Simon climbed through the shrubs, pupils black and wide with the dark, feeling his way through the bushes. Without the sunrise, he’d missed the path, and was making a trip through the plantlife, instead. He was just lucky that it wasn’t thorny underfoot, given his bare feet. The burning summer had cracked the dry earth apart, and almost all but the most hardy of vegetation had been roasted away by the heat.
He hadn’t escaped the tearing, himself. Red had crusted in streaks across the insides of his legs where he’d caught himself running, and on his feet, it was less obvious, merely dried on with the dirt. What did he even care, now that the skin was whole, and new again? He’d barely noticed, or even felt it, when it was raw, let alone now it had been healed. He’d simply needed to get here, however was quickest after he’d gotten an intermittently broken text message that had seemed too crazy to be true.
The stars seemed to hum with light above, and he sucked air into grateful lungs as he climbed. In the cooling minutes that he’d been away from his place at Jesus’ feet, he’d been increasingly aware of the clothes weighing him down, damp as they were from the sweat had seeped in faster than it could evaporate. It occurred to him that he probably stank, that his hair was crawling with grease, and dust, and none of it mattered because Jesus was alive again.
It was that thought, more than cresting the hill that made him stop and seize a breath. The wind of the summer night whistled across the hilltop, and the dim light almost made him miss the familiar outline in place, as it should have been, at their prayer spot, under the olive tree. “-Thom!”
How many months had passed since they had first prayed together in this spot? It was all familiar. The crackle of the dry grass under his feet, spiking up through the soles of his boots; the tree whispering above him, sighing in the lightest of breezes. It was all entirely unfamiliar. There was no sound of his voice, no sleepy trudge of feet to match his. The sky above was not its sublime gradient of pink, green, blue, but a piercing navy, the stars closer than they had ever been before.
As Thom knelt down in the soft tussled grass sprouting from the roots of the olive tree, he listened to the soft bird call of some annoying owl that Simon had tried to mimic a month or a year ago. He could feel the dew-stained grass on his knees from where had shredded in a fight from yesterday (was it really only yesterday?).
“Jesus,” he breathed at the ground, his chest rising with a wave of unrestrained joy. He knelt his head down to the ground, touching it and whispering the Shema, every word singing a new meaning.
And then he heard Jesus’ voice. He turned abruptly, tensed, shocked.
Just as abruptly, he realised it wasn’t Jesus. Something jumped in his chest, unfamiliar from the warm glow the Messiah brought to him, but more keen, insistent. “Simon?”
It didn’t seem like it could be real, that it could be actually happening, but then this day had been nothing if not filled with incredible surprises. As he kept climbing towards him, he stumbled on an upturned stone in the low light and reached out for Thom’s shoulder, instantly elated that the feeling that solid warmth that confirmed he wasn’t conjured out of exhaustion.
“…What are you…what are you doing back here? You’ve seen Jesus, right? I mean -” He laughed, because of course the other one had. He’s seen the state of Thom back…before, and everything about how he looked, how he sat was different now.
It was the air of relief, and Si felt just that too, this thorough joy at the fact that Jesus was a fact, that he could speak that name again without it being the final full-stop on the world, on humanity, on the future of Israel…it was so infinitely good, that he had to laugh with relief. “Oh god, Thom, he’s back, he’s really back, it’s amazing.”
He sighed happily, and it all came rushing out of him, joy, relief, and almost his very bones as he half fell to his knees beside the other apostle, one hand still screwed up tight in the fabric of the t-shirt on Thom’s shoulder.
He laughed again, a little more sadly this time, opening his eyes to peer properly at the other one in the dim light. “We’re not dreaming, right? Because, if we are, I don’t want to ever wake up. God.”
It was a good question, because with the euphoric topple of Simon’s voice, Thom felt himself looping through that same question - is this just a dream? It was like the catharsis of a Hollywood film, the pinnacle of emotion and feeling and triumph - except this was real, grit embedded in his hands and the ache in and around his eye sockets from barely sleeping for days, crinkled around his senses. And Simon too was weather-worn, his clothes like rags around him, the edges of his eyes knotted to make him look several years older, his face blotchy like a teenager’s but completely clear, and yet an utter grin of elation lit it all up, making him look regardless of all this in a child’s state of bliss.
“I came here to…” He stopped, and just motioned all around with his extended hand to try and summon the words, because he didn’t really know what had brought him here, except something outside of himself that told him this was the place he needed to be, and something that moved him here out of his own accord. It wasn’t the stroll of his mild traveling wander that brought him here, or even just a fleeting desire to be here, but a need as strong as food and water and sleep. This was where they felt most connected to Him, and this was where, right now, they needed to be.
