised the demon from Nita?"

He swallows.

"Scared. Even after. Like ... like I did something wrong and didn't know what, and I was going to get in trouble."

She tilts her head again.

"Was Nita all right? And the rest -- Matt and so on? And you?"

"Yeah. I mean -- Nita was shaken up pretty bad, and ... I think it took a lot out of Ava to hold the demon while I, while I pulled it out, but ... everybody was basically okay, after?"

A beat.

Lower: "I mean. The demon wasn't."

Brix sighs.

"It is -- it seems regrettable that it would not compromise with you. But that is nobody's fault but its own."

"No, I know. It wasn't that, I don't think ..." He trails off.

And starts again, slower: "I mean, I did something. Something big. It saved somebody, and killed somebody else, and ..."

He feels on the verge of realizing something important; his brows draw together in silent struggle, working through it.

Brix can wait, for the moment, while he works on it. She sips her tea.

Barely audible: "And I didn't have anyone to tell me I did it right. So I was afraid I did it wrong."

"You saved someone. She's all right, because of what you did."

She shakes her head.

"You asked me to give you time to yourself, and I agreed, because I think we both understand that I should not be your new master. And so I'm not sure you should look to me to know if it was right or wrong. But I think you know, for yourself, what was right, if you give yourself permission to know it."

"... I don't know."

He props one elbow on the table, rests his forehead on his loosely curled hand. Doesn't look up.

"I don't have the greatest track record for that. From like, ever. Way before Lucifer."

"So you've said. Yet here you are, still trying to do better than you did before. You asked me to give you space so that you could make your own decisions. You asked me here to talk again when you thought you might need help."

He nods slowly.

"I just ... I keep thinking of all the times I was sure of what I was doing. What I was supposed to do. Really sure. And it, it felt good. And it was wrong. I don't know what getting it right would feel like. I don't know how I could tell the difference."

"All right." She nods. "Then perhaps being led by your feelings, by what feels good, will lead you astray." She lays a hand on her chest. "Our hearts are simple things, sometimes, and the world is complex. But if you understand that, then you can examine your feelings. Compare them to something else -- or someone else, if you like -- and let your reason guide your decisions, rather than relying solely on this."

Picking up her tea, she adds, "Is there anyone you know that you think 'gets it right,' more often than not?"

He gives that unhappy, half-despairing smile again. "I mean, if you'd asked me six months ago..."

In unconscious mirroring, he picks up his own drink and takes a swallow. Most of the ice in it has melted.

"That's the other part of the problem."

She grimaces sympathetically.

"I see, yes. But if I had asked you six months before you were taken and tortured by Lucifer, you would have given me yet a different answer, would you not?"

Andrew flinches, just a little, at the word tortured.

"Well, yeah," he says. "But if you go three years before that, or five years before that, or ... I mean, that's the thing. I've trusted a lot of people, and some of them weren't good people. And I did things for them that weren't good things. And mostly I felt okay about it, because they told me it was okay and I believed them. Until the next person I trusted told me it wasn't okay, and then I believed them, and I called that 'learning better' and 'growing up' and now I don't know if I ever did either."

He shakes his head; his voice is very soft. "He didn't make me like this. I was always like this."

"Trusting?"

"Trusting," he echoes, low. "Easily led. Wanting someone to follow."

Soft: "What do you want now?"

He breathes for a moment, slowly, in and out.

"I don't want to go back to him," he says, very low. "I don't. But ..."

She sips her tea -- by now cold -- and watches him.

"But I want to belong to somebody. Like I did to him."

He's leaning on his folded arms on the tabletop, hands wrapped around elbows, shoulders hunched; his voice is dull and bleak.

"I'm not ... I know that's not something I should have. Because I shouldn't belong to somebody who's bad. And somebody who's good wouldn't want that. So I'm not going to."

There it is again: someone who's good wouldn't want that. And it's hard, again -- maybe harder, this time -- not to take that personally. To remember that her own Kusheline blood, and the exchanges of power that friends of hers have entered in love and free will, are worlds away from what Andrew means.

(But are they? Can you love mastery, as Kushiel did, and still be good? Or is she fooling herself, as Henri said? Is she just another Shahrizai, a Lucifer-in-waiting, who can't be satisfied without holding another's will in her palm?

Wouldn't this all be easier if she submitted to what Andrew so clearly wants, and told him what to do?)

It takes her a moment to bring herself back, to focus on the question at hand. She's here for a patron, not for herself.

"I'd like to suggest something, if I may. Something to try. If it doesn't help, we can always try something else."

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