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We can do that. It's pretty there.

Okay. See you in a bit.

[And with that, she puts on her Josie suit, and wanders down to the gardens to look for her friend. She'll perch under one of the trees and play with her device, occasionally glancing up to see if Mega's appeared.]

[He's happy to join her, beaming at the sight of her. She's here and she's Josie and it's more of a relief than he thought it would be.]

I'm so glad you stayed.

[Does that make sense? He seems to be under the impression that it makes sense.]

[It's a curious way of stating things, to be sure, and she tips her head to the side curiously.]

Was I supposed to be leaving?

I don't think so, but you're a good person. And good people don't stay in hell. I think that's why Elena left.

[ and he has no idea how to center himself without Elena. ]

[She frowns at that, because while she's glad Elena's gone, she can't say that it's not a sound theory.]

I don't think it really matters if you're good or not. If it was, I think other people would have stayed.

[People like Klaus.]

Oh...

[ he might've continued to argue with anyone else. But Josie is one of the people who can explain everything. Her opinion matters more. ]

Then what decides who stays and who goes?

I don't know.

[She wishes she had those kinds of answers. Josie very much wants to go home.]

Lucifer says it's God, but who knows how much he can be trusted.

I'd trust God more than I'd trust Lucifer. He's got to be trustworthy if he's God, right?

And... So if Lucifer says that's how it is, he could be lying. But it's better not to rick it just in case he's telling the truth.

Being God doesn't necessarily mean anything.

[She tips her head to the side because this is always a hard thing to explain, but being a witch odds are high she never actually believed in him.]

Contextually speaking, everything we know about God was told to us by other people. All the people who have ever seen them, if they really have, are long dead. People place meaning on him to suit whatever beliefs they want to enforce.

In the same book of the people who worship him, he's wiped out entire populations because they weren't adhering to what they wanted him to do. He's flooded the world, rained down fire and turned people to salt. It's not until his son showed up and started talking about treating people how you wanted to be treated and loving people in spite of the wrong they've done that God got a kinder, gentler face lift.

[She pauses, because that's a lot to deal with.]

We still don't know which one is true. Jesus could have existed just to rebrand him into something that sold better to the huddled masses. So, in the end, God is a highly subjective thing.

[You can't really objectively call him good or bad.]

[He gapes a little as she explains the intricacies of all this. It's much more complex than the way his father explained everything.]

Why would God hurt people? Isn't he supposed to only do good things?

[This is also the first time he's heard anything about God having a son. The humans' creator had a son the way robots' creators called themselves fathers?]

That's what they say.

[But that's not necessarily the case.]

People are going to believe what they want to believe, but when you're coming into a space where Lucifer and God are real people? Don't assume anything until you actually see them in in action.

Father said they were real before.

[There's something resigned in his voice, then.]

I wish Father told the truth more often.

Parents like to tell us stories of how they want the world to be, not always how it is.

[Though her father tended to ignore her, more often than not, so maybe she's not the best example.

Then, in a moment of sympathy.]

Maybe he wanted you to see the world as better than it was.

Father liked to think about how to make the world better. He always saw possibilities, not problems. But you can't solve problems if you aren't willing to see the world as it really is.

No, you can't. But if you don't see the possibility of what it could be, it might be hard to see the way things are as a problem.

[It takes a balance. Though Josie doesn't know enough about his father to make a decision one way or another.]

[It's something to consider. And it makes him hear the echo of his brother's voice trying to cajole him into reaching a particular conclusion.]

I don't think Father is evil.

[That isn't what Josie was trying to imply, but it's something he doesn't get to say aloud often enough.]

Maybe he's not.

[Because that's a valid option too.]

Maybe he's just made mistakes. People can do that too. What matters is if he's sorry for them.

I exist because he's sorry for his mistakes. And then he made different mistakes. And I don't know if he's sorry about those. But I'm ready to forgive him if he is.

That's the right thing to do, isn't it?

I can't tell you that.

[Forgiveness isn't a black and white thing.]

Forgiveness isn't really about right or wrong. People are going to always make mistakes because that's what people do. No one is going to be right one hundred percent of the time. But just because they say they're sorry doesn't mean they mean it, or that you have to forgive them or tell them it's okay if it's not.

[She explains it simply, but his eyes grow wide the longer she talks. This is a take that fully goes against things he thought he understood well.]

I don't understand.

[He doesn't elaborate which part needs more explanation. Maybe all of it does. Why would anyone apologize insincerely? How could he not forgive someone if they're sorry?]

[She pauses, trying to figure out the best way to phrase it.]

Sometimes, people don't apologize because they're sorry. They apologize because they think they're supposed to. And once they say they're sorry, they'll get forgiven and they don't actually have to think about what they did anymore.

[It's a matter of social scripts, not sincerity.]

But forgiveness is a lot more complicated than that. It's not something you owe anyone. It's something they have to earn by actually changing their behavior.

But... That's not honest.

[Neither side is being genuine in that case. People should say the same things they mean so there's no ambiguities about it.]

It's not. But ... it's the way we're programmed. We have these scripts that get us through the world, and people don't always think about how we use them.

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