Andrew's notebook

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.

He hasn't been able to make himself leave the cell since talking to the demon yesterday.

What he does finally do, with some effort, is ask Baby to take a message to Ava, asking if she'll come talk to him for a few minutes.

He's tried to think about taking off the cuffs, as Brix told him to. It's hard to think about: painful, and frightening, and disturbing in a way that's somehow worse than either. It feels wrong.

But he said he would try, and he's been trying. It isn't his fault if it's too hard to keep doing for long.

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.

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."

The corridor outside the Security Office isn't the busiest place, usually; not a common spot to run into someone else.

Andrew might be upping the odds a little, though, by dithering indecisively outside it for several minutes.

[From this continuity. Content warning for magically impaired consent and mild-to-moderate smut.]


Getting the okay from Giles wasn't hard at all; after all, he's brought other friends from other worlds to the Council library before. He managed to avoid mentioning that this was a guy he'd only just met, so that worked out all right.

Andrew steps into Milliways, looking about hopefully.