Repair work Who: Andre and Verity (and Jasper) Where: Billiard room When: Mid-morning
"Damn!" came Andre's booming voice from the billiards room. It was very rare that the preacher let out even a minor swear, but every now and then, circumstances warranted them. This was one of them. Sitting in a chair at one of the card tables, Andre was fighting with his artificial leg. It would've been quite a sight to anyone unfamiliar with the man's situation. His left pants leg hung empty from his knee, while his artificial leg was laid out on the table in front of him. After days of protesting, the leg had finally blown... something. It was one of the joints that attached the metal "leg" to the foot, he thought. He'd never given much thought to the construction of them in the 24 years he'd used them. If something went wrong with it, it was simply a matter of going back to the prosthetist and getting it adjusted. He'd never had to do it himself before, and the damn thing was frustrating him.
He stared at it for a bit, as if it would magically repair itself if he thought at it long enough. A part of him was thankful, really, that they'd managed to save his knee at least. A leg with a knee would be even more complicated. He'd thought he was getting somewhere at first, thanks to the random tools he'd managed to scrounge up as he stumbled around on the damaged prosthetic. But now, about halfway through, he was at a loss. I don't need this, he thought as he pounded the table in frustration. Fat lot of good I'm gonna be to anybody if I gotta hop around. Frustrated, he put the screwdriver back down on the table before he caused any more damage. He'd already managed to make a couple of nice gouges in the table. At least that was replaceable. At this point, he was pretty sure the leg wasn't.
Jasper had been avoiding him again. Verity felt like things were just getting worse with his little brother lately. The moments where Jasper seemed almost like himself, just quieter, were fewer and fewer. The most he could really hope for was blank silence. Much worse were the times that his little brother was obviously scared or angry and still wouldn't talk to him, actually shied away from him. He wasn't sure what he'd said this time. He'd just been talking about a vacation years ago. Touchy subject matter, of course, but sometimes Jasper almost seemed to like hearing about their parents and brother and home. Something had set him off, though.
So Jasper had stormed off. Verity had followed, but not too close, and now the little blond boy had slipped into the billiards room. He hadn't been in there before. Nothing here to really interest either brother, who'd never held a pool cue in their lives. He walked in just as Andre cursed and jumped slightly, eyes widening a bit. He'd expected to be alone, and Jasper didn't care for running into new people, even under the easiest circumstances.
It wasn't until it was too late that Andre had that sense of little eyes on him. Oh, Lord forgive me, he thought. It figured that one of his rare swears would come right in front of a child. Suitably embarrassed, he quickly turned his frown into a grin as he turned to face the little one. "Oh, uh, hey, kiddo," he said, still stumbling at his momentary indiscretion. He started to get up to go see the boy, only to remember that he was still in pieces. "How you doin'? I didn't see you sneak in." Charity had told him there were a few kids around, but this was the first time he'd seen one. "You lost or somethin'?" He really hoped that this kid wasn't alone, that at least one family member had survived with him.
Jasper blinked. This was one reason he'd wanted an empty room. Verity wasn't here to tell people that he didn't speak anymore. He bit down on his lip, at a loss, for a long moment until his brother caught up. "Jas, please don't run off like that." Verity couldn't help sounding a bit exasperated. Jasper was running him ragged, and he'd been up since the crack of dawn working on the same projects that had occupied him since they'd gotten here. His eyes had gone a little twitchy from all the fine focus and his head was a thick, slow place, reduced to processing lengths of wire and twisting screws, not much more. "Am I still in trouble...? Oh." Verity finally noticed they weren't alone. "Um, hi."
Andre smiled, glad to see that the child wasn't totally alone at least. "Howdy," he said, waving and feeling a little stupid for not being able to get up. "This one belong to you?" The older boy was still pretty much a kid himself, really. "Don't worry, he wasn't botherin' me none. Tell the truth, I could probably use a little break." He motioned to the semi-dismantled leg on the table. "Thing's got me all cross-eyed." He extended a hand, in case they wanted to come in and say hi, although he wouldn't be hurt if they didn't. Some kids were like that, especially these days. "I'm Andre. I'd get up, but," he nodded towards the table. "Yeah."
