15828/Flock of Crowes

Flock of Crowes
Date of Scene:	10 September 2023
Location:	Candle, Booke and Belle
Synopsis:	Joshua and Nettie talkin' on the rooftop
Cast of Characters:	Nettie Crowe, Joshua Foley

---

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    THe Rooftop of the Candle, Booke and Belle building -- which is generally just referred to as The Candle by most of the occupants and transients who pass through -- is a calm place, above the bustle of the East Side. It's accessable from the Fifth Floor by a ladder, marked with a sign that says "ROOF ACCESSS - Fliers/Smokers/Crows

    JOsh may have learned that there is a lot of stupid jokes through-out the building, and that Nettie kept herself busy updating job boards, ideas, library requests and ordering items for the shop below. And that the shop itself was more of a hobby, half the time Nettie 'forgets' to charge people for tea, scones, or the super basic materials.

    She also charges double if someone tells her she doesn't know what she's talking about.

    But right now, in the cooling afternoon of the Manhattan evening. Nettie was at the rooftop, looking out over the city.

Joshua Foley has posed:
Coming up the stairs, Joshua is carrying a load of wet sheets. He opens the door to the roof access and smirks at the sign as he moves. Setting down the basket, he goes to straighten out the line and plucks some of the laundry pins, tucking them in his mouth.

Returning to the basket, he takes out the first sheet, shaking and waving it out before pinning it to the line and advancing it to hang the next. "Hi, Miss Nettie!" he calls out to her between sheet hangings, his attention locked in on the job in front of him of preparing another sheet to fly in the warm sunlight.

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Washing day? Was it Sunday already? NEttie turns, plucking the lit, handrolled cigarette from her mouth, and gives a grin to Joshua as she waves her left hand, and then pulls on her glove again.

    "Hullo duckie." she greets him warmly, eyeballing the washing he's brought up, but she gives a smile as she wanders her way over.

    "How're you settlin' in?"

Joshua Foley has posed:
"Yep. Another Sunday. Getting my chores done and then may try to do a Tik-Tok with my skateboard." Which is a huge step. He hadn't done a video since he died and came back. "I'll just need to create a new account. Not that I'm sure anyone cared that I had to delete my old one because I was dead." Joshua shrugs his shoulders and considers her question honestly.

"It's taking some getting used to. I got used to seeing some weird things in the short time I was at the Academy... but magic. That's a whole other story." he glances down and takes up another sheet to hang. "I don't want to let anyone down. I stay up at night, studying books. Trying to learn how to heal. Because I don't want to be out in the field and not know how to heal someone."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "I whole-heartedly approve of you making the TikToks for the vimes. Vines? Is that even a thing anymore on the MyFaces?" Nettie asks thoughtfully, and she rattles around finds a bucket and turns it over to sit down on, stretching her legs out.

    "WHichever it is, send me a link and I'll follow." she adds with a small smile, and listens intently to Joshua. Her too-oddly-colored-to-be-real blue eyes study him as he speaks, and she chews the inside of her cheek as she considers.

    "I do want to make it clear that you're not *expected* to be out in the field, Joshua. You're still a young pup. You've quite bravely thrown yourself into the mix with this League Dark and outperformed every expectation I've had for you in just a brief time." Nettie replies with a soft smile. "You should be quite proud of yourself and your progress already."

    And she gives a soft hum. "Let's talk about those goals then. Do you think having better access to more books will help you feel more confident in your abilities? Or discussions with medical professionals or other healers?" she asks.

Joshua Foley has posed:
"I will." Joshua says with a chuckle. He's not going to try to correct her, it's close enough! Blue eyes cast down to look at the golden skin that has yet to go away. "I'd like to know why this happened." he admits, totally unsure of it himself.

Then she's complimenting him on being in the field and he shakes his head. "If I spent all my time at the shop, I'd be a bum." he comments with a small chuckle. "I... I heard about the X-Men getting arrested. Try to investigate the cure for this..." a hold up of his hand. "...I." Closing his eyes, he steels himself, ready to be railed against. "I had signed up for the waiting list to be cured when it was approved." he admits quietly. "I thought maybe if this went away, I'd be normal and.. and..." he reaches up, pressing his palms into his eyes and rubbing at them. "...maybe my parents would take me back. I even wrote them a letter about it."

"But... I want to help." he finally decides, turning to look out over the city. "I can heal people. I can be an Elixir that soothes, that helps... but I can't stop a heart attack, I don't know how it happens. I can't prevent a stroke, because I don't know what to focus on. I can barely mend bones and physical wounds." He's just opening the door to the full scope of his abilities. "I came back to life, I don't know how..." He looks over to Nettie in confusion, his eyes brimming with tears.

