milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Theory: The bar, not Bar, has a tendency to provide the people who're needed to further personal fulfilment.

Proof: Twice now, Hellspawn has placed ads for people he needed, and they have shown up, almost immediately.

Test: Ask aloud for who is needed, to see whether it works.

Which explains why Hellspawn slumps against the bar, sighs and says

"I really need to talk to Andrew Wells, I sure wish he was around."

And then he waits. Feel free to join him in said waiting. Especially if you are Andrew.

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There's a pause, and a hiccup in spacetime.

Followed by a hiccup from the faintly translucent figure that has appeared at the Bar.

Andrew looks like he's been drinking heavily. Or at least he looks that way if you're Hellspawn. Because nobody else can see him.

Tim stares for a long moment. Then ventures.

"Andrew?"

"Yeah yeah yeah 'm up."

Andrew looks up, and blinks.

"...the frell're you doing here, Hunter?"

"I'm not anywhere. I'm still here, at Milliways."

A gesture towards the door, not quite picking up that Andrew doesn't see it.

"Bound, remember?"

"'m not at Milliways."

Andrew reaches for an invisible glass, which becomes visible as his hand closes around it, and takes a long drink.

"Left. Trying to. Sort things out."

"If you were actually here, I might kick you."

He wags a finger.

"Drinking solves nothing. But it does proove my point about the bar providing people who are requested, even if only half assedly."

Andrew gives him a cockeyed look.

"You," he says with drunken dignity, "sh'd know better."

"Should I?"

He shrugs.

"I'm still hellspawn Andrew. Not quite the same Tim, sadly. Or maybe gladly. He was a bit fo a git."

Andrew snorts. "He's a Tim. So're you. Hundreds of worlds."

Another long drink.

"Whad' y'need me for anyway?"

"I have an idea, and you seem to be the only one with both the knowledge, and the trustability to helkp me deal with it."

Cagey, Tim? Sure.

Andrew looks at him sidelong, and waits for him to go on.

"You know I'm dead, and my world destroyed."

He steeples his fingers.

"According to Tims memories, in the year 2006, there is a Crisis, of infinite proportions. The Spectre goes insane, starts killing magic users byt the handful. Wastes all the lords of Order and Chaos, Shazaam, and the Rock of Eternity. Which leaves an assload of magic floating around. I want to try and go back to then, and channel it. Make use of some of it, to rebuild my world. And bring myself back to life."

Andrew stares at him for a long moment, and then starts to laugh.

It's not a pleasant laugh.

There is a stare.

"I'm...sorry?"

"Yeah I bet you are."

Andrew drains his glass and shoves it away; it tips over, slipping off the bartop, but vanishes the moment it leaves his translucent fingers.

"Y' want y'r life back. Y' want y'r world back. D'you even know what your world is?"

His slurred diction has become brutally overprecise. "You're a sight gag. A one-shot injoke. You're Vertigo poking fun at the rest of DC. You're 'hey, we've done a bunch of worlds of Tim Hunter, let's do a totally silly one where we parody Robin and the Teen Titans.'"

Andrew turns on the barstool and leans forward, his face barely inches from Tim's. The rest of the bar is visible through him.

"And even if you weren't? You're still Tim bloody Hunter. Too self-absorbed to notice that Alleatha was in love with you, much less that she was plotting to sell you out to the Other in revenge when you picked Molly instead."

Tim looks at Andrew... then lets his head hang.

"You're completely right."

"And. And if this really is Milliways, there's a girl upstairs who, who's worth fifty of you, and she is dead, Hunter, dead and staying dead because she won't go for the easy fix, no matter how much it tears us both up, and if you think --"

The words are starting to choke him.

"-- if you think --"

He can't finish the sentence.

Tim watches Andrew.

"I'm sorry to have bothered you. Forgive me."

He turns away slightly. There's something about seeing Andrew like this, and hearing his story... he's tearing up, just a little.

Andrew blinks up at Tim, and then turns away. "Whatever. 'm not even here."

His head sinks slowly down until it's resting on the surface of the bar again, as it was when he appeared.

"This isn't real."

There's a ripple in the air, and he's gone.

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