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The first time Steven misses a session without so much as calling in sick, Andrea spends the back half of the hour reading all the cape news she can find.
A lot of the Moon Knights' adventures are too secretive or classified to be easily findable! But she has to check.
"It's normal to miss a day," she says out loud, to the empty office. "I've canceled sessions before. It happens. It's not mentally healthy to catastrophize every time a normal thing happens."
Of course, the last time she canceled a session was because a group of troubled ex-assassin antiheroes had kidnapped her, to protect her from getting kidnapped by an even-worse supervillain. So.
Andrea paces the length of her bookshelf until she finds the holiday gift the guys got her: a clear glass paperweight, with a 3D image of the full moon etched inside.
(Steven had asked a lot of questions about what sort of gifts from a patient are appropriate and not boundary-crossing. Turns out his first idea had been "an actual moon rock." Andrea had to admit she couldn't in good conscience accept that! No matter how easy it would be for Steven to just...swing by The Actual Moon and pick one off the ground.)
She stows the paperweight in her bag for now. Stays at the office late. Even if she's under Khonshu's special protection, it can't hurt to reinforce that, so she only pulls out the moon emblem on her walk home -- when she clearly counts as "a traveler of the night."
"Khonshu, embracer, pathfinder, defender," she chants, cupping the paperweight in both hands. "I'm afraid for my patients. For your priests. Please, give me a sign of how they're doing."
Nothing happens.
...until ten minutes later, when she's waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change: her phone rings.
"Dr. Sterman? I am so sorry! I completely forgot," says...a strange woman. "This is Layla El-Faouly. Steven's...well. Legally, Steven's wife."
"I understand his condition makes it complicated," says Andrea, sparing her the explanation. "Thank you so much for calling. I missed the guys this afternoon..."
"They're not dead," says Layla immediately. "I want to be very clear about that, okay?
"Not dead," repeats Andrea, relieved. "Thank go-- uh, goodness."
"But they won't be making it to appointments for...I don't know. Maybe a while."
"Can you tell me why?"
Are they kidnapped? Are they kidnapping someone else? Busy on the other side of the galaxy? Busy in another dimension? Running a secret time-travel heist?
Or maybe a new headmate has appeared, someone who didn't realize they live in London now, and skipped town. The possibilities are endless.
Layla quizzes her about the details of doctor-patient confidentiality. Andrea isn't sure if there are formal medical rules dealing with superhero activities, but has drawn ethical lines for herself, and says so...
The light turns green while she's standing there, then red again. It's okay. She'll get the next one.
"All right," says Layla at last. "The very short version. The guys are in the Regent's Park Hex, and won't be available for anything until we get them out."
☽
A month or so into the Hex situation, Andrea arrives home to find a man in a long coat standing ominously in her living room, looking out the window at the sleepy neighborhood. All the lamps are off. He's barely outlined by the moonlight.
"Andrea Sterman," he says, without turning around. "Did you think you were the only superhero therapist in the world?"
Andrea drops her bag on the end of the couch and flips on a light. "Well, they all need therapy and they're not all getting it from me, so I certainly hope not."
That gets him to look at her, blinking (or is that winking?) in the sudden brightness. "You're not...surprised? Concerned? To find some strange man showing up in your house?"
"I got an alert from my security system."
He scoffs. "You don't have a security system. If you did, we would've hacked it."
"I'm a therapist for people who regularly fight supervillains. Of course I have a security system." Specifically, magic wards, which alerted her to a discreet break-in from some guy with no powers and no hostile intent. (If Andrea was a sorcerer, they would've sent the alert to her personal scrying mirror. As-is, she got them modified to text her.) "Is this a job offer, Director Fury?"
"Uh," says Nick Fury. "As it happens...yes. I'm here to talk to you about the Avengers Mental Health Initiative."
Andrea crosses her arms. "Then I'm going to need you to visit me at the office. During normal business hours."
"Dr. Sterman, I'm not sure you understand me. I'm vetting you to work with the Avengers. Earth's mightiest heroes? Ring any bells?"
"Is an Avenger in an acute mental-health crisis, and you need my help with it, right now?"
"...well, no."
"Then if you want a mental-health initiative to help anyone, it needs to acknowledge and respect healthy boundaries," says Andrea flatly. "Normal. Business. Hours."