"What if I could revive someone else who died?" he asks her quietly. "Does that make me a monster?"

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Arguably, poppet, if you could revive the dead --" she pauses a moment, in consideration, "that would make you a god." Nettie replies quietly to the lad brimming with tears. She doesn't admonish him. she doesn't tell him to man up. She lets him feel what he's feeling, and she motions to him to join her, kicking over another bucket with her leg and setting it so he can sit down.

    "That must be a tremendous amount of pressure on you, admitting that you'd want to take the cure. I reckon a great amount of people would judge you for it -- both good and bad. They need to recall, though, that your life is what matters to you. You will make choices, they will have concequences, but ultimately? Your body. Your life. /Your Powers/. They are *yours* to do with what you will." Nettie replies quietly, and she leans back a little, pulling one leg up and sitting with her arms looped around it. "If 'the cure' is approved, and you wish to take it, I would still welcome you. No matter what, you /are/ Joshua Foley, and I would understand why you chose to take it. Though I don't believe your parents would approve of me, being a hundred seventy-year-old witch who was married to another woman in the '40's." she gives a huff out for effect.

    "However, choosing to keep your powers will afford you freedoms, even if it means sacrificing the idea your parents will accept you back without significant change on their part. That is a sacrifice that I understand with the whole of my wizened little husk of a heart." Nettie reflects.

Joshua Foley has posed:
"It's okay. I know how to pick them. There was a girl when I was going through all this, who didn't give up on me. You kind of remind me of her." Joshua shakes his head as he finishes up the last blanket and comes over to take a seat when Nettie offers it to him.

He settles down and folds his arms around his legs and pulls them up into his chest. "I don't even know if they would want me back. I just thought I would make one last attempt. That girl said something to me once. If they don't love you with your powers, did they ever really love you?"

"She was probably right. Maybe it's just a fool's errand." he glances aside to her. "Not that I don't want to be here." he adds. "I just... I'm a wreck."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "You're not a wreck. You're experiencing a period of upheaval, both personal and political. Your identity is shifting, you're trying to figure who you are and who you want to be. Both noble goals." Nettie replies with a smile and a point of her finger to Joshua. "They may want their idea of you back, someone who is just like them. Would you be able to take your experiences, what you have lived -- and died -- through and be that?" Nettie wonders, and as he's given that thought, she reflects.

    "My whole family has been magic-users. I had an older sister, two older brothers, and a younger brother. My parents and my uncle. My grandparents stretching back generations. After... after our house fell, it was just me and my younger brother. And he decided that magic wasn't worth condemning his children to live with the risk of persecution... so he chose to give it up." Nettie explains.

    "He lived a long and happy life without his powers. He married a lovely young woman, they had oodles of children, and he founded the Crow Shipping Company -- which, by the by, is how I actually pay for things like 'laundry' and 'antique busses' and 'hazard payments'." Nettie gives a small smile.

    "And I visited him towards the end of his life. His children and grandchildren and great-grand-child didn't know who I was, since I hadn't aged. They just knew his 'younger sister' was a bit of an oddball and traveled about, always wrote letters though." she muses quietly. "I asked him if he regretted giving up magic."

    She pats herself down. She pulls from a pocket a little silk pouch, and withdraws another cigarette from it, and lights it without a match.

    "He did not."

Joshua Foley has posed:
As Joshua chews over the information, his blue eyes blink and his fingers lace together in thought. "I'm sure you know the story of the Good Samaritan?" he asks, not delving into it unless she says otherwise. "It's one of the first things I learned from Sunday School when I was a kid and me and my brothers went to church with my parents." he explains.

"Your brother did what he thought was right for him. I'm a little more complex. How many people can I help with these powers? How many people could die if I don't have them? Could I live with myself just walking by someone that is hurt without rendering aid?"

A shuttering shy releases from him and he closes his eyes again. "I didn't second guess myself until I healed your hand, Miss Nettie." he admits.

"When I saw my death... and I assume yours?" he asks her quietly. "And then I saw that I could do good. That I could help others."

"Is being able to heal others an affront to God? If so, then why did he give me these powers?"

"And why do I feel the overwhelming urge... to help."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "You caught a case of Altruism." Nettie replies, her eyebrows drawing up though her eyes stay lidded. Smoke curls about her head as she smokes. "It's contagious among the heroic sorts, and I"m afraid it's terminal."

