inthewildwood | fanfiction: stories about the end of the world

Title: stories about the end of the world
Fandom: Jesus Christ Superstar
Characters: Judas Iscariot, Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene
Summary: That is how the story began. This is how it ends.
Rating: T

The story starts like this:

Judas is angry, but more than that. Judas is tired. Judas has seen friends- too many to count- disappear into Roman jails, emerging months later with haunted eyes and hollow ribs. Judas has seen the priests ride by, fat from their takings, cloth of gold rippling in the breeze. Judas has also seen those who weep and tear their hair and beg on their hands and knees at the temple door, asking for something- anything- to take the pain away. Save my daughter; she's only a child. Save my husband; with him gone, no one will provide for us. Save me; I'm still young. I don't want to die. He turns away, but even without looking, he knows their pleas fall on deaf ears. Only those with fine animals to slaughter- a goat, a sheep, maybe even a lamb- will reach the ears of the priests. Or those with coin-purses jingling rich enough to satisfy an official's greed. There are those who say the priests cannot truly be blamed; they all do what they must, living under the Roman occupation. Judas doesn't care. Judas only knows what it, not why it is. And he does not know how it can be changed.

Judas looks older than his years; his hair is thinning, though he's not past thirty. His eyelids droop. His shoulders are rounded. He shuffles to and from work. He has given up already. He is waiting to die.

One day, there is a man.

His hair is gold and his eyes are blue, and he is sitting on the side of the road. There are others nearby, but Judas only sees the man. His eyes pierce through Judas, right to the soul, and Judas suddenly remembers every unkind thought, every rough word that has ever passed through his lips. For the first time, Judas feels shame. It makes him angry.

“What do you want?” he says. His voice comes out louder than he anticipated. The man only cocks his head, sparrow-like.

“Your name is Judas,” the man says. Judas hunches his shoulders, arms clenched at his side, ready for a fight. The man is wearing a flowing white caftan, miraculously unspotted with dust. “Are you a priest? We don’t like priests here.”

“I am the son of God,” the man says.

Judas stares.

The man stands. “Come with me,” he says, “and see your country free. Or stay here and continue as you have, and as you will until you die. You are bound for more than drudgery, my Judas. Come with me and see your life begin.”

The way he says my Judas, proprietary, should raise Judas’ hackles. It does not. Instead, he finds himself chilled. No one has ever spoken to him like this, with the casual assumption that he will be more. He has never spoken this way to himself. He has never thought to.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

The man smiles. “My name is Jesus. Some call me Christ.”

The story started like that. This is how it will end:

Judas will be tired again. There is no limit, it seems, to how tired he will become. His only fuel is anger. It has always been this way.

Jesus is different; better. Jesus can watch Simon threaten their mission with an indulgent father's smile. Jesus can accept the likes of Mary Magdalene into their train and not hear a word against her profession. Judas does not believe that Jesus is the son of God, but he does believe that Jesus is something better- better than him. Jesus does not get tired.

Judas does not consider himself well-liked among the other apostles. Some tolerate him better than others. Simon is constantly attempting to rouse him, puppy-like. He is a child. He has not learned any better yet. Someday, Judas thinks, Simon will understand that there are those who cannot be saved with an infusion of youthful enthusiasm. Perhaps one day, Simon will be like Judas, tired and bent and hating the world that let him down so badly. Judas does not have the strength to hope for a better end.

Peter does not like him; he sees the way Judas speaks to Mary and hates him for it, circling her and warning Judas away. Under other circumstances, it would be amusing. Judas has no time for Mary Magdalene. It's she who cannot seem to let go of him. She sits beside him at supper, tries to coax him to eat, tries to draw him into the conversation. No matter how many times he snaps at her, she keeps coming back. Sometimes Judas thinks that they are nothing more than a pack of shepard's dogs, trailing at their master's heels and waiting for a sign. Jesus speaks of his people as lambs. Jesus is their shepherd. That makes them his dogs.

"Why do you follow him?" Judas asks Mary once, when his exhaustion overwhelms his irritation. "Don't you see that this will all end in tears?" He doesn't like Mary, but he can at least recognize that she is intelligent. Intelligent enough to understand that their venture is doomed.

Mary only stares at him. "Jesus saved me," she says. "He saved all of us. Soon, he will save the world." Judas despairs.

In Jerusalem, as in his hometown, Judas despises the priests. Perhaps he despises these ones even more. Annnas and Caiphas sit directly in Rome's lap, suckling the empire's bounty. They are everything Jesus fights against. Idly, Judas wonders which Jesus hates more- Pilate or his priests. He wonders if Jesus hates at all. He is too pure for it.

Judas is not pure. He thinks he understands Annas and Caiphas. Sometimes the corrupt must do what the pure are unable to.

"You will find him in the garden of Gethsemane," he says, and knows he is damned. All of Jesus' words predicting a better future for him, and what came of it? Only this. Jesus is not the son of God. He is as fallible as any of them.

All their dreams and it comes to this: thirty pieces of silver and a noose on a high hill. As the noose tightens, Judas spares a thought for what will become of Mary, of Simon, of Peter when he and Jesus are both gone. Will they carry on his mission? Will they still believe? Or will they sink, like him, into despair? Whatever the future is, he cannot see it. It seemed that, for all his preaching and prophecies, Jesus was as blind as he is.

Do prophets always end this way? Or do some of them find a way out?

He does not know.