Fury sighs. "Okay, look. I'd love to come back tomorrow at ten--" (So he did check her business hours, before ignoring them?) "--but I have a space elevator to catch in six hours, so I'm on a pretty tight schedule. Can't I get, you know, special space dispensation?"
Sounds like he's in a position where he might be willing to bargain. Luckily, he has something Andrea's wanted for a while. "Can I get a login for your official Avengers database?"
"...Lowest clearance level only. No editing permissions, and there's a lot of classified intel you still wouldn't be able to access."
Andrea waves him toward a chair. "It's a start. Let's talk."
☽
Four days after the Avengers-Assembly-But-Not-Much-Of-A-Battle of Regent's Park, and it takes all of Andrea's professional willpower not to pace in her waiting room. Or to lurk out front of the building. Her practice is on the second floor of a converted house, it has a whole front porch, great for pacing...
...but no, she stays in her office, and waits for the knock.
She does jump out of her chair when it happens. "Come in!"
The door opens --
And there's Steven, looking exactly the same as he always has, holding hands with a curly-haired woman in a shiny bronze tank top and khakis.
"This is it!" he enthuses, letting her go and flitting around the office so he can touch things. "Ahh, it's just like I remember."
Checking that they're not bugged? No, he's not being thorough enough for that. Basic reality-testing, maybe?
"And this is Dr. Sterman! Doc, this is Layla -- isn't she lovely?" He says it like a reflex. Like when he's around Layla, gushing about her is as instinctive as breathing.
"It is good to see you both," says Andrea. Understatement of her life, there. "Are you staying for a joint session, or--?"
"I'm just dropping them off." Layla's answer is for Andrea, but she doesn't take her eyes off Steven, smiling like she could watch him all day. "And I'll be back to pick them up."
"We've been through a hell of a thing." Steven touches the table lamp, runs his hands along the back of the couch, and moves on to the windows. "Not going places by ourselves yet. There is a non-zero chance we'll forget where we are, and won't even know how to call for help because they didn't have cell phones on Malcolm in the Middle."
He gets all the way around the room, coming to a stop in front of Andrea's desk. She won't sit until he does. (Even though she badly wants to write this down.)
"Look, I -- I swear I'm not saying this bit to be cute." Steven rocks back and forth on his heels. "Since the last time we saw you, our whole sense of reality has been turned inside-out and stomped on -- and you know our grip on it was pretty slippery to begin with -- we have a legitimately heightened need for reality-testing right now, and physical contact is helping--"
Andrea holds up a single finger. "One hug."
Steven throws his arms around her like a drowning man grabbing a life preserver.
"You can go now, love," he adds over her shoulder. "Doc's got us from here."
☽
The full hour is barely enough for Andrea to get her head around a broad recap of the Hex, let alone to help the guys start processing it.
They plan to meet next week. Twice.
"We'll bring in screencaps next time," promises Steven. "Not whole clips -- we haven't been ready to watch any of the episodes, let alone clip out bits of them to share -- but Dr. Lewis gave us an archive of beautifully-organized screencaps."
Andrea accompanies them out into the waiting room, to set new dates with the secretary.
Her next appointment is already here: Rutherford Winner, a tall, iron-haired, concrete-jawed man with deep talon marks down his chin.
(He was a test subject for the Winter Soldier program. They hadn't nailed the healing factor back then.)
Chatting amiably with him is...a man Andrea's never seen before. Dark hair, neatly pressed shirt, French accent...
"Frenchie?" asks [not Steven]. "What are you doing here?"
"Ah, Marc! I have been making a new friend," says the man who must be Jean-Paul Duchamp. (Marc and Jake's oldest friend. If he identifies Marc as the one fronting, he's probably right.) "I thought I recognized the dramatic facial scars. And would you believe it, I think this gentleman tried to kill us in Karnak once? Small world, n'est-ce pas?"
"Not so small," says Rutherford grimly. "I have tried to kill many, many people."
"Same," admits Marc. "We won't hold a grudge if you don't. Frenchie, what I meant was, where's Layla?"
"Layla returned home, informed me that you were safe in the care of your therapist, and has been asleep ever since. I believe this is the sort of situation where I am to be deployed as backup."
Before she lets them leave, Andrea has to check: "This change of plans is all right with you?"
"Yeah," says Marc quietly. "Any extra help Layla needs with us...including, y'know, backup babysitting...he's our guy."
☽
When the Knights asked for a telehealth session, Andrea didn't expect them to call in from a bench in a park she doesn't recognize.
