'twas grace that taught my heart to fear

He sprained his ankle. It hurt, but he'd been able to walk on it so Elijah had kept on walking to Burger King. He'd gotten his food, sat down, and ate.

Then he tried to get up.

He almost ate shit the instant he put weight on the now swollen to all hell ankle, but he'd managed to hobble out the door and onto the busy sidewalk. From there he wasn't exactly sure what the hell to do, which ended him where he is now. Half knelt all awkwardly in an ally back behind Burger King, bad leg outstretched, trying to think how the fuck he's gonna get anywhere like this when he sees someone down the other end of the little alleyway.

They called Las Vegas Sin City. Who nicknamed it that, Judas never really knew. But it was funny, in a way that he had trouble laying a finger on. Something, perhaps, about how Yeshua was once tempted in the desert. There was an irony there, even if it wasn't the same desert.

Whatever it may be, Judas rarely left the city, if he could help it. What exactly should he do? Go out and preach the gospel on a street corner somewhere? Become a priest? What would he have done if he hadn't betrayed him, once upon a time?

Well. Things would have been very different. But they also couldn't have been different. There needed to be someone to betray Yeshua, without that... Without that, would he have reached as many as he did? Was it the martyrdom that lead him to greatness, or what came before it? If these questions had answers, Judas didn't know them.

What he did know was who was sitting in the diner he tended to frequent, just outside the city, where prices were cheap-- even if the diner itself was a little dated and dirty. Judas would have recognized him anywhere, any time, any place. It didn't matter that times were different. It didn't matter that they were both different. You do not forget the face of the person you loved and ultimately destroyed.

Judas makes a plan to exit without being seen as Yeshua is sat, but something stops him. His gut curls uncomfortably, and yet he can't seem to stop himself as he changes directions from the door to where his old... Friend. Let's call him a friend, sat. He's still holding his mug of tea, having not exactly noticed he still had it in his hands, and strides over to his friend.

And lays it on the table in front of him.

Ain't that often you see someone performing a miracle on the street, after all. Maybe it's enough to stop and watch.

Joshua stands above someone with a bleeding, bloody gunshot wound to the chest. This is the type of thing that kills people. This is the type of thing that you don't come back from, a through and through shot with an exit wound that practically blew apart the poor man's back.

"an' you shall be healed, child of god that you are, amen." Joshua finishes his prayer, and as if on cue, the wound begins to stitch itself back together. It's slow, it's strange, the movement of flesh from nothing, pulling itself back into one. The man's breathing becomes easier. He begins to cry. Joshua is smiling.

The goddamn thing about it is that's not even an exaggeration. Not even slightly. Johnny Clearwater plays the damn fiddle better than anyone has ever played the fiddle. He may be the single best fiddle player the world has ever seen and he knows it. He ain't the type to downplay nothing he does good neither.

When he's done playing and the lights in the bar are low, and girls are flocking around him like he's the hottest thing they ever laid eyes on, he leaves them be to approach Lestat, all smiles, hands in his pockets.

Isaiah peers at him over his glass of whiskey. Bottom shelf stuff, preaching didn't pay much, nor did cleansing the world of evil. That didn't bother Isaiah Renoylds none, though, as far as he was concerned a lotta that evil came from money's doing.

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