“We’re not dreaming.” He sank down too, conscious of Simon’s fist balled around his t-shirt and that the last time his fist had been this close, his face had paid for it. And even this seemed like a dream, the starlit flecks of Simon’s hair, the shine in his eyes more than pride or love of anything earthly. And if Thom had felt exhausted before, now he felt like a battering ram had knocked him over, tiredness drenching over him. With Simon there too, he knew it was all over. The only questions and fears humming inside his mind were those born of his increasingly nervous, necessarily analytical mind as it had been trained over the past two months with everything happening, that he had pushed down in order to fight against it all more effectively.
“Where have you come from?” Simon looked like he had been on the road far longer than when he had last seen him. Long gone was the boy he had exchanged fists and kicks with. For the first time he could feel of, he felt like a man alongside Simon, no age or experience or disagreement to separate them, but only an equal in adversary and joy.
He pushed his hand through his hair, the coarseness and grime not even making him blink. What even was the point of what he looked like, really, when they’d made it back to here of all places after the world had been torn apart and then healed again?
When they’d come here in the long months before, he’d always brought so many expectations, such huge asks in his prayers. Strategies for a future free of the Romans, for building popular support and attention so that they’d be in a position to usurp the corrupt priests and representatives…really, not much had actually changed in these three day in terms of the world around them. Those unanswered questions, however, those pressures were gone.
Jesus had told him that when he had returned, when the newly risen Lord had healed him, looked at him with eyes that had somehow become even more calm and composed that before, and invited Simon to walk with him in the garden.
They had spoken there, and the interaction was so blinding in Simon’s mind that the details escaped him, but not in anyway the feelings, the sense of understanding. Jesus had thanked him for everything they’d put into the cause, their energy and their sacrifices, but that they were following a different direction now, of peace, of fostering love and humanity in people one by one. Simon knew in his heart, even as he said it that it was right, that on some level this had always been what they had meant to do, and that a lot of what else had gone down had subverted this single, pure, original intent.
Sitting here with Thom, staring out towards where the wilds became the city of Jerusalem again, it felt so right. He wasn’t responsible anymore for the problems of the world, wasn’t somehow betraying everything that was good by pausing in slamming himself against the corrupt influences. He could just be here in this space, be here with his brother, and with God, and it felt…so good.
“Yeah. I get it.” He said wistfully in response to Thom losing the words. “I, uh, figured this was where you’d be, when Thaddeus said you weren’t with the rest of them. Made sense.” As hard as it was to tear himself away from Jesus’ prescence, there was more to be done, and people more than him who needed that light right now, he could see that. As for sitting with the other apostles and followers, well, it wouldn’t have felt right. The way he felt right now, so blasted open by all that he’d seen, by all that had happened - he couldn’t imagine going back to small talk. And, they’d been one pair of arresting eyes in particular, large, hollow, and familiar that had caught his, and - things had been pretty messed up between him and Tabatha when they’d…parted. It seemed better to steer clear of the whole thing for now.
“We’re not?” Simon exhaled, lying back on the hilltop until only the stars and Thom’s shoulder filled his eyes. “Then, I, uh, I guess there’s some stuff I have to apologise for. I mean from…before.” Jesus may have undone the marks they left on each other, but that didn’t excuse any of what had gone on, really. It made his stomach turn to think of it now. Although maybe that had something more to do with the bare bites he’d stolen while travelling over the last few days. His body pitched in with a dubious stomach gurgle that made clear it’s feelings on the matter, but he ignored it. He could deal with hunger. He couldn’t not address this, however. “I just…I want you to know that a lot of what I said, it wasn’t true. Wasn’t ever true. I’m sorry.”
His stomach rumbled again and Simon burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of it, of not being able to escape being human right when he felt the most transcendant he’d ever been in his life. “Cana.” He sputtered out in reply, rubbing the space under his ribcage with his palm as a distraction. “I’d gone back, pretty much after…the thing with us, and had been back with…mum, until I got the message…shit. I should probably text her.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I sort of left without saying anything…yeah, crap. Hold on.”
He pulled out his phone, the screen splintering and fractured where it had come out of his pocket where he’d run down one of the highways and smashed on the asphalt. It had still worked enough to lead him back to Jesus, so he hadn’t been too worried - but it was only now that he was registering the little 92 number next to his mum’s contact details.
Crap. He started tapping out that he was safe and that he’d get back to her properly soon. It was about as much as he could manage, at this moment.
Thom watched the tiny little glow like a captured star in Simon’s hands as he tapped away, not fully conscious of who he was typing. Sam. His mind drifted to the others in Simon’s life, the others in Thom’s life - and wondered distantly what they would be thinking, if their mindset had changed at all now, or whether even news had spread to their tiny little village settled at the nook of the lake of what had happened. There were realities he had to face, pasts he had to come to terms with. But not now.