(In a time zone where, judging by the light, it's already evening. The last red of the sunset reflects in a stretch of manicured green water, with a few rowboats drifting down the middle. On the grass beyond it, people are feeding the ducks.)
She also didn't expect them to hold the phone back from their face, and have Wanda Maximoff lean into the frame beside them.
Since getting out of the Hex, of course Steven and the others have talked about Wanda. A lot. And of course, Andrea has said they would be welcome to invite her to a "family therapy" session.
The specific relationship of "cast as relatives in a sitcom-flavored trap designed by a psychic enemy, trying to recalibrate their friendship in the aftermath, untangling their genuine love and loyalty from the lingering impulse to call her Mom" is, as far as Andrea knows, therapeutically unprecedented! But she's always liked a challenge.
All that said...
"It's good to meet you, but I would really rather have our first visit in the office."
"No, you wouldn't," says Wanda. Simple and calm. Almost eerie...unless that's just Andrea having some unexamined prejudice about the soft Sokovian accent.
"We're not doing a whole meeting with her right now," adds...okay, that's Steven. "Just wanted to make introductions while she's not physically in the room with you, yeah? So you know you're not being, ah, mind-controlled into your first impression."
"Steven, you remember that I have other enhanced patients," says Andrea firmly. "Without getting specific about who they are, or what their powers include...I already have defenses against that kind of...tampering."
"Respectfully, doctor, if you have anything strong enough to keep Wanda out, I...I'll eat a cheeseburger!" declares Steven. "A whole one. With bacon!"
"I'm still not sure she believes you," says Wanda. "Demonstration?"
"Might be called for, yeah."
Steven turns his phone to face the other side of the park. Across a wide dirt path, strings of round lamps hang between the trees, lighting up a crowd of generously-spaced picnic tables. All occupied. Is there some kind of event tonight...?
...Every single person in view stops cold, turns to the camera, and choruses, with perfect pitch, "SO NO ONE TOLD YOU LIFE WAS GONNA BE THIS WAY!"
The group CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP shakes the ground, rattles the tables, and sends a thousand panicked birds erupting out of the trees.
A breath...a beat...
...Everyone turns back to their picnic dinners, and the normal low chatter picks right back up, as if nobody noticed they stopped.
Steven turns the phone back around. Both eyebrows go all the way up his forehead. "Eh?"
Wanda looks shyly proud.
"I," says Andrea shakily, "will look into getting stronger defenses."
☽
The next time the guys are late for an appointment, Andrea resists the impulse to go for the news immediately.
This is normal! Two meetings a week is new for them. Dissociative disorders make new schedules tricky at the best of times. And for the Knights, this is anything but their best!
She gets up, planning to stop by the break room and top up her coffee...
"...so if we're in a fight fight, my arms could be anywhere, but if we're doin' forms, I got 'em up like this -- don't actually sock me, ay, just make like you're gonna throw a straight punch --"
That's her patient -- in an American accent, probably Jake -- standing at one side of the waiting room in what Andrea broadly recognizes as a boxing stance. He shifts his weight in a restless rhythm, back foot to front.
His companion is a young woman with sharp features and black hair, dressed in striking monochrome -- form-fitting white top, black jacket with white trim, black pants with a white belt. She mirrors his pose, watching him intently...then her back arm shoots forward in a lightning-quick jab.
Jake (?) flies theatrically backward, nearly tripping over a chair and crashing to the carpet.
"Ahh!" yelps his companion, kneeling at his side in the blink of an eye. (Literally. Andrea didn't see her move.) "Sorry! I didn't even connect, I had no idea we could--"
She breaks off as he sits up, cackling. More playful and energetic than Andrea usually gets to hear from...any of the guys, frankly. "Gotcha! Aw, pajarita, I gotchu good!"
The young woman punches him in the shoulder -- not hard, but this one connects. "Don't do that!"
Jake smacks back...and if this is who Andrea thinks it is, wow, she is watching two trained killers get into a light-hearted playground slapfight.
She clears her throat. "Jake?"
With a sharp gasp, Jake looks up, then scrambles to his feet. "Doc! You're not supposed to--" He looks at the open door over her shoulder. "Are we late?"
"Only a few minutes. I didn't realize you were out here. Ready to come in?"
"Uh," says Jake. "Yes! Yeah. Totally ready."
