Rev. Andre Washington III (holy_ghost) wrote in downfallrpg, @ 2010-05-13 22:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2015-09-05, andre, andre and josh, josh |
Too early for philosphy
Who: Andre & Josh
Where: Josh's room
When: Morning
Andre was still tired, even after getting a full night's rest. The search and rescue operation the day before had really taken a lot out of him. Not just the stairs, spiders, and fire, but especially turning a second person invisible with him. Considering how easily he could turn himself invisible, or anything he happened to be holding or wearing, it was kind of a shock just how worn out he still was from it all. He could still turn himself invisible- he'd tried it when he woke up and looked in the mirror- but it seemed like it took a little more effort to do this morning. He hoped that all he needed was to recharge a little and it would all be all right.
He was more concerned about the other members of the rescue party, though. Terry had seemed to come through all right, and he knew Landon and Catie were in the best hands possible, considering that their doctor had left them high and dry. But he wondered how the kid was holding up. Josh had done a bang-up job keeping all the spider-things occupied while he and Terry rescued the others, but he hadn't looked that good before it, and he could imagine that all that fire had taken a lot of out of him as well. After taking a cold shower, shaving, and a little prayer for everyone, he decided to go have a look-see, make sure the boy was doing okay. He climbed the stairs, silently cursing them as he did, before stopping at the boy's door. He knocked semi-quietly, hoping the boy wasn't still asleep. "Hey, kid," he said, trying not to be too loud, which was difficult with his booming voice. "It's me, Andre."
It was relatively early, but Josh was awake. He'd already had his first icy cold shower of the day, and while it had helped for a few minutes, he was feeling fairly miserable again already. He knew exactly what had happened: he'd burned himself out, much in the same way he had when he'd fried those monsters that had attacked him before Joyce and Verity had found him on the street. He was aware that his body temperature ran high anyway, but it was higher than his high-normal, making him feel as if he had the flu. Hot, achy, queasy and shivering, he'd been lying on the floor in front of his window, completely naked and hoping to drift off to sleep again. Before that could happen, a knock came on the door, and then someone called out to him. Andre, the guy who'd turned invisible, from yesterday.
Josh dragged himself up from the floor and pulled the top sheet off of his bed, wrapping it around his waist before padding over to the door and opening it. "Hi," he said, nodding and then stepping back so Andre could come in if he wanted. He didn't even have the presence of mind to ask the man why he was here, if there was something else for which he was needed.
Andre was a little surprised by the makeshift skirt Josh was wearing, but he figured that by showing up while the boy was obviously still sleeping, he kinda deserved whatever he saw. Seeing him step back, he assumed it was an invitation to come in and did so. "Sorry if I woke ya," he said apologetically. He looked the boy over. He looked about how Andre felt. "Just wanted to come by and make sure you were all right. You did a fine job yesterday." He didn't come in more than a couple of steps yet, in case the boy wanted him to leave.
"W-wasn't asleep," Josh said, flushing a little. He was aware that what he had on looked very odd, but it was much preferable to going to the door naked. He'd had no energy whatsoever for finding acceptable clothing on short notice. He backed up enough to perch on the end of the bed, discovering that his legs didn't really want to hold him right then. He knew he must look horrible between the sweating, shivering, dark circles beneath his eyes and with his slender, pasty body mostly naked. Really, he felt too bad to care all that much. "I burned myself out," he explained, thinking that it was very nice of Andre to check on him. He hadn't expected that, considering that he didn't know anyone here very well at all yet. "I s-should be okay in a day or two." He paused, trying to force his foggy brain to work correctly. "A-are you okay?" he asked, since Andre didn't look as if he felt tip-top, himself.