“You don’t have to apologise,” he said, slowly. His mind drifted through the words that had been said, the punches that had filled the holes in the sentences of what hadn’t been said. Everything felt as sharp as if it had happened only moments before, unnecessary as if it had happened several lifetimes ago. “I mean… I’m sorry too. Really sorry. But, even what was true… There were things that may have been true then, that might have had meaning then…” He trailed off to lick his dried, crack lips, a cut that was healing slowly. “…That don’t now.“ It was the worst thing that could have happened, but without it, would they be here now? Would everything had been just unsaid, unfelt, throttled up? Maybe everything needed to be broken, all bridges burned, in order to start again.
But he was so glad to have Simon here, now, when all others were somewhere. He was the one line bringing him home. “I’m not sure where the others are,” he said. It wasn’t really something he was dwelling on and he didn’t expect an answer from Simon, but inside him, the inner circle of him, and Jesus - and now Simon - was opening up into little fractals from his soul into the sky, and the faces of the whole camp were coming back to him, and beyond. There was a lot of work to be done, he thought. And lots of todays and tomorrows to do them in. Slowly he allowed himself to spread his thoughts further and around again, back to Jesus, the words of Him slowly coming back, and all those feelings they had opened up, so much to feel, so much to take in…
“…I think I get what you mean. Like, the me from…even a week ago, seems really different now. It’s bizarre how much has happened even in - hours! It’s crazy. So crazy. But, you know.” He hit send, and let his arms be brought down naturally by gravity until his phone was resting against his forehead, clicking it onto standby so that it didn’t blind him.
“I think I’m the last one to get here. Saw most people back talking to Jesus or milling about at camp.” Simon murmured in response, running through the tally in his head. “Peter, John, all of the cousins…Thaddeus, Nath and Phil, both James’, Matt…” When he started counting down the 12 in his head, his blood ran cold by the final addition. God. Judas. He’d…he’d put the other man from his mind, for the most part. He’d just been so angry about what he’d done to Jesus, where his short-sightedness had left them and then…shocked, he guessed, when he did what he did in the end. And that things that Simon had said as well, that he wished Judas was alive so that he could get him with his own two hands…shit. He’d never even visited the grave, in the end. He only knew about where it was from what…Tabs had said.
God, and she’d found him, hadn’t she. Even with Jesus back this must…this must all be pretty hard for her. And if she…or any of them blamed him then he’d…he’d kind of get it. Simon had said some pretty atrocious things to Judas, especially…that last time.
“You, uh…” Simon swallowed, putting his mobile away and rolling his head over to look up at Thom. “…You want to come with for a…thing, tomorrow? I think there’s some, uh, unfinished business that we both, uh, maybe could do with taking care of.”
Thom nodded, thinking through the 12 in his head too, each of them held in a bathing revenant light in his mind, each of them glowing back to life in his mind as he thought of them; they weren’t just traveling men on the road anymore, he knew, they were something more; and even if they’d get lost to the vestiges of time within a hundred years or so, right now, they were really leaders of men for the word of God, at least in his mind, at least in Jesus’ mind, who was all that matters.
Except… one name was unspoken. That name and space was a restless wind, unsettled, unresolved. He had heard rumours as he had been charging around in the past long few days, but there had been rumours about a lot of things, after all he still wasn’t overly clear what had happened with Peter… Everything had changed since the Lord had come back, and surely that would have changed too, and even if something had really happened to him, he would have risen again too… Jesus wouldn’t have wanted an Earth without him.
But Jesus had said nothing when he had saw Him, and so he had kind of pushed them to the back of his mind like an inconvenient truth… He swallowed dried blood as he looked down at Simon. There was a lightness in the sky to the east, only a slightly bluer sky, but a reminder that the earth was alive and the sun was slowly coming, and breathing slowly into a new day. “Which thing?” he said, deliberately and languidly, trying to measure out if he wanted to ask, knowing from Simon’s tone this would be something he didn’t want to know.
“The…” Simon took a deep breath, “…the you know, they put Judas after…what happened. It was…I don’t actually know where it is. I’ve been told, I mean, but I haven’t actually seen it. I wasn’t around to help. Well…” He dragged a hand over his face, because that wasn’t quite it. “…I refused to help. Like, they asked and I said…I said no.”
The usual cloud of denials rushed to his mouth, that they had other things to worry about, that it wasn’t right, that Judas had brought it on himself - but now that they’d finished all the charging around and he had to actually think about everything about had happened, everything that he’d done…God. It wasn’t exactly great.
He liked to think that he knew evil when he saw it, that whether it was the Romans out on the streets or the more quiet injustices in the home, he knew when people were pulling shit and that he didn’t stand for it. He thought back to what had happened though, the way that people had looked at him, and somehow along the when he’d slipped across to the wrong side.
