That's Just Fine: The Original Version

A/N: This story was originally uploaded to this site on 12-22-2011. It was deleted sometime around December 2016. Or at least, that's when I noticed it and about 7 others were gone from the ZD archive on this site. Since I now have access to the original copy of it, I have decided to include it in the Restoration Series and upload it back to where it belongs on this site.

The words written in italics at certain points in the story are English translations of when Andre and Mr. Kriegman speak to each other in German. At one point, italics are also used to indicate something Andre is thinking.

This is my 80th story! Not every one of them is BY me, not with the original versions of some of the RS stories up. But hey, that's what my profile says now, 80 stories. Yay for me. I know I'll be hitting 100 stories uploaded sooner or later.

Below are the original author's notes that preceded the beginning of the original story:

"My first shot at writing Andre seriously. I think I did pretty good. This is one of my favorite Andre scenes in the movie because... Andre Keuck (the actor) is so good at letting what Andre Kriegman (the character) is thinking show on his face and the emotion that Andre Kriegman shows is so... amazing and brilliant that I needed to write out what I thought he was thinking during this scene."

April 29th, 2001
9:29 PM

Andre wiped at the fridge, appreciating the silence of being alone in the pizza shop. If he was honest with himself, there was something oddly emotional about even just wiping down the store that night, knowing it would be the last time he even stepped foot into the building.

In just a couple of days, all his coworkers would know his true self—or at least, they would think they did. Truthfully, only Andre would ever actually know his true self, as well as Calvin. Everybody else would just make assumptions that they were horrible people, and yeah, he figured they kind of were, but what else did humanity expect from them? They weren't the first to do this type of thing, and he was sure they wouldn't be the last.

He sighed, looking to his left, pausing for a second as he saw his dad walking toward with the camera. Andre could feel his heart stop, fear filling him as thoughts raced through his mind. Was that it? Was it over? Had his dad found a tape and was coming to gauge his reaction on tape and turn him over to the police?

"Hey, Andre," he didn't seem mad, that was something right? But he didn't want to drag this out.

Nervously—although he tried to keep it out of his voice—Andre asked, "What're you doing with the camera?" Please don't tell me you know. Don't say that you found things in my room.

"Well I just thought I'd come by to take a little footage for the family archives as it is, you know." Andre wanted to collapse in relief but opted to continue wiping down the fridge, his heart still rapidly beating in his chest.

Of course that's what it is. He and Calvin had thought about the possibility of someone finding tapes months ago; this was why Andre had opened a security deposit box at the bank. All the tapes were there, the pipe bombs were all hidden, and they hadn't yet got the guns. There was absolutely nothing to be found except for the F on his last math homework that he had hidden from his parents because it didn't matter and they didn't need to know about it.

"Maybe who knows? Maybe I'll send it to your grandma in Montreal." His father continued and he just gave him a look. Send a video of him wiping down the pizza shop he worked at to his grandmother? That would be a lame fucking video.

"Dad, grandma doesn't want to see an entire video of me wiping down at closing." Andre shook his head, going back to wiping down the fridge. Especially after two days from now,Andre thought to himself. He felt a little bad about that, but what was he to do about it? Not do Zero Day?

That just wasn't an option.

"Your grandma appreciates hard workers, Andre." Andre had to fight from rolling his eyes. "So that is your fabulous job now?"

"Oh yeah…" Andre sighed, tossing the rag into the bucket, picking it up.

"How long until you're done?"

"Now," Thankfully. Andre walked past his father. It almost felt weird having his dad film him with the exact same camera they used to record their entire plan of Zero Day. His dad didn't know that the camera he was holding was going to be the one to record his last message to them, that it was going to record his last words before he went into his high school.

What his dad didn't know couldn't hurt him—at least, not until May 1st.

The two of them left the pizza shop, heading for Andre's car. "Hey Andre," he turned towards his dad. "Do you have your car keys?"

Of course he did. "Yeah. Always."

"I figured I could… maybe give you a little driving lessons on the way home." Driving lessons? There was no harm in that, although he wouldn't be driving for very much longer.

"Sounds good," he replied, getting out his car keys. It felt nice to spend a bit of time with his dad. He didn't hate him, after all. He really did love his parents; it was everyone else in the world that he hated—but his parents had to be the best parents anybody could have.

"Watch the cars." His dad urged and Andre turned, looking at him.

"Really? I'm not supposed to jump in front of them?" Not that he would want to, anyway. That would put a few dents in Zero Day, now wouldn't it?

"Not just yet." Was there ever a time to jump in front of them?

The son and father duo got into car, starting back home. Andre felt a little uncharacteristically quiet, aloud anyway. Inside his mind was loud. He hadn't slept fully in weeks; worried that somebody would find something, that somebody would discover before it was time.

A few times he had even wondered if this was really the right thing to do, but before the thought had ever even fully formed, he had answered his own question with a loud yes. There was no way it wasn't the right thing to do. He had been thinking about it for awhile and when a year ago the idea had fully been brought to the table (in a purely hypothetical conversation at that); he knew Calvin felt the same way he had.

All of it just proved that this was the right thing. There was no other choice for him except for Zero Day. He thought about all possible outcomes for his future, except all he could see was his future being Zero Day. He would die on May 1st, and that would be that. His life would be complete.

And Andre was okay with that.

XX

"Was it busy tonight?" His father asked. Honestly, Andre hadn't really been paying all that much attention to how busy it was.