The woman in black-and-white stands too, looking over Andrea with sparkling interest. "Oh! Is this your therapist? Or are you not allowed to say?"
"She's not allowed, but we can say whatever." (Oh, good, they've paid attention when Andrea explains doctor-patient confidentiality.) "Yeah, uh, this is Dr. Sterman, therapist to the magically messed-up. It's fine. She's not like other doctors, she's cool. How d'you want us to, uh...?"
The other system steps forward and offers Andrea a handshake. "We have not settled on a cool team name yet, my name is Aurora. We are, collectively, their chaperone for today, and their honorary fake little sister. Or, I guess right now, honorary fake big sister."
Jake hisses...in exactly the tone and posture you'd expect from a tween boy whose big sister is embarrassing him. "Au-ro-ra...!"
"What, you think she can't tell? Don't think much of her doctoring skills, if she can't tell."
Andrea crosses her arms. "Part of doctoring skill is not talking about a patient's health without that patient's permission, all right? Thank you for coming with them. Jake, I'll be waiting for you inside."
She steps back into the office, leaving the door cracked.
After a low murmur of conversation, the guys pull it open.
"Um -- 'ello, there," says Steven shyly. He's hunched-in and fidgety, and his voice, like Jake's a minute ago, is pitched a little higher than normal. Could just be nerves, or..."Wouldn't you know it, we spent all afternoon with Mum, and our brain took that fine...but in the evening someone set off fireworks, and whoops, now we're sort of stuck in the fourth-of-July episode. All right if the Beaubiers look around, confirm the office is safe? Please?"
"We're quite paranoid," says Aurora brightly, leaning around his shoulder. "Comes of all the trauma, probably."
"All right," says Andrea (trying to remember if she's seen "screencaps" from a fireworks-watching scene, and how old the boys in it were). "As long as you're--"
Another eye-blink, and something whisks around the space too fast to be seen. The whoosh of air in its wake rattles the blinds, whips at Andrea's hair, and knocks over her least-heavy lamp.
"--quick."
"Sorry, probably should've warned you!" squeaks Steven, as the Beaubier system reappears beside him. "They've got super-speed now."
☽
Wanda in person looks...a lot like Wanda in the Hex screencaps. Cozy cardigan, jeans and sneakers, red hair pulled back in a messy bun.
She shakes Andrea's hand. Lets the guys show her a few things around the office. Digs with interest through the bowl of fidget spinners. Eventually she pulls out a red-and-gold Iron Man one, and flips it around -- suddenly it's white, with crescent moons on all the discs.
"Aw, cute!" exclaims Steven. (He's wearing an aggressively '90s tie-dye shirt, the fabric blasted with spirals of dark blue and hot pink.) "You'll put it back at the end, though, yeah...?"
"I will put everything back in order before we leave," says Wanda. "Promise."
They sit side-by-side on the couch. Steven fiddles with the Moon Knight spinner. Wanda crosses her legs, biting her lip.
Andrea takes her usual chair, and goes over her ground rules. ("To be clear, I'm not bringing these up to accuse you of anything. I get a pretty eclectic crowd in here, and I always want to make sure we're on the same page.")
No touching beyond handshakes, except in special circumstances. No threats, to her or anyone else. Keep in mind the few things she's required to report, even if it breaks doctor-patient confidentiality. No mind-reading. Definitely no mind control.
"If you think too loudly, or directly at me, I won't be able to help hearing it," admits Wanda. "I promise not to go into your head on purpose without permission. That's the best I can offer."
Andrea nods. "I can work with that."
"Fun fact, she doesn't have to go in your head to let us do this," adds Steven--
--and suddenly he's three people?
Not in the usual sense! No, suddenly Andrea is seeing three people!
One in a solid dark-blue shirt, sitting next to Wanda. A second leaning against him from the other side, in a high-collared black jacket and a hot-pink tie, legs thrown over the arm of the couch. A third leaning on his elbows over the back of it, wearing a plain off-white hoodie, one hand loosely over the blue-shirted shoulder.
"Steven, Jake, Marc?" guesses Andrea immediately, looking at each face in turn.
"You got it!" cheers Steven. He turns to Wanda with a grin. (This must be a visual aid more than an astral projection -- that is, they're all still "really" in the body -- because all three heads turn in sync with their physical eyes.) "See that, Wanda? We told you she was good at this!"
☽
They don't actually talk about anything too heavy for most of that hour.
