Work Text:
Judas wasn’t ever sure what happened to him in the lower circles of hell when he thinks back on it, curled up on his mattress and trying to block the screams of people down the street.
He knows he’s been here before. In his flat, in this bed, with the bar below and his vinyl player (one of his very few possessions of worth that have yet to be stolen over the years) whining away a scratched stolen record.
Kate Bush seems strangely fitting.
He remembers Jesus. He’d known for certain it had been him the moment he’d arrived here. All the memories had come back. All of them. Every timeline flooding into his brain like a tsunami of information. Of pain. And he remembers being in pain, before now. For a long time. Judas can feel the pain of remembering Jesus so vividly that even thinking about it now makes him want to vomit. However, anything that had taken place in Hell before arriving back at his flat feels vague, away from the front of his mind, only to be accessed in his dreams.
He flinches at the sound of chains, winces at loud noises, and finds himself hyperventilating whenever someone won’t let him leave a room.
Judas also stops wearing red.
However, he starts collecting journals. Fresh pages where, every time, he scribbles down everything of his past life he can remember. Judas finds himself constantly terrified of forgetting.
He’d arrived back here earlier this evening. He’d been woozy and confused, still slipping in and out of consciousness, when they’d thrown him on his mattress, and slammed the door behind him. Judas remembers slipping into sleep and waking up having forgotten where the men had come from, and why they had returned him home. Had they picked him up, after he’d died, on earth? Had they personally escorted him back here, and taken him to his flat? Or had he immediately gone to a bar the moment he’d returned to Hell and consumed so much whisky he could no longer feel the pain, or remember anything? The lack of a hangover once waking seemed to disprove that particular theory.
After an excessive time thinking about it, Judas decided if it was so important, he would’ve remembered.
Instead, he tried to focus on what he did remember. Judas pushed himself up and against the wall, slipping a hand back down behind the mattress to push out a battered hardback journal, pen tied to its side. “Thank God”, he mumbled, cradling it into his lap and flipping back pages to glance at other timelines.
I was right, he thought triumphantly, unable to stop his smile as he saw everything confirmed in his writing. Dated, labelled, drawings of Jesus’ smile, his language adapting with every entry. With a sudden jolt of heart-wrenching terror, Judas grabbed the pen and began to frantically scribble down everything that happened in his last life, every significant detail Jesus was part of. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been writing once he stopped, his wrist aching and fingers cramped.
It was a relief to get it out of his mind, and Judas found himself almost able to drift off into a sleep, exhausted and aching, his body sore from injuries he didn’t have, but felt in the depth of his bones. His eyes were closing, body sinking into the mattress, until he realised that this might be it. That this time he might be here for good. He’d been given countless chances to redeem himself and yet, every time without fail, he ended up here. What’s to say this wasn’t it? That this wasn’t forever? That he would never see Jesus again?
The panic that clawed up his throat was so sudden it made him wheeze, rolling over to bend over the side of his mattress, arms pressed into the creaking floorboards, head dangling in between. This couldn’t be it. Every time he felt closer to figuring it out, to breaking the cycle, to changing something monumental, but instead it always ended the same way. With Judas, in his bed, in this flat, crying out curses to God and choked screams at how unjust everything was. Sometimes, he screamed for Jesus, but he’d never admit it.
It wasn’t as if Jesus ever responded.
—
“Do you think anything happens, when we die?” They’re lying in the dark, sharing a mattress. Once, this was routine. Collapsing onto the bed next to Jesus, curling into the invitation of his soft touch before fleeing in the morning. It had happened most nights, until Judas had noticed Mary’s lingering presence in Jesus’ bedroom more often than not. He knew when to take a hint.
Tonight, however, he and Jesus had stayed up late, passing joints and giggling softly until the high mellowed and the tension melted away. If Judas tried, he could pretend things were normal. That nothing was falling apart around them.
“Of course something happens,” Jesus replied, turning his head slowly. He was so beautiful Judas wanted to cry. The weed always made Jesus look just a little more radiant, all golden and soft with long flowing hair and perfect skin. Judas resisted the compulsion to reach out and touch, instead clasping his hands together over his chest, black painted nails digging into flesh.
“Well, go on, then.”
“What?” Judas couldn’t help but smile, turning his head to glance at the man next to him, raising an eyebrow, “Tell me what you think happens, when we die.”
Jesus only smiled, head lolling back to glance at the ceiling before his eyes fluttered closed. Judas could see dust particles dancing along his skin, illuminated by the candle light, as Jesus stretched an arm up behind his head. The wave of sweat and warmth hit Judas as if he’d taken a toke of their still lit joint. He couldn’t help but manically think of Jesus as a new strain of hash, a laugh threatening to bubble out of his mouth. If Jesus had noticed, he didn’t do anything other than smile a little to himself. He had never looked more perfect.
“I think we all move on to something greater. A place to heal and rest,”
“So, ‘Heaven’,” Judas interrupted. He often resented how little his interruptions ever seemed to bother Jesus, who simply paused, and continued.
“Perhaps. Call it what you want, it hardly matters. We’ll be given rest when we die,” Turning his head slowly, Jesus met Judas’ gaze and held, “All of us.”
Something akin to guilt festered under his skin, and Judas looked away with a scoff, “Yeah, sure. So, you’re saying those Tories out there starting these wars and ignoring these illnesses - no, you’re saying Maggie Thatcher and all her cronies - are going to get into a ‘Heaven’? Just because? That’s absolute bollocks. That’s just like saying ‘do whatever the fuck you want, because nothing matters’.”
“We’ll all be deserving. I don’t know what happens until then, but everyone will get to experience that peace, at the end. It’s about working towards it.”
“If we’ll all be deserving, what’s the point of doing anything? If all our fates are fixed, what’s the point?”
Jesus smiled, arm outstretched to light his joint on the candle next to him, taking it back to inhale delicately, before exhaling with his head tilted back, throat exposed. Judas tried not to salivate.
“Everything is fixed, and you can’t change it. It’s about enjoying the gift of life and letting your soul guide you.”
“Fuck me,” Judas laughed, daring a touch to poke Jesus teasingly in the ribs. The risk was worth it when rewarded with a soft laugh, the vibrations making the very tissue of his heart expand, “you’re really turning into a total hippie.”
Taking a toke, Jesus raised the hand to hold up a peace sign, exhaling dramatically and saying in a endearingly terrible American accent “Peace and love, dude”, which simply made Judas double over in a fit of hysterical laughter.