"Oh, um, I'm Verity, and this is Jasper. He's my brother." Verity patted Jasper's hair. At least he didn't twist away. He seemed to be more willing to stick close to Verity with a stranger in the room. As usual, he didn't know how to say that Jasper didn't talk, so he left it alone. "Yeah, it's, um, looking kind of a mess, there." He'd never seen a detached prosthetic limb before, but all machines were the same to him, came down to individual parts that behaved or didn't and always had a reason for what they were doing. Verity liked machines. "It's giving you trouble, huh? Well, um, I can take a look. Be a break from getting the alarm stuff together. There're a lot of twitchy little wires that I have to get in the right place for that..." He craned his neck a bit to peer at the leg.
"Hey there, Jasper," Andre said to the little one was he moved out of the way for Verity. He really doubted the kid would be able to do much more than he had, but who knows? If they were letting him mess with the alarms, he couldn't do any worse at least. "And good luck, I been fightin' with that thing for a while now. The ankle joint's doin' somethin screwy. Probably been up and about on it way too much lately." Being on the run for two days hadn't helped the situation any. "My wife was always on me about goin' to get it fixed, but I kept puttin' it off. Serves me right, huh?" he chuckled, before turning his attention back to the boy. "So how old are ya, anyways, kiddo?" The kid was the quiet type, that was sure. Maybe he was just shy.
Jasper moved in closer to Verity, who patted his shoulder. Jas had gotten really touchy last time he'd tried to talk about the whole not speaking thing, but he had to say something. "Jasper, um, hasn't really talked since all this started. ...He's ten." Verity watched his brother carefully. He didn't seem to get offended this time. Good. "Um, anyway, this doesn't look too complex." He was getting used to focusing his power now, and the mechanism here was simple enough that it didn't take too much effort to etch the structure in his mind. "Yeah, this's easy." Verity had taken to wearing his toolbelt just about everywhere, and was well equipped. Verity tried to remind himself not to blather. It was okay with people his own age, but he didn't want to run his mouth around real adults. At wenty, maybe he should have thought of himself as an adult, but he didn't.
Andre nodded when Verity told him that his brother didn't speak. He wouldn't push it any further. With everything that had gone on, he didn't blame the kid. It had been hell enough on an adult like himself, he couldn't imagine a kid going through this. "'Preciate you takin' a look at it." He was a bit amused when he said that it didn't look complex and that it was easy. It sure hadn't looked easy to him. "I'd hate the thought of havin' to hop around everywhere, 'specially at my size," he chuckled. "So, you just good with tools, I guess? Handy talent to have."
"Engineering student and part-time mechanic," Verity said automatically. Credentials seemed to make people much readier to accept that he was as good as he claimed to be. That was fair. He probably wouldn't have believed an awkward kid with big feet and a tendency to ramble who claimed to be, say, a sharpshooter, but he'd have understood if said hypothetical doppelganger had been in the army or something. As it was, he'd done pretty well for himself in terms of education. He actually managed to be useful around here. "This isn't really the kind of thing I've worked with, really, but the world still comes down to the same simple machines and regular old physics."
"Sure didn't look simple to me," Andre said, trying to see what Verity was doing, in case he ever had to do it himself. He couldn't get a great view, though, so he gave up and instead absently fiddled with his wedding ring. "I was gonna head out in a little while, but I wouldn't get very far hoppin', that's for sure. So you sure are an answer to a prayer." He looked down at his ring. Part of him told him he should get rid of it, it was useless now, but he just couldn't bring himself to get rid of the last link to his wife. "How's it comin'?" he asked, craning his neck again. He didn't want to sound impatient, but he felt rather naked without it. Especially if something unfortunate happened right now.
Answer to a prayer? He opted to just take that figuratively. He'd tried to avoid thoughts of religion and the odd doubts about his general atheism that had sprung up. Verity could certainly understand the rush. He wouldn't want to lack a limb. And to a nerdy technophile, having a prosthetic limb didn't seem to him to be all that bad. He focused his attention on the little failures. He was seeing microcracks and he'd have to think about how to shore those up, but he could fix the leg for the time being. "It looks pretty okay. Probably need some real maintenance. I'll give it some thought. See my, uh, superpower thingy is reading machines and making them do what I want. So this isn't bad or anything." He didn't think he could will the structural damage to heal itself any more than he could really force power into something without fuel.
"Yeah, probably does need some serious work," Andre said. "But if you get me back on my foot, it'd be much appreciated." He was intrigued by the fact that fixing things was apparently this young man's power. "So you couldn't fix stuff like this before? Or just not as well? Pretty good gift to get, that's for sure."