Andre leaned against the wall, still pretty tired and wanting to take the weight off his leg. He was glad that Josh hadn't been asleep, although he looked like he should be. He probably should be too, come to think of it. He knew he probably didn't look much better. "I'll make it," he said, rubbing his hand over his freshly shaven head. "I never tried that before, makin' someone else invisible with me. Worked, but took a lot out of me." He gave a faint smile. "Don't help that I ain't in my military shape anymore either." He looked closer at Josh. "Whatcha mean, burned yourself out? Can't flame on no more?"
"It was cool," Josh said, a little shyly. "Y-you were just gone. Both of you." Invisibility would be an excellent ability to have with the world like it was, he thought. Maybe those things outside could still smell Andre, but not being able to see him might confuse them just enough for him to get clear. Glancing at the man, he thought he was probably in better shape than Josh was. Didn't make any difference right now, though; they both seemed to be feeling like crap. He nodded his head at the question he was asked. "It'll come back, b-but... yeah. There's nothin' there. When I do that, it makes me kinda sick." Which was more than obvious at the moment. The first time, he'd wondered if the ability was gone, but then it had seemed to return stronger than ever. What might happen this time?
"Mmmm," Andre nodded and looked down. He was lucky that his powers were still around if he needed them at least. "Know whatcha mean, kinda. I can still do my little stupid human trick, just a little harder right now. Least now I know that'll get better." At least, he assumed it would. He wasn't quite sure if the same rules applied to everyone. "Tell you what, though, I wouldn't have minded havin' a human flamethrower like you back when I was in Iraq. 'Course I wouldn't have minded bein' able to go invisible either. Might still have all my bits n' pieces attached." He chuckled, then looked over at Josh. "Well, anyway you slice it, I'm just glad we got 'em outta there. Like somethin' out of Revelations or something like that, all those bugs runnin' around."
"Maybe you sh-shouldn't do that for a while if y-you don't have to," Josh suggested. Personally, he had no reason to try to set anything on fire or even boil water, so he was going to wait until he felt recharged again. He smiled slightly when Andre said he could've used somebody like Josh when he'd been in Iraq. "'S kinda neat, 'cept for being hot all the time," he offered. "If we had ice, it'd be a lot better." If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, as his granddad had always used to say. He nodded in agreement to Andre's last sentence, then winced and put a hand to his temple. "I-it was awful. Never liked spiders, anyway." Much less mutant ones.
Andre wasn't planning to. He'd just done it this morning to make sure he still could. "Me either. Pretty much bugs in general, really. Never could stand 'em. I know they're God's creatures and all, but sometimes I wonder why he had to go and make 'em so creepy." He chuckled a little. "So what'd you do before all this? You still in school or something?" Andre wasn't entirely sure how old Josh was, really. Their patrol-slash-rescue party hadn't really given them a lot of time to get to know each other at the time. They had all been too focused on the mission for chit-chat.
Josh would have to agree that spiders were creepy enough without adding in the mutant factor. At any rate, he felt fortunate that they'd managed as well as they had down in the basement. It could have turned out so much worse. He was a little bit surprised when Andre asked if he was still in school, although he shouldn't have been. He knew he barely looked eighteen, if that; nobody would guess that he was going to turn 22 in November. "No," he said, shifting to lean back against the headboard of his bed. "I was... kinda livin', you know, on the street." He was reluctant to disclose that, actually, because he wasn't keen on getting into the rest of his story. "H-how about you?" Deflecting more questions by asking a question often worked, he'd found.
"Oh, I been a lot of things over the years." Andre wasn't one to judge someone for having lived on the streets. He never had, although he'd come close a few times when he was in his gang phase, and he had a lot of former street people who'd cleaned up and been part of his church. "Most recently, I was a preacher, though. Potter's House, across town. Had a pretty big group going too." He sighed and motioned to a nearby chair. "Mind if I sit? Leg's still botherin' me after all them stairs yesterday."
