Work Text:
"Why ... didn't you make me good enough...so that you could've loved me?"
Stephen Adly Guirgis, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
It was never about the thirty pieces of silver.
Perhaps none of them ever liked him, he now thinks, with a surprising sense of clarity. They tolerated him well enough—enough for him to believe, again and again, in illusions of brotherhood and camaraderie. These would then be promptly shattered whenever his Keriothite accent bled through, followed by glances exchanged between them; whenever his name came last on paper like an afterthought. At times listening in on their conversations felt like eavesdropping.
He does not blame them, anymore than he blames the one who brought him to them. They were sons of the promise, able to trace their lineage all the way back to Ya'akob, the proverbial ninety-nine sheep that stayed within reach and needed no saving. No matter how many times he heard that particular parable, the treasurer in him found it hard to believe that anyone would choose to chase after the single, lost lamb, much less rejoice in it.
Treasurer. At least that was a sign of trust, he grants begrudgingly: the relinquishing of the money box to him, soon after he joined. He can only speculate that the distance between him and everyone else meant that he was the perfect candidate for the job. He was not lacking in funds: they all knew. Just means more earthly riches to give up, Simon—or Kepha, as he now prefers—would joke, shoving him with the force of a fisherman. And yet whatever they thought of him would forever be tainted once they find out about the shekels, heavy in his pockets like a vow he has no choice but to keep. It was, after all, better to be spat on for his supposed greed than for the truth.
How ironic—that his most beloved must bear the heaviest brunt. Condemned by too much love. His own name alone: "I will praise the lord." But this, too, feels like destiny. He found himself harbouring the thought, as the bag of shekels was placed in his open palm, weighing him down for all eternity to come. If this was always meant to be—the betrayal, the death, the resurrection—why was anyone surprised when he played along, accepted his role with a bowed head, never bothered to wash his hands of blood?
For it was him, he thinks, that had more faith than anyone else. Understood when it was said that the last enemy that would be defeated is death. Believed—believes—that, no matter how well he played his role as a sinner, the saviour would prevail. So why was Yeshua no longer with them?
He remembers the dinner table. The great care that went into every action, as if it would be the last—which indeed it was. How Yeshua pushed his chair back and stood up, that seamless robe hanging off his shoulders like a blessing. Deft fingers fastening a towel around the waist as he strode over, wooden basin in hand. Ioudas found him beautiful.
The clattering around the table ceased as water filled up the water basin. Yeshua locked eyes with him—took two steps—and knelt down before his feet.
"Rabbi," he croaked, the word a stone in his throat. A title only ever used in the presence of others. It tires me, Yeshua once said. A constant reminder.
His teacher met his gaze with the same fire he knew so well. In me you trust, those eyes said. When they would retreat to the mountains together, row out to the vast cerulean together. Together, together, together. Never apart.
In me you trust. It was not an imperative, but a fact. A constant reminder.
Yeshua broke eye contact and undid Ioudas' sandals, setting them aside. Ioudas cringed at the sight of his own feet, calloused and dirty, his toes curling inwards instinctively. Yeshua cupped his heel in one palm and scooped water up in the other, pouring. A baptism.
It felt like eternity, but eventually Yeshua dabbed his foot dry with the towel and moved on to the next disciple, who protested with more fervour than Ioudas did. They all crowded around Yeshua, attempting to pull him to his feet to no avail. At last he arrived at Kepha, who backed away with trepidation. It took Yeshua some threatening before Kepha sat back down, face ashen. "My lord," he mumbled. "If you will wash my feet, then wash my head and hands as well!"
Yeshua did not cease his movements. "He who is clean," he said, calm as ever. "Needs only to wash his feet. And yet not all of you are clean."
Ioudas wanted to shake him, wanted to shout why he was chosen to bear these sins, why couldn't it have been anyone else. Why he was doomed from the very start. And why—why?—didn't Yeshua make him good enough—so he could love him.
"Do you understand now?" Yeshua was saying, rising from the wooden floors and straightening his back. "You call me teacher and lord; very well, then I shall be teacher and lord to you. Yet I have washed your feet. Should you not, then, wash each others' feet?"
The room was silent, and Ioudas knew the rest of them were picturing it, on their knees in front of each other, scrubbing at unsightly fishermen toes. Yeshua, perhaps sensing the same confusion, heaved a sigh.
"With truth, I say to you," he started, and Ioudas wondered if he imagined the strain in his voice. "One of you shall betray me."
A split second of silence, then an uproar. Both Kepha and Yaakov stood up, shouting something incomprehensible. Someone's fist pounded the table, making the plates clang and clatter. "Is it I, rabbi?" Voices around the table asked, some mournful, others indignant. Ioudas felt far away, a mere spectator, watching a play unfold the exact way he had pictured it.
Yet his silence seemed deafening amidst all the racket. "Is it I, rabbi?" He joined in, words ringing hollow even to himself. Yeshua's eyes found his for the second time that night. "So it is," he answered, a murmur nobody else caught. Ioudas wanted to run the dinner knife across his own throat, then and there.
Yeshua dipped the piece of bread in his hand into the goblet of wine before him. Then, like the most loving death sentence in the world, he placed the morsel in Ioudas' open palm. He didn't even know when he had opened it.
"Whatever you are to do," Yeshua said, his soft, firm voice piercing through the clamour around them, the rest of the room falling away. "Do it quickly."
Ioudas sat, ceremonious like tombs. That bland, white bread, raised to the air, cracked in half with a deafening, irreparable snap. The chalice of wine, though Yeshua called it blood, as if willing them to ignore the rich aroma of fermented grapes wafting through the room. But who were they to doubt him? If water could turn to wine, wine must turn as easily to blood. And so it was blood they drank, passing the chalice among each other. A shared sense of dread lingered amongst them, a graveness left unarticulated.
Ioudas squeezed his eyes shut when the liquid touched his lips, almost expecting viscosity, the telltale metal tang. Bile rose in his throat; he forced it down by imagining his lips on something wholly different, on Yeshua's cheek that he had kissed so often, rough, weathered by the ocean. For if this was his blood, then it was as good as any other part of him