Logs:The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established.

The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established.
Dramatis Personae Joshua, Leo
In Absentia	2023-03-30 "Hell."
Location Navachethana Community Center - Bengaluru, India
Calling this place a community center is perhaps a bit aspirational. There's very little by way of facilities; not a lot of meeting or recreational space -- in fact this looks like little more than someone's aging and eclectically decorated house. There are several bits of not-really-outdoor furniture that have been scavenged from the trash to provide gathering space in the cracked stone patio; the living room is hung with an unmatched assortment of inspirational signs, news clippings, Bollywood posters, and photographs of famous mutants both local and abroad; the small kitchen is stocked with a very disorganized jumble of cooking implements and oddly neatly organized and labeled leftovers in the fridge. The bedrooms have a number of mattresses each spread nearly wall to wall on the floors, and the bathrooms have been filled up with a wide range of serviceable if very generic toiletries. The pooja room, in contrast to the rest of the mess, is quite neatly and lovingly upkept, fresh cheerful paint and carefully polished idols and bright fragrant fresh flowers laid out before them each morning. Upstairs, somewhere, the bedrooms are considerably less filled with agony than they were this morning. The patio, on the other hand, now holds one extremely exhausted and headachey Leonid Concepcion, pale and jittery where he's slumped into an armchair with much of its stuffing coming out. He's downing a handful of Probably More Advil than he should, without water. The lightweight mustard-yellow khurta he is wearing (trimmed elaborately in green vinework embroidery, though the intricate stitching has been fraying and the fabric somewhat threadbare) is definitely not his, several sizes too big in addition to its shabby state. His eyes are kind of fixed and staring -- he's probably not giving deep philosophical contemplation to the bougainvillea spilling over the patio walls, but a first glance might suggest that he is. Joshua is wandering out onto the patio looking much as his usual, in jeans and boots and a blue tee shirt reading "Lamoille Union High School STATE CHAMPIONS 20 15 BASEBALL" in gold, around a picture of a lance-wielding knight on horseback. He has a bottle of water in hand, which he offers to Leo before silently slumping into the side of a busted old couch beside the other man. Leo is sluggish to take the water, but after a pause does actually blink, barely looking away from the flowers though he reaches up to take the water. He takes a long swig, and then slouches further into his seat. "Do you," he is asking -- more curious than judgmental -- once he seems to have recovered At Least One Brain Cell, "even play baseball." "Not for Lamoille Union High School in 2015," Joshua answers promptly. For a stretch this is all he says -- seems like it's all he's going to say. His legs stretch out in front of him, his head rolling back against the saggy couch cushion so that he can look up at the hazy sky. "But yeah. I'm pretty fucking good, actually. Nearly gave my mom a heart attack as a kid cuz I started wanting to go to church -- only because they sponsored the best Little League team in the neighborhood." Leo's laugh is just a small huff, his head shaking. "The horror. My mother would have had a heart attack if I had stopped." He turns the water bottle over in his hands, looking down at it for an excessively long stretch before he ventures: "But -- your father. He was Catholic, yes? How did that... work." Joshua raises his eyebrows at the question. "Still is Catholic. He got baptized, I think that was pretty much what it took." Leo's cheeks flush darker, his head dipping apologetically. Only at the first half of this; the second half he is huffing a bit more. With Joshua out of easy swiping distance he instead tosses the bottle cap to plink Joshua in the side of the head. "I mean -- your whole family. You being Jewish and your father being Catholic and -- was that... hard?" A second too late, Joshua lifts his hand to bat away at the bottle cap. It hits his forehead lightly and clatters to the dusty stone ground. He's slow to bend down and retrieve it, and when he does he doesn't give it back. He turns it over restlessly in his hand, thumb running against its ridged side. "You mean my parents." He flicks Leo a brief glance, then turns his eyes back up to the sky. "Things getting serious with you and Kitty?" "I mean --" Leo's brows scrunch slow and thoughtful. "-- all of it." He's starting to pick absently at one of the fraying threads of his khurta, catching himself before he fully unravels a delicate embroidered leaf and transferring his fidgety plucking to a wayward piece of stuffing emerging from the armchair. "How did they -- decide which --" The furrow in his brow is getting deeper. "Was it difficult for them? For you?" "So having-kids-level serious." Joshua sits back up. His eyes shift back to Leo -- not the other man's face so much as the restless