milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The front door opens, and in steps Andrew Wells, hands in his pockets and shoulders slightly slumped.

He's got a note to leave -- but it turns out the intended recepient is already here.

After that conversation, Andrew finds himself in a somewhat better mood -- right up until he reads the note that's been left for him since he was last here.

He's sitting at the bar reading it. Feel free to interrupt him; it's not like the words have changed since the last three times he read it.

[ETA: Mun has gone to bed. Thread is open until it scrolls off the front page.]

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This gets Sam's full attention.

"Did they."

A beat.

"And?"

He breathes out. "Beth loses her Slayer powers," he says. "As soon as Ms. Harkness and her people finish refining the spell."

He grows very still.

"Is she okay?"

Andrew nods. "I think so. She took it pretty calmly. And ... I just talked to a friend of hers, here, and he seems to think this is the best thing that could ever happen to her."

His shoulders slump a little, and Sam nods.

"Good. I'm glad."

A beat, and, quietly,

"You did it."

"We did, yeah." He sighs. "I just hope it doesn't come around down the line and bite us in the posterity."

"How do you mean?"

He turns to face Andrew a little more, clearly paying closer attention now.

A shrug. "Someone's bound to think we let her off too easy. We're gonna have to keep a close watch to make sure no one else decides that going after her to finish the job was a good idea."

"You mean because you didn't kill her."

Beat.

"What happened to the ones who tried?"

"They got pulled off active duty and assigned to drudge work at my cousin's farm. Indefinitely."

Andrew touches the bartop with a murmur under his breath, and Bar obligingly produces another Coke and an order of fried paradoxes.

Sam looks grim.

"Guess it depends on whether anyone else who might be considering it thinks that'd be okay."

"Yeah. I mean, I don't think we really could've given them anything harsher than that, not under the circumstances, but is that going to scare off the next Slayer who wants some payback? I don't even know."

He sighs, and reaches for a paradox. "Anyway, it's done."

"Yeah. It's done."

A beat, and then Sam asks,

"A spell, you said?"

His tone is casual -- carefully so.

Andrew catches that careful note, and glances up.

"Yeah," he says. "It's kind of complicated. I don't know all the details."

"You're just the idea guy, right?"

Sam grins, a little.

"When it comes to stuff this high-level? Yeah. Seriously, magic on this scale is way out of my league. It's even out of Jonathan's."

He munches another paradox, and offers Sam the plate.

He shakes his head, silently declining the offer.

"Oh," he says. "Okay. I was just curious."

That gets a headtilt, and a sidelong glance.

"We've got to face it, Dean - there's something wrong with me."

Sam gives him a bland one in return.

"Funny thing about it," says Andrew after a moment, "is that the Slayer's superhuman abilities are actually demonic in origin, if you go all the way back to the First Slayer. And whoever originated this spell knew that."

"Really."

Something almost indefinable changes in his expression; something of a tightening, drawing in and closing off.

"Demonic."

Bingo.

"Yeah." Still with that carefully offhanded tone. "Which, I don't know about you, but it kind of makes me wonder whether it could be, you know."

He looks up and meets Sam's eyes.

"Adapted."

"Adapted."

He doesn't move even the slightest bit; neither does he look away.

A single tense beat.

"Do you think it can?"

The question hangs in the air between them. Although Sam's managed to match Andrew's offhand tone, there's nothing at all casual about the look in his eyes.

Andrew's gaze drops, and the casual tone has left his voice completely.

"I don't know, man." Quiet. "I mean I really don't know. But it's something I could find out. If you wanted."

Sam takes a deep breath, holding it for a second.

Then he lets it out, slowly, and lowers himself to sit on the nearest barstool.

"The way I see it, there's two things. First is to find out if the spell can even be adapted at all."