SIX QUESTIONS / JOSIAH & TRUMAN @vapxrlngs
There were days that Josiah still wondered what it would have been like if the world had not fallen into a ruin. Would he be married now? Would he finally have found someone to settle down with? Would he be a father, greater than the man that his father was not? Would life had been good to him, better than what it was when he was younger? The early days of the apocalypse, and the last two years, have only made him think of survival. He had young people with him, young people that needed to survive. There was no time for what ifs; he couldn’t risk it. But now he had a home, people to live with, people to love, and so the questions came like clockwork. So, the questions came like clockwork, like something spurned by his love for the people he now lived with. It was a physical ache in his chest not to know the answers to these questions, yet all the same, he asked himself anyway.
Maybe it was wrong to look back, and maybe it was wrong to think of what could have been. And maybe this was the only sin nowadays: that one wished for the past to return. Josiah Rivera thought of these anyway. The people of this new world cared not for what was wrong or what was right, after all; they cared only for who lived or died. For so long as Josiah could find it in himself not to let the thoughts overrule him, then he would be fine. Or, at least, as fine as he could be in today’s day. As fine as anyone could be with walkers lurking at their every door, even in that of their heads. He’d be fine, and for another day, he’d be okay; he’d tell himself this over and over and over, if only so to get through the days, to get through the hole in his chest where another version of life was taken from him.
As he looked at the people around him, holed up in this prison cell block like he was, he knew he had to be strong. He had to be fine. He had to be okay. These people were his family now; and he, along with the rest of the leaders of the group, had to keep standing on their two feet so as to show these people that they could stand on theirs. The truth of the matter was that this was life now, that this was how the world ended up, and that this was how he was going to live whether he liked it or not. The young woman he treated as his younger sister smiled at him from the other side of the block; she had a smile that could burst him out of any bubble and get him back on his mind’s two feet.
“Thinking again?” she asked with that playful lilt to her tone. There was something comforting about it, too. There was something affectionate. “Ease up a little! You have an interviewee in five.”
Josiah returned the smile she gave, though in a way that was more distracted than hers was. Still, it held all affection and love for the younger woman; it held everything he looked for in a family that was not given him when he was young. “Thanks for the reminder, but I didn’t need it. In fact, I was just on my way!” Josiah tried to match the playful tone. “I’ll see you later. Hopefully with a new member, yeah? Stay safe.”
“Stay safe,” she echoed. These two words had become something of a reminder for the two of them. It had become somewhat of a promise, too. A promise to come back alive. A promise to have the other person something to come back to. A promise that no one was going to die, even if dying was inevitable, even if dying was as easy as breathing. (There was irony in that.)
With a tip of his head and a smile that said he would keep the promise as he was supposed to, Josiah moved towards the cell that held all question meetings, so to find the newcomer that had just arrived at their gates.