The headmates are more reserved than usual, always with an eye on Wanda's comfort level. When she hesitates, they don't push. When she outright cuts them off, they go ahead and change the subject, without complaint or judgment.
"It's fine," says Marc at one point, when Wanda starts to apologize for a topic change. He's in the middle position now; he pats the knee of Steven, at his side. "This guy spent months seeing Dr. Sterman before he mentioned me or Jake existed. Then it was more than a year before either of us got up the stones to talk to her. She's got patience."
Andrea keeps an eye out for red flags, but she's pleasantly surprised. All the lessons Marc has learned about being protective without being controlling or smothering, he's visibly applying with Wanda. All the practice Jake has gotten at being vigilant without paranoia or knee-jerk aggression, it's paying off. Steven keeps in gentle, low-key contact with both headmates, self-soothing whenever they get anxious or twitchy.
As for Wanda, she treats the guys like a healthy group of trusted adult friends.
Okay, she does fondly address them as "boys" once or twice. And nobody seems self-conscious about it. (Andrea suspects none of them noticed.) But the guys don't have another regression into kid-mode, they just accept it like a quirky term of endearment.
So far, so good?
Even with all three headmates visible and audible separately, they still have the pauses Andrea associates with silent internal negotiation, before they agree on what to say out loud. She has a growing suspicion that Wanda is (with permission?) looped in on that today.
Ten minutes from the end, Steven validates the theory by saying out loud, "Go on and ask. If she says no, she says no."
Wanda nods, and takes a steadying breath. "Doctor, I'd like your permission to mind-read one thing."
Andrea puts her pencil down. "Tell me about it, then I'll decide."
"I want to know...if your intentions here are really honorable. Or if you're looking for a way to...take advantage. Of me, mostly. Not to insult the boys, but..."
"But she's got a slightly wider range of exploitable skills than us," fills in Jake, unoffended.
Andrea thinks it over. "I should say up front that I'm only human. Of course I've thought about how a reality-warping telepath could, say, wave a hand to clear out my drains and morph my eight-year-old TV into the latest model. That doesn't mean I would ask you to do it."
"I'm the most psychic human on the planet," deadpans Wanda, flat and all-American. "I haven't missed how people have thoughts they don't act on."
(The patter of a canned laugh track fills the office. All the Knights -- even Marc! -- smile in rueful recognition.)
"But the kind of things I could do for you, if you talked me into them...those would tempt a lot of humans eventually." Her accent drifts toward Sokovian again. "Fame and fortune. Power and control. The resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting."
"Have you ever really, properly brought someone back from the dead?" pipes up Steven. "Or was it just people curious to see what would happen if you tried?"
Wanda confirms that it's the second one. But apparently, it's ambiguous enough that she needs a minute to think about it.
So, to be perfectly frank: Andrea didn't become a therapist because she's not curious about the strangest and most powerful abilities of the human mind.
But she has stayed a therapist because she knows her patients are people she respects, not experiments for her to poke to see what makes them tick.
And if there's a serious danger she'll give in, with enough temptation, to exploit a patient...a doctor like that probably shouldn't risk having the Scarlet Witch on her couch, now should she?
"All right," says Andrea out loud. "Strictly to see whether I'm likely to take advantage of you -- you can look."
Wanda nods. Tilts her head silently to one side. There's no dramatic transformation, her eyes just start to glow a soft red.
The academic curiosity is stronger than the fear...but it's a little unnerving that Andrea can't tell if she's started yet.
...the moment she thinks that, she can feel it. A light ruffling sensation in her head, like her brain is a book having the pages flipped through...
...A whirl of orange firework-sparks appears next to her desk, two portals spin open, and half a dozen sorcerers charge through, oops.
"Whoa -- no -- Mir, stop!" exclaims Andrea, as the emergency response team skids in to form a line between her and the couch -- the Knights strike a defensive pose, Marc and Jake's images blurring together -- Wanda casts twin blobs of scarlet energy, pulsing in her hands. "False alarm, I'm okay!"
"You're not, but you will be," says the lead sorcerer, as she and her team draw a row of golden energy bolts.
Andrea thinks the backstory directly at Wanda, as "loudly" as she can -- Wanda stands and pushes the Knights' body backward, they clip right through the couch like it's a badly-coded video game -- a prismatic red shield appears just in time to deflect all the magical shots --
-- which ricochet off to crash into other things around the office. One goes through a window. Another leaves a smoking hole in the ceiling tiles. Several books have just been forcibly removed from Andrea's to-read list.