“I mean…you might not want to but…I just mean that I’m going tomorrow, so if you were going to…yeah.”
Thom nodded slowly, everything sinking in. So… it was true. It should be hurting more right now, he should feel something more than… this. Numbness. He felt wiped out of emotion right now, like the wave of happiness that had washed over him had crashed down to the shore. Normality to despair to the absolute sheer incredulity of the last few days to… this. The world was shrunken, pale, white, everything was thin and lacking, and so much lost. Yet under everything that had happened, he could still see the glow of Jesus, and everything was still ultimately beautiful, and all it needed was for him to be by His side again…
Something drifted to his mind, a memory as strong as if he was walking within it right now. Seven months ago, they had visited the village of Taybeh and Jesus had been leading lessons there. Thom had been speaking in the square, and walking away from it to look for a local bath house, he found an older lady gathered up in her robes. She had first caught his attention because she looked so startingly like his own grandmother before she had died, so he stopped to offer her some bread and talk. There was something in her eyes… She had spat at the ground and told him about her family with this simmering anger, how much they had suffered, how her daughter had been forced into prostitution when the Romans had invaded, how the Jewish local priests had refused to give help to her son in law. He had heard worse stories, but she captivated him, like a fly within a spider’s web. “Tell me,” she had told him, with eyes that should have been angry to match her words, but instead were black and dead. “Despite all this Nazareth’s miracles and his good deeds, how can there be a God?” And Thom had listened. And for the first time, he was unable for the first time to find a single reply that could have soothed her.
He couldn’t explain why this memory had come to him, because he could never consider a world without a God - especially not /now/ - but in such a difficult world, with all this joy yet suffering and none of it proportioned out equally and no real explanation for either… he thought he could understand something of what she was feeling.
He had to shake himself from this reverie to bring himself back to exactly what Simon was saying and the implications of this. “Yes,” he said, more bitterly than he meant to. “Yes, I’ll come.” Maybe when he was there, it would all start to make more sense…
“Great.” He managed, rubbing his hand against his forehead, as if he could iron out the crease there and get deeper, to the tension growing in his brain. The pleasant mood had gone, drained away with that admission and taking his sense of peace with it down the plughole.
Even now he could feel that familiar resentment raising it’s head again, the seething burn that even now, at what was one of the few uncompromised joys he’d ever experienced in is life, that Judas had once more ruined it by butting in.
As he realized that, his stomach turned over, because fuck, the guy was dead, was Simon really that much of a dick? The annoyance didn’t fully dissipate, but he supposed acknowledging it was something that almost resembled progress, at least.
He could hear the edge in Thom’s reply, and wondered if he’d reached the same conclusions. That familiar jagged excuse popped up in his head, that it wasn’t like the other apostle could point fingers, what the hell had he ever done for Judas. Simon screwed up his face, rubbing at his forehead - it felt almost like there were two hims in his head, his new self, his better self, and the same patterns and rhythms of how he used to be that just didn’t make any sense anymore. He was…he was getting now why it had been strained meeting with the others again. Was this…was this what he was like? Was this him?
“I…” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. That he was sorry? It didn’t really make any difference, now.
“It’s, uh, under the tree where him and Tabs used to hang out, I think. Or at least, around there. I’m sort of pegging on it being at least slightly obvious. Hopefully.”
He tried to think of something, swallowing audibly, reaching for something to say to fill the void. “It’s…everything’s going to be different now, isn’t it? At least that’s what I got from Jesus. Everyone’s gonna go their separate ways, and - maybe it’s for the best. I don’t know.”
Thom nodded to his words. “Huh...” Under the tree. That was just... wow. It was just sad, in a way. It was more than sad. He had always just scoffed at this growing tendency towards angsty self-hating tendencies before, that seemed commonly accepted for young people these days, and so hand in hand came his deep resentment for the selfishness of suicide, the pointless of it all. But this... This was entirely... What Judas had done, to their Lord, was inexcusable. His betrayal to them all. To God himself. Followed by yet another inexcusable action, to... what? Cancel them out? He was back teaching his kids again, where ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’, and... Well, even his own children knew that lesson. What made adults so stupid? He wondered if Jesus had said anything to Simon about this. He hadn’t said anything to him, and he wished he had asked now, because it would iron out the beautiful fabric of everything that had happened... and where creases were, doubts entered his mind. Did Judas defy God’s great plan, or was he part of it?
“Do you think so?” In his minds, the strands of everyone coming together just seemed so complete, but that reality was wavering in and out of the one where they were falling apart for the final time, like they existed at once. “Whatever Jesus says... He always knows best.” He smiled as he watched the horizon. If anything could confirm that, it was Him, rising from the dead. If he said it was going to be different, it was going to be different. It had been the best years of his life, but that didn’t mean they had to last forever.
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