Josh hadn't heard of Andre's church, but then that wasn't all that surprising. He'd been a nonpracticing Catholic for years, and if he had sought out some sort of religion, that would have been it. "Y-you have a preacher kind of voice," he remarked, then felt foolish for saying it. He thought it was true, though, even if the most he knew of preachers (as opposed to priests) was from things he'd seen on TV. "Oh. No, I d-don't mind," he said when the other man asked if he could sit. He probably should have invited him to sit down already, but clearly Josh wasn't accustomed to having company in his room.
"Much obliged," Andre said, limping over to the chair. He sat down and extended his bad leg out straight to relieve some of the pressure on the knee. "Think I come by it natural, the preacher thing. My dad and granddad both were, too. Although I sure fought it for a long time." He made a slight "hrmf"-ing laugh as he thought about it. "Took God puttin' a land mine in my way before I'd slow down long enough to listen, get myself back on track." He shrugged. "Guess sometimes you gotta get hit over the head to get straightened out, huh?"
Josh turned sideways a little, his head pressed against the headboard, one hand making sure the sheet hadn't ridden up anywhere strategic. He'd feel like an idiot if he accidentally flashed the preacher. He listened, wondering what it would be like to have those strong family ties. He'd never even known who his dad was, although he'd been fortunate to have a granddad who'd done his best to provide a father figure for him. "D-do you really think God does things like that?" he asked. "C-cause somethin' bad to happen to make you listen?" God seemed very far away to him most of the time, and he wasn't sure how to reconcile a loving God with tragedy and misfortune. Well, and what had happened to the majority of the world. There was that, too.
To be fair, Andre knew about his father and grandfather, and his dad had been killed when Andre was only six years old. "I suppose I should restate that," he said with a slight smile. "God doesn't necessarily cause things to happen, but rather allows them to happen." He leaned back a little in his chair, tipping it off the front legs. "A lot of times we're kinda stupid when it comes to doin' the right thing. He could 'make' us do the right thing, but he knows we'd never learn and grow from somethin' like that. Instead, he allows us to be tested, lets the devil put obstacles in our path, so that we can become better people for going through it." He'd had this conversation last week with that poor boy Landon, and had really been reading up on the book of Job after that, since, next to Revelations, it seemed to be the one that spoke to their current situation the most. "You ever read the book of Job?" He had no idea if the boy was even Christian, but chances were he'd at least heard the story, even a warped version.
"M-most people... follow the course of least resistance." Josh stumbled over that last word a little, but he got it out. "That's wh-what my granddad always used to say." In his experience, the wrong thing was generally a whole lot easier to do than the right thing, so that was what people went with. A very few people were genuinely good, the majority somewhere in the middle, and then there were some who were pure evil. That was his opinion anyway, possibly because he'd had a great deal of experience with one that he considered extremely evil. His lashes lowered, because his eyes felt a tiny bit damp, and that was embarrassing. He was going to chalk it up to feeling awful in general. "S-sometimes I used to wonder... why He wouldn't help. If He could." He curled himself tighter in his half-seated position on the bed and shook his head, saying, "No. G-guess I never read much of the Bible."
"Well, you're right, they do. It ain't in the Bible, but a wise man once said there's a big difference between what's right and what's easy." He shrugged a little. He was right, of course, and even he had been guilty of it. Too many times, just like everyone else. Whether it had been dealing, lying to his mom when he was little, or sleeping in a little rather than getting up early and doing work around the house, it was easier. "But that's how we get tested. To see if we do exactly that." He gave a small smile. "And He does help, you know. That little voice in the back of your head, tellin' you the 'right' thing to do, or sometimes even just the 'better'? That's Him. It don't always seem fair, I admit it. But like Job, after he went through all those tribulations that the Lord allowed the devil to put him through, he still praised God through all that. And in the end, He rewarded him for his faith."
"Wh-why d'we have to be tested, though?" It was rare that Josh actually had someone to talk to, someone older who knew things. Andre wasn't old enough to remind him of his granddad, but he had that same kind of vibe in his opinion. He didn't seem to get impatient, didn't seem to mind dumb questions. "Why can't we just be?" He'd struggled with the existence of God for years and had finally decided that while he didn't understand Him or His ways in the least, he'd like to believe He was up there, turning wheels and pulling strings. That was so much preferable to feeling all alone in the universe, and when you died you'd be like Rover... dead all over. Another Granddad-ism. Josh figured that life wasn't really supposed to be fair, and if anyone expected it to be? Then they were destined to be unhappy.