"Hmm, uh, it's more like I have additional tools. Really the big difference is that I can see what's going on. Like I have... machine specific X-ray vision. And a photographic memory. And a modeling program. And it's all just really clear in my head. I can nudge stuff around a little, but the important part is being able to see really clearly what it is I need to do for the results I need." It wasn't a bad job at all. Everything followed the same rules with machines. And it was fantastic. "And Jasper's always been my helper, right, shorty?" Jasper nodded, which was a lot from him, lately.
"Nice," Andre said, leaning back in his chair a little, giving a nod to Jasper as he did. "It's really impressive, isn't it? The gifts we've all been given to help us survive this whole thing." He watched Verity as he continued to work. "Me, I can turn invisible. Comes in pretty handy with all them monsters out there." He gave Jasper a look, then turned back to Verity. "How about Short Stack over there? What can he do?"
Gifts they'd been given? That was a funny way to put it. Verity was inclined to think of these developments as random accidents that happened to work out pretty well. What mutation was good for, after all. There was hardly any reason to think otherwise, right? "Ooh, invisibility? Always a good choice." Especially in a team situation. Verity had yet to learn to stop thinking in comic-book plots. "Jasper hasn't really, um, shown me anything yet." He was wondering about that, but some people didn't seem to have any real powers going, or at least that had been the case when they'd all gone around the table for their ice breaker. It wasn't really worth worrying about. If Jasper did have some neat trick, he'd share eventually. Probably...
"Well, i didn't choose it, although I ain't complainin'," Andre said with a broad smile. "The good Lord saw what was best for me, what I needed, and here it is." He motioned to Verity. "Just like you, He took something you were already good at and made it even better." He looked over at Jasper, who still seemed to be clinging to his brother. "And I bet He's got big plans for you, too, just you wait." Suffer the little children to come unto me, he thought. "Jesus always did love kids. Yessir, I bet He's got somethin' big for you." He started to put his leg up on the table, but stopped himself, realizing how stupid it would look.
Oh, they'd moved straight into uncomfortable territory there. Verity didn't really care for religious... anything. His grandmother had only ever used it to make people miserable, and he'd had his share of nightmares when he was little about fire and brimstone and the demons she blamed for the strong strain of mental illness in that side of the family. He remembered being very glad when Jasper was born that the horrid woman was already dead. So it didn't sit well with him, and he grunted a little disconnectedly, pretending to be very engrossed in tightening a nut. Jasper looked up, though. He'd grown up in a house excised of his grandmother's lingering influence, and hadn't the least idea about any of this.
Andre barely even noticed Verity's grunt. "You know, my wife and I always wanted kids, but we were never blessed in that department," he mused out loud, not really speaking to anyone in particular. He was starting to get a little nostalgic as he sat there, imagining the family he never had and now probably wouldn't have, barring a miracle. He looked at Jasper and smiled, trying to look as unthreatening as a six foot six, nearly three hundred pound bald black man could look. "You keep an eye on your brother now, you hear?" he said, motioning to the child. "I know he's bigger, but you just watch. He needs you as much as you need him, okay? You two are family. You gotta look out for each other."
Jasper nodded, looking almost like himself, enough to make Verity stop and just watch for a moment. That was... well, better. Seeing Jasper almost smile and relax like a normal fifth-grade kid was soothing. Verity had no idea how to get through to Jas, and didn't think anything about that conversation had been new. Maybe he could pick out what had dragged his brother out of that shell he'd been in the last few days? "Yup, I do. And Jas is only a couple inches shorter than me now. If he keeps shooting up, he won't even be littler." He thought wistfully for a moment of a time where being surpassed in height by his kid brother was an important worry.
"Well, you better watch yourself, then," Andre said with a smile. "Once he's bigger'n you, he's gonna get you back for all the stuff you done to him growin' up." He chuckled. "I got three brothers and two sisters, and I ended up bein' the biggest of 'em all." He remembered the teasing he'd endured growing up and wished he'd kept better contact with them over the years. "But you don't wanna hear 'bout poor little Andre growin' up n gettin' picked on, do ya?" Of course not. Kids half his age didn't want to hear old war stories. Even the ones that were really about war. Absently, he began massaging his leg. It was too bad he couldn't go a couple of days without the prosthetic. It'd probably help it heal a little better.
"He could definitely do that now." That wasn't entirely true. Verity was a lot stronger than Jas just from being mature as well as running around all day carrying engine parts. But he didn't really think of himself as strong, and Jasper was an effective kid, just in general. He'd gotten into a lot of fights with other kids, usually older, and he'd generally come out on top. Verity's nver really thrown a punch, and had to admire Jasper's tenacity. "And, well, it's not like I don't want to hear. Nothing wrong with conversation. I'm just not necessarily going to be able to spare the best attention. My mental imaging thingy takes a whole lot of concentration."
