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We were walking down the streets of New York, Maggie's hand very warm in mine, and pointing out the different things that we had learned, either from TV or from our short trips outside.After a while Maggie fell silent, and I, remembering my old duties as village idiot, continued to speak as though she was talking back, told jokes, and pointed out a dog that looked just like one of Bart's disciples.After a good twenty minutes, Maggie squeezed my hand and I let my rambling story about Star Wars trail off. After a few moments of silence, she spoke. "Biff, why…""Why did I doubt when I had the most cause for belief?"She nodded, still not looking in my direction. I had known, known since I saw her framed in that hotel room door, that this would be her first real question to me (Not counting ones like, 'was your Angel obsessed with soap operas?' and 'Did you get to watch Saturday morning cartoons?'). I had tried to think of an answer that would make sense to Maggie, one that would convey my thoughts at the time to her, but when she squeezed my hand, all of my prepared words went right out the window."Maggie, you and I were different than the others." I said. Not bad for a start, I suppose. "Because we knew the savior as a child.""So did Martha and Simon," she said, "and Bart for that matter.""No. They knew Josh as a child. We knew the other side of him. The Christ side." I was talking very fast now, trying to get all the words and thoughts I had to come out in roughly the right order. "We were with him when he attempted to raise that soldier, Maggie. We saw him straining when his gifts were still too new and too hard for him to do them. You see?"Maggie nodded, but it was a warmer, more contemplative nod than before."And I was there with him when he started to learn more things, like keeping out the feel of cold or pain, or when he first learned to multiply food. I was there when he learned and practiced every one of his 'miracles.'""But that just proves the others right. You had less reason to doubt…" Maggie's voice was hesitant, and I really couldn't blame her. The others must have made me seem like a total villain after I died."I didn't doubt in the things that I knew Josh could do. I didn't doubt him when he said he could do something that I'd never seen before. I only doubted (and with good reason, might I add) when it was something that I knew he couldn't do."Maggie was silent, but in a way that told me that she didn't understand, and was debating smacking me."Look," I hurried to say, "you know that Joshua absolutely could never have sex with anyone right?" I knew that this topic was a bit of a sore point with her, but it was the only thing I could think of on short notice.Fortunately, instead of smacking me, Maggie nodded."Right. So if someone said to you, three days from now, Joshua is going to go fuck half the girls in Galilee, what would you have said?"Maggie was silent for a moment before blurting out. "But this was something he could do! He could raise the dead!""He could raise others who had died." I corrected gently.Maggie stopped dead in her tracks. After about five minutes, we started getting funny looks from the vender across the street, so I started walking again, gently dragging her with me."What makes you think Joshua couldn't have risen himself?" Maggie asked finally, breaking her long silence."Because he couldn't heal himself, and that was the first step. And I'm not talking about whether he could have healed himself if he'd practiced it a bit, because he had more than enough opportunity for that. I'm saying that it was one of those things, like sex, that Joshua just was not allowed to do.""Joshua never healed himself?""That time he got a concussion while we were the only ones with him? Nope. We pretended, but he had to wait until we got back to the others so that Peter could do it.""And since healing was the first step towards resurrection, you thought that he couldn't do that either.""It was the logical assumption to make. Joshua may have performed miracles and had an odd fondness for mustard seeds, but you have to concede that his powers weren't illogical."Maggie was silent for another long while, and I managed to steer us across a few streets and into Central Park while she was thinking. "But what about… Joshua's father?" she asked finally."What about him?""Well, all of Joshua's gifts came from his father, so why didn't you think that He would make Josh rise from the dead.""Because that would mean that He might have to get off his great, celestial behind and do something for Josh, and that certainly never happened before." I spat out the words with more than a little anger, remembering Joshua's face when he tried to communicate with his dad, only to have the door slammed in his face."What?" Maggie looked aghast. I suppose she really didn't spend enough time with me and Josh when we were alive the first time, or she might have been more prepared for my declaration. "How can you say such things about Him? He is the creator of all! He put Joshua on this earth!""And then He just abandoned him there." I had kept this secret inside of me for years, but now that I had just written it in a gospel for all of the world to see, I suppose it felt less like a secret. "Do you know what Josh and I spent those missing years doing? Working. Training our butts off. Doing whatever these madmen said to do because we thought it would help make Josh a better messiah. And in all that time, in all the years of meditations and prayers, how many times do you think that He actually responded, instead of just ignoring Josh, or worse, slamming the door in his face?"Maggie shook her head, backing away from me. I realized that I had let go of her, and somehow had ended up on top of a park bench.Oh well. As long as I was acting the part, I might as well finish my rant. "Once." I hissed. "Once in all those seventeen years did Josh get any kind of acknowledgement, and do you know what the almighty one had to say to him? Fuck the human race. 'Fuck 'em' is what He said. That human race that Joshua was a part of, might I add. What the hell had He ever done to even give me the slightest impression that He might be willing to save Josh?"Maggie gaped at me. Well, of course she would - she had never heard either of us speak about Josh's relationship with his father so personally before. I climbed down off my park bench and calmly said, "So yes, I did try to stop Josh from dying. Because I assumed that was the reason Josh had assembled us all; I thought we were there to help him. I did have faith in Josh, and that is why I knew that he would come back, one way or another. Because his father might have abandoned him, but we never would."Maggie was silent for a long moment, and I knew she was remembering, and thinking. Eventually, she looked back up at me, smiling slightly. She wrapped her arms tightly around me, squeezing as though she wanted to squeeze all of the air out of me. Maybe she was still upset."I think the gospels we just wrote are proof enough that we would never abandon Josh," she whispered the words into my chest, her breath warming me all the way down to my toes. So she wasn't mad at me, after all. "Now it's time for us to live for ourselves."I liked the sound of that.I leaned down to kiss Maggie again. It was everything wonderful I remembered about kissing her, and at the same time, it was so much better. I'm not sure how long we stood like that, but at last we pulled apart, just far enough for me to see her brilliant smile.She was right; it was time for us to live for ourselves, instead of living for Josh. And I couldn't wait to start my life with Maggie.