    Nettie hitches a sigh, and she leans back. "The Good Samaritan is also a parable about not judging others for what they are -- lesson your parents should learn." she adds a bit ruefully, but she also shakes her head. "My family were helpers. My mother and uncle could heal others -- not to the same extent as you, mind. My father fought for King William and Queen Victoria's courts in the realms of demonology and magician's services. My siblings were expected to do the same. Our service to the Crown had shielded us from prosecution by the church. For a time." she replies, and she looks thoughtful.

    "You cannot live your life solely for others, Joshua. No matter what anyone says, not any holy book. You must live for yourself as well." she comments quietly, and she squeezes her left hand.

    "I often thought that these powers aren't gifts. They're burdens. When we choose altruism over being selfish, we put our souls into The Work. Saving of others, but there is always choices. Who to save -- who to leave behind. What weight we can carry, and what we must let go of." Nettie replies quietly.

    "There are going to be times you must walk by, because the Greater Good demands it. It's... that stupid... fucking... trolley problem." Nettie gives a scowl.

    "Aye. You saw fourteen-year-old me I wager, making a deal with a Hag or Demon of some sort for the power to bring my sister and her infant back from the dead. The cost was the color of my hair and eyes. In the process, my soul, whatever you'd call it was lifted from my body. My uncle and father worked together to stitch it back... and in the process I lost the ability to age at some point. My color changed -- I wasn't always so pale. I used to have brown eyes, in fact." she frowns a moment.

    "If I hadn't given up the color, I would not have been here, in this moment, to have this conversation with you. I would never have met my wife, Addie. I wouldn't have nursed to the dying in the wars." she leans back a moment and thinks, and then, to add humor:

    "I'd probably never be able to enjoy a proper curry, now that I think of it. And that would be a travesty."

Joshua Foley has posed:
"You were cute." It's a minor tease, but Joshua adds, "Not that you are not now... just... you know." So old. "Way out of my league." There, that works. "Plus, I see you more like my mother than anything. Especially since my real mother was... is." He reaches into his pocket and fishes out a letter.

Unfolding it, he offers it to Nettie. It's a letter that his parents had written to Xaviers, stating that they have no desire or want to have him as a child anymore. That his powers are an affront to God. That he cannot be forgiven unless he finds a way to remove said powers and repents. And even then, they have no room for a devil in their home. It's relinquishing all birthright and claim to him, emancipating him and saying that when he died almost a year ago, he might as well have stayed dead.

"I can make a pretty good curry. It's really cheap to make and one of the things I could afford to make when I was alone. I can make some tonight for dinner, if you want."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Nettie gives a frown as she accepts the letter. She narrows her eyes, and then she exhales.

    "Doesn't matter what era it is. DIfferent always equals bad to some people." she murmurs softly, and she folds the letter back up, and hands it to Joshua.

    "Not only far too old for you, lad, but also plays for the other team. I got married in the thirties. Well, not married, legally, but my wife and I considered ourselves, for all intents and purposes, wives." she gives a small smile.

    "And for what it's worth lad, you have done nothing that needs forgiven for. You died. That life you had before can be considered settled." she states quietly. "You're born anew. And this is your time now." she gives a small smile, and then gives a laugh.

    "I don't doubt you make a great curry, lad. I'll have to try it sometime soon."

Joshua Foley has posed:
Joshua tucks the letter away and shrugs. "You love who you love." Not that he'll ever know that. Afterwards, he moves to stand to his feet. "I'm going to be okay." he finally decides.

"I'm here. And now. And you've given me some direction and purpose. I really appreciate that. But if I'm making dinner, I need to get downstairs to start on it." He gives Nettie a warm smile, then closes his eyes for a moment of thought, before opening them again, the blue orbs bright within his gold skin.

"Is it okay to hug you?" he asks. "If it's not, I understand. But... you have given me a lot to consider. And look forward to."

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    Nettie draws up to. a stand as well, and she gives him a smile before taking a draw of her cigarette, and expelling the smoke to the side.

    "Ordinarily, no. I'm not much of a hugger, on account of touch brings visions of death." Nettie gives a smile, and she brings her hand up and clasps JOsh on the shoulder. "You remember to give yourself grace, an' time. And know that no matter what, I'm in your corner, poppet."

Joshua Foley has posed:
"I mean, I've already seen said visions of death." Joshua reminds her, but relents, with a bob of his head. "I promise, I will." he says and then pulls away. "I'll go ahead and get started on dinner!"

Nettie Crowe has posed:
    "Aye, but they get new and creative the longer I touch you. Don't ask how I know what other people see." NEttie rolls her eyes "That one's not a pleasant story. So -- this girl that you say I remind you of--" Nettie gives a joking grin, and motions Joshua inside as she goes to follow.