milliways_bar | (no subject)

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He isn't going to keep carrying around Baby's inert mobile forever. That'd just be morbid.

But he tried keeping it in his room upstairs, and that's worse somehow. It looks like a toy, sitting there. Like nothing that was ever really important.

So he's bringing it downstairs to try to find somewhere better to keep it. Maybe a shrine over the bar, like the memorial for Bernard and Tonks, if Bar herself wouldn't find that too painful. Or maybe in the Security office, in a storage closet there or something, so that if Baby ever -- if she ever does come back --

Right now Andrew's sitting by the fireplace, watching the fish swim in and out of the flames, with a mug of Irish coffee in his hand and a little metallic arachnoid in his lap.

Botherable.

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"She doesn't really occupy it exactly?" He doesn't notice that he's using the present tense. "It's more like a waldo. She operates it at a distance, and she can sense the mobile's surroundings and talk to people through it."

Epimetheus nods.

"Got it. So where's she live? In the cells themselves?"

"Yeah. In -- she's sort of the whole office complex."

"Hm."

He laces his hands behind his head, looking up into the rafters thoughtfully.

"So you've got an office run by a magical spell that gained sentience and personality, and right now the sentience is missing but the magic's still there. Right? Lights are on, but nobody's home."

Ava doesn't have much to say yet.

She's watching them both with a careful attention as she snacks-- but especially guitar guy, who is the unknown quantity who sounds like he may be coming from a place of some expertise.

The quality of Ava's attention, when she's not pretending to be an airhead, can be a little ... singleminded.

"Pretty much," says Andrew, "yeah."

(He isn't quite conscious of how much calmer he's feeling, in the face of the other man's businesslike questions.)

"So, like, hibernation. Or a coma. Body's working, just the mind's . . . elsewhere."

"Yeah, I --"

More slowly: "Yeah. Maybe."

Ava frowns.

Isn't the body not working? Of the little robospider?

"What are you saying?" she asks.

"Is that-- what's going on, with Baby?"

And how do you know?

He shrugs, bringing his focus back down to them.

"I'm just guessin'," he admits. "If I saw the cells, maybe I could be a little more certain. I don't know much about magic, but I get most kinds of life."

"I can show you," he says quickly.

Epimetheus grins.

"Hey, I got nothing better to do."

'Gets most kind of life.'

What does that mean?

"--Oh." Ava reaches for the basket of paradoxes.

"Me either, actually ... am I invited?"

His glance at Ava is slightly startled -- and grateful. "Sure."

"Well, hey, lead the way, then."

He picks himself up from the couch, tucks the arachnoid under one arm, and leads the way.

The cells are pretty empty today.

Epimetheus, having slung his guitar onto his back, wanders in with his hands in his pockets and whistles softly.

"Nice digs."

Ava, personally, is frankly astonished she's never been locked up in here.

(Not that she needs that to change.)

She hangs on to the paradoxes for the time being.

Edited 2012-03-14 02:18 (UTC)

"Do you need to see the spell schematic?"

He's trying hard not to hope. It isn't working.

"Naah. Like I said, not big on magic."

He takes off the guitar and sets it down, then wanders further into the offices.

"Does she . . ." He waves one large hand. "Live anywhere specific?"

"All through here," he says, looking up at the walls. "She's ... the whole office."

"Oookay," Epimetheus says, cracking his knuckles.

His wanderings take him over to a wall. He closes his eyes, reaches out a hand, and strokes his fingers over the surface.

(let me distribute)

It's been a long, long time since he created anything. That's not what this is, but it takes a similar sort of skill -- looking for something in the solid surface that he could have put in there, once upon a time.

Outwardly, it doesn't look like much. It isn't much, in the end. He taps his fingers on the wall a couple of times and frowns.

Ava watches him do this for a moment.

And glances sidelong to Andrew.

He looks back at her.

Is this stupid?

Ava shrugs.

And points to the basket, for want one?