"It's fine, don't mind me," Andre said. He definitely didn't want to mess with Verity while the kid was working on something so important. He leaned back and hummed, occasionally sneaking a glance at what Verity was doing or flashing Jasper a smile. He had to give the boy credit, he definitely seemed focused and knew what he was doing. Even the highly paid prosthetist had taken his sweet time to make simple adjustments. You definitely had to admire that sort of dedication. "Keep this up, you might get you a second career when this is all over."
"I kind of liked my regular old career, honestly. Cars are cool. But the main idea was mechanical engineering, you know? Working with real machines with moving parts you can get your head around properly. Though I guess this is a pretty good machine, too. Just not my usual specialty. I don't think I'd do too well in a medical field. More pressure than I could really deal with. Weird enough when customers who thought they knew a lot about cars liked demanding I do my job the way they liked. I mean... Stress." He shrugged. "But... yeah, it's about done. There you go." He turned around and presented the leg.
Andre took the leg from Verity, practically beaming with excitement as he did. "Much appreciated," he said, hiking his pants leg up, revealing his stump, covered by a white sock. "I know it sounds redundant, but I just don't feel like a whole man without it." He put it on as he talked, in a hurry to get back on his feet. "I don't pretend to know anything about machines or anything like that. Figure whoever's workin' on my car or whatever knows what they're doin'. They sure don't need me tellin' 'em what to do any more than I need them tellin' me how to preach." He chuckled as he made the last couple of adjustments to his leg. After nearly 25 years, he'd pretty much mastered the task and was able to "pull himself together" pretty quick. "Yeah, that's nice," he said as he moved his leg around a little, testing the fit. "Real nice. And I think you even managed to make it fit a little better. Don't know how, but you did it." He grunted a little as he stood up, leaning on the table for a little support. He shifted his ample weight back and forth to test it, and it seemed to hold. "My, my, my. God bless ya son, you did good." He clasped Verity on the shoulder and gave him a wide smile.
"Well, I guess I wouldn't." Verity managed to get it through his own head in time that a comment about it being cool to be a cyborg wouldn't be appropriate. He nodded as politely as he could, trying not to mind the blessing and the mention of preaching. Most people didn't care for, say, Marvel comics, and he blathered about those. A lot more people would actually want to hear about God stuff, wouldn't they? He had weird enough interests that he couldn't judge. "Well, as long as it's comfortable. The point of the thing has got to be maximum functionality under the circumstances, right?" Under the circumstances had become a favorite phrase of Verity's. It summed things up without getting into particulars. Messy particulars. "So let me know if it needs tweaking at all."
"Exactly, yeah," Andre said, still testing the weight-bearing properties of the leg. "Definitely gotta be at your best, 'specially if you're gonna be headin' out there," he pointed towards the window. "I was goin' on a supply run when the thing decided it didn't want to work. Anything you need while I'm out?" He turned and looked at Jasper. "Or him?" He felt like he owed Verity something for getting him back on his feet, so to speak. "Least I can do, if I can find it anyways."
"Nothing in particular. Um, if you see any metal doodads or anything? I've got lots of stuff I want to work on. I'm pretty much done with lights and alarms, so next I need to talk to Terry and see if maybe I can get a manual elevator working in the shaft or see if maybe a working windmill can go on the roof and give us a little bit of power. I haven't run too low on parts yet, though, and there's broken stuff or stuff that isn't doing any good now all over the place, so I'm okay on cannibalizing bits. Though if the elevator thing works out I'll need to find some really, really epic cable... I'm sorry, I'm blathering again." Verity found he was finishing ha;f his sentences with some version of that apology.
Andre had to give a good chuckle at the young man's self-depreciation. "You're not blathering, you're just fine." He clasped Verity on the shoulder. "Trust me. A good portion of what I've said in my life would count as blathering to some people. Don't mean I stop or anything." He gave Verity a wide smile. "I'll keep an eye out for stuff like that. May not bring any cable this time, but if I run across any, I'll definitely make a note where it is for ya." Looking him in the eye, Andre said, "I appreciate this, man. I really do." Shifting his attention to Jasper, he gave him an equally warm smile. "You keep your brother out of trouble now, ya hear?"