"It was alright." He answered finally, paying close attention to the road as he kept his thoughts to himself. "I mean, you know… I get to wipe down at the end of the night. Woo-hoo." Yeah, wipe down at the end of the night after shitheads that should learn to clean up after himself.

Andre had wanted to quit long ago, but he knew that it would be wiser to keep up appearances in front of people, which was why he continued to get grades just as good as before.

"Hey listen, somebody has to do it." That didn't mean he wanted to do it though. "We all started at it. You know the way how I started. We all did this." Yeah dad, but you aren't me. You didn't know you were going to be dead in two days. "You cannot start up on the top as the head pizza man."

"That's true, but luckily I have absolutely no desire to be head pizza man." He didn't have any desire to be anything even close to head pizza man and he wouldn't even if he had a future.

"Yeah and good. Don't become head pizza man either."

"Yeah," Andre let out a laugh, continuing to drive. "Don't I know it?"

"There are better and bigger things out there for you." Better and bigger things? That was definitely true. There was something so much grander than head pizza man just around the corner. Soon he would have it in his grasp and he would be God.

"Yeah… like you wouldn't believe." Andre replied, almost wishing he could say it just to see the reaction it would get. Horror definitely. Disbelief most likely. No "that's good for you son, you grasp that bigger and better thing in your hands!". Although, Andre wouldn't say it. He couldn't say it. He couldn't speak of it to anybody except Cal.

Only he and Calvin understood why and very few people would understand even after they did it. Hopefully though they would inspire those few and that those few wouldn't turn out to be fuckheads who just wanted attention like everyone before he and Calvin.

"Oh I do believe." I'm sure you do dad, just like I'm sure you have no fucking clue what I'm talking about.

"I realize its only a pizza job and you don't seem to be doing anything that important a thing there, but it's amazing how much it made you grow up in the last few months, maybe even a year already by now." The pizza job wasn't what had made him grow up so much though; the knowledge of his upcoming death was.

And had he really grown up that much? He felt just like he did last year and the year before that, as well as the year before and so on. The only difference was that now he was doing something about all these feelings and thoughts he had kept bottled up for so long. Nobody even knew. It was amazing how nobody knew, nobody had any idea, and they wouldn't. Not until Zero Day.

Just how he wanted it.

"You keep this up, you're gonna have the car paid by no time." Another plus to Zero Day was the fact that he didn't have to worry about paying for his car. Inwardly he laughed a bit. He never really thought about those things, but since his dad brought it up… technically Andre could do anything and not have consequences for doing them. It was better to keep a low profile though. One mess up and it would be all over for him. One mess up and Zero Day wouldn't happen.

That couldn't happen.

"Hopefully…"

"I never thought—you know, wait a minute, I'm not done with my speech yet but you know how difficult it is for me. I never thought I was gonna say this, but I'm proud of you. You did good."

Andre laughed. "You never thought you were going to say it?" Gee, thanks for having so much faith in me dad. He tried not to think about the fact that there was no doubt his dad wouldn't be proud of him after he found out the truth about his son.

"Well, not that I don't always mean it, but you know me, I'm having a problem saying these things."

"Absolutely,"

"It's not necessarily that much a thing to say."

"Yeah, I guess you could—"

"So keep doing what you're doing," Andre was sure that if his dad knew what he was doing, his dad wouldn't want him to keep doing it. He swallowed. "And you'll do just fine." He would be doing okay, yeah. He would be dead but… that was what Andre wanted. So that was okay. That was just fine.

"Like I said, that car will be paid in no time."

That wasn't exactly what Andre had in mind, but that was just fine too.

A/N: 11-5-2017.

In rewriting the deleted stories covered in 1-8 of the Restoration Series, I had to work with what fragments I managed to save, and otherwise with what I could remember. Inevitably changes were made, because I had to make up whatever I could not precisely recall. "Caught Before the Act", "That's Just Fine", "The Prom Party"- those in particular, the three one-shot stories, wound up having some notable differences from the originals. I feel like I did well with rewriting those three nonetheless, and those few reviews that have been posted seem to confirm that.

However, upon discovering on 10-28-2017 that I had not actually lost the original documents forever as I believed, I began to think about adding to the RS stories list. Why not post an "Original Version", one that is pretty much an exact copy of the original (only different due to some minor edits from me)? That way, with both the old story and my rewrite of it to read, the audience could compare the two and have every chance to tell me how well I really did with the restoration efforts. I thought about simply going back and updating the stories, but after so much time and effort into replacing stories I had thought were gone for good, I figured it would not be fair to myself if I just deleted my own hard work and then uploaded what the original author wrote exactly.

That might have been what I would have done back in December 2016, when another user in the ZD fandom alerted me to the fact that some 8 stories were gone. No kidding, I told them about these outstanding stories that had been here when I started reading ZD fanfics in December 2011, and they said, "I can't find them." Sure enough, ZD's archive was down to 12 or 13 stories, from 20 or 21. The story author's account was not closed, but they never responded to any of my attempts at contact, and I doubt they ever will. At any rate, when I began the Restoration Series, I probably would have jumped at the chance to simply upload edited copies of the original stories, had they been available. But almost a year later, with so much time and effort put into rewriting the stories with fragments or with nothing at all, it made sense to go with both. So I added RS10- "That's Just Fine (Original Version)" for anyone who is interested to read.