plucking. "Never really been hard for me except that sometimes people get shitty about interfaith families. I've never felt mixed up about shit." The idle spinning fidget of the bottle cap between his fingers picks up. "My mom's Jewish so we kind got roped in by default," comes out a little glib, but he is more serious when he continues, "... I don't know if it was a hard decision. For them. How to raise us. My dad is -- he doesn't really care that much about the church. Think that made it much easier, you know? Judaism is important to my mom. For my dad Catholicism is like. The shabby old paint some other assholes left on the walls." "No, it's not... we haven't..." The quick jittery fidget of Leo's fingers is growing faster, together with the unsettling everpresent roil inside him. "I haven't even -- some things I wasn't sure how to -- didn't want to bring up if --" He rolls a piece of the demolished stuffing between his fingers, pressing it into a small pill. There's something edging on pleading in his next question: "-- but what if he did care? Can't you just -- be -- both?" Joshua barks out a rough laugh that, almost as soon as it's come, he is trying to marshal into some semblance of oh-wait-you're-serious gravity. Probably Leo is looking for a more helpful answer, but the one he gets is a simple and firm: "No." Leo's expression does not quite crumple, but there's a definite suggestion that he is steeling himself very hard against it. His shoulders do sag, and he flicks the small pill of fabric sharply off the pad of his thumb to patter to the patio stones. "But why -- you'd still have been born Jewish no matter what, right? So if you were raised Catholic, wouldn't -- I just, I have met some Christian Jews who --" "You have not." Joshua cuts in before Leo can finish this sentence, with an abrupt and uncharacteristic sharpness. "I'm sure you've met some assholes cosplaying as Jews but fucking Jews-for-Jesus are not a thing. You can be born Jewish and choose to be an apostate, or you can be a Christian who's colonizing our culture like they always do, but you can't be a Jew who thinks Jesus is a god." His expression has tightened, but eases some when he looks back at Leo. "... if you're serious about her, maybe you can work it out, but..." He doesn't finish this but, but there's a definite skepticism in his expression he does not quite manage to hide. Leo's eyes grow wider -- maybe at the sharpness in Joshua's tone, maybe at the reply. There's a clearly visible but forming on his lips that he swallows back down, a deep frown inscribing itself into his features. He is quiet for a very long while, silence punctuated only by the crinkling of the plastic water bottle as he lifts it for another long drink. When he speaks again he just sounds deflated -- heavier, exhausted in a way the marathon healing session had not previously managed. "We should get back to work if we want to get you home by tomorrow." And, after a short delay, quieter: "Thank you. For." The water bottle crinkles in his hands with another small dent. Joshua does not break the silence, and barely acknowledges the thanks, his lift of chin so small it might have been accidental and not a proper nod. He pushes himself heavily to his feet, offering Leo the bottle cap back. "Get you some goddamn food, first." An almost-casual afterthought: "Be the last trip I can come on, for a while. Mirror can --" The pause here is fleeting, "--probably help you out, though. Till I get back." Leo does not look pleased at the prospect of food -- likely more due to lingering headachey-queasy overexertion than any actual dislike for the delicious meals he's been getting here. The unhappy scrunch of his face isn't a no, though. It's pushed aside by a quizzical lift of eyebrows: "-- a while? Back from -- where?" His blush after this is dark, his backtracking hasty: "Sorry, you don't -- it isn't like you have to do all this, I just -- travel does not usually stop you from -- sorry." "I don't have to. I want to." Joshua pauses on the verge of turning back toward the door. His hesitation here is long, his hands both hooking thumbs into his pockets. "Hell," doesn't sound quite as glib as it would have without the long delay. "Ohio. I'm sure you'll hear all about it after I get back." Leo looks oddly sanguine about the thought of Joshua foraying into Hell, but it's 'Ohio' that gives him pause. He's just been pulling himself out of his armchair but gets no further than standing, casting Joshua a baffled look. "What on earth is in Ohio?" This hesitation -- even longer. Joshua is busy searching the sky like it will answer for him, but he's looking squarely back at Leo when he finally replies: "Lassiter." Leo's hand drops to the back of the chair he's just vacated, fingers curling in tight to the weatherbeaten old fabric. The restless agitation inside him is churning harder. This time, his eyes don't leave Joshua -- not for his long-held breath or the stretch of time after, either. "Well," eventually breaks the long silence, in just a soft exhale. Leo swallows, and pries himself away from the armchair to go open the door, hold it for Joshua. "After you get back, then."