"Enough!" snaps Wanda, gesturing with both hands.
All six sorcerers are yanked off the ground -- their toes hover just above the carpet -- and held frozen in place. Electric curls of red light fizzle up and down their bodies, matching the crown of light on Wanda's brow, and the fierce glow in her eyes.
"I promised no mind control, so you're not getting mind-controlled." The deadpan this time is in her natural Sokovian accent: "You are welcome."
(Laugh track.)
"But," continues Wanda, holding the attackers suspended with one hand while doing something glowy and wiggly with the other, "I will not let you blow up your sister's office."
Steven (back to the shared body in the tie-dye shirt, but that expression is clearly Steven's) pops up from behind the couch with tentative interest. "Sister?"
Miranda Sterman is too frozen to turn her head -- but as Andrea squeezes forward between two of the sorcerers, Mir's eyes strain to meet hers. "Andi...how in the hundred hoary hells of Hoggoth did you not let it slip that the Scarlet Witch was your patient?"
☽
It's less than ten minutes later when Stephen Strange portals himself in (looking unusually rumpled, with something on his collar that might be purple lipstick). "Whatever's going on here, I'm sure we can -- uh." He takes in the scene. "What is going on here?"
"Very funny misunderstanding!" Steven assures him. "We will all have a good laugh about it later, I promise."
Wanda lets the rest of the sorcerers go, and they defer to Strange's instructions to lay off the attack. Instead, he marshals most of them into studying and updating Andrea's office wards, so they don't raise any future alarms over consensual mind-reading. Miranda sheepishly trails Andrea around the room, fixing each bit of physical damage as Andrea points it out.
As Miranda re-sets a row of scattered paperweights, she snatches up the moon-etched glass one by hand, casting a flurry of runes around it. "Andi, were you aware that this one is extremely blessed? Not by us..." She side-eyes Wanda and the Knights. "I don't think by her. And...probably not by him?"
The patients are lurking near Andrea's desk, keeping watch. Marc is fronting now. The figures of Steven and Jake are half-visible over his shoulders, but apparently the guys aren't "broadcasting" the plural view to anyone but Andrea.
She wonders if Wanda is giving them some extra illusory cover, so Miranda hasn't recognized their face from the Hex. Wanda's massive power signature is almost certainly blotting out everything else, or Miranda might recognize the mysterious moon vibes from the times she's shared a battlefield with the Moon Knights.
"Mir, please, stop asking for confidential patient information," says Andrea out loud. "Just trust me, all right? I know how to count my blessings."
☽
When the office is reset as far as Andrea can tell, she gives her sister one last hug, and all the sorcerers portal their separate ways.
Marc/Jake/Steven collapse onto the couch with an exhausted groan, three images overlapping and jittering like an out-of-phase film effect. Wanda sits beside them. She looks pretty jittery too...not because of any psychic visual power, she's just physically shaking.
The guys pull her into a hug. She slumps against them, burying her face in their shared chest, clawing at the back of their shirt.
"Shh, Mum," soothes Steven. "It's okay. It's all right now."
"You did great," adds Marc. "No mind-control, barely any fighting, you followed the plan and called backup and it all worked out. You did great."
"Nobody's gonna lock you up again," finishes Jake.
Steven eyes Andrea over the top of Wanda's head. "So, doc...? How far did that blow us past the end of our appointment?"
"I think this counts as 'special circumstances' enough to offer you an extension." Andrea checks the clock. She can host them for another twenty minutes. "If you need to text anyone a schedule update...?"
"It's, uh. Covered." Marc rubs Wanda's back. "Did you get what you needed? Confirm Dr. Sterman's not planning to pull a Hayward on you...?"
...which is when Andrea notices a new figure peering over the back of the couch.
Not a lingering sorcerer. Not even an adult. And not fully opaque.
Comparing the roundness of the face to the different ages from Hex screencaps, Andrea guesses this kid is nine or ten. But it isn't the child-form of one of the guys she knows. Or a fourth doppelganger of theirs. This is a whole different kid.
If anything, this kid surveying the room with wary, suspicious interest looks almost like...
Darting eyes lock on to Andrea's, and the child holds a finger to their lips. Shhh.
Wide-eyed, Andrea nods.
"We'll tell her," says Jake out loud, not looking up from the hug. "Good job, doc. You passed."