Andre shrugged. Honestly, he wasn't sure himself. It sure didn't seem fair to him that he survived but his beautiful wife hadn't. Or anyone else's loved ones. "Who knows?" He straightened his chair up, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled. "Maybe it's like Noah. Back then God looked down and didn't like what He was seein'. So He chose one man and his family to save out of everyone." Lord, give me the words this boy needs to hear, he prayed. "Might be like that all over again. He didn't like the way the world was goin', so He decided to give us one last chance, show Him that we're worth keepin' around a couple more millennia." Personally, Andre wasn't entirely sure he believed that himself. He thought they were living in the End Times himself, but he didn't know if the boy was ready for that trip.
Josh knew the story about Noah. Long ago, when he'd been a small child, his mom had let him go to a Vacation Bible School at the Baptist church in the summers, despite the fact that they were Catholic. He'd gotten the basic Bible stories and concepts he knew from that. "G-guess those people were kinda like people today," he said, lifting his head now that his sudden case of watery eyes had passed. "They thought... it wouldn't h-happen to them, so they didn't listen." And they'd all drowned, probably screaming for one last chance. Creepy, and not all that reassuring. He wasn't sure what he thought about what was happening now, whether it was some kind of punishment, a fluke of fate, or-- like Andre seemed to be implying-- a cleansing. That was probably something he'd never know for sure, and maybe he was okay with that.
Andre really hoped he hadn't laid anything too heavy on the boy. He couldn't tell if the way he looked was because of how he felt or because of what Andre had said. "Mm hmm," he said with a nod. "Like I said, sometimes takes gettin' kicked in the head to get the message across. But we got some good people here. And hopefully us, and anyone else that survived in other places-" surely Detroit wasn't the only place spared, right Lord? Cause if it was, You sure got a funny sense of humor- "will overcome, make the world a better place for when He comes back." He smiled. Right now, he had to hold onto that thought, that one way or another, the Lord was coming back. If not, they were, in crude language, fucked.
Strangely enough, Josh hadn't spent any time thinking about people who weren't in Detroit. But surely there had to be others. "H-hope so," he said, aware that he was sweating again. He had longing thoughts of a walk-in freezer where he could stand for a while, and he wrapped his arms around himself as he started to shiver. This would pass. He knew it would, because it had the last time, but it was certainly miserable while it was going on. Andre hadn't freaked him out, really. Aside from feeling sick, he was okay. Luckier than a lot of people, because he had somewhere safe to stay.
Andre gave Josh another glance. The boy really did look miserable, and even if he was sure it would pass, Andre knew he'd need some rest first. He got up from his chair with a slight grunt as his knee argued with him again. "Well, I'm gonna let you get your rest. Think we both need it. You need anything before I go?" He flexed his protesting knee a little as he leaned against the wall, trying to get it going again.
"No," Josh replied, his eyes following Andre as he stood. "Th-thank you." He figured the second Andre was out the door, he was going to go get into an icy cold shower again and then lie right back down on the floor where he'd been when the knock on his door had come. Somehow he felt cooler lying on the floor. Possibly it was the difference between carpet and bedcovers, who knew? "I'll be fine." If the previous episode was anything to go by, he'd still be unwell tomorrow but not quite as bad as today, and then the next day he should be fairly back to normal. Well... what his normal was now.
"All right, then," Andre said, heading towards the door. "If ya ever need to talk or anything, just come by and see me. Big guy like me ain't that hard to find." He contemplated going back down and reading his bible some more, then taking a nap. Something told him that he was going to be called into action again sooner rather than later. He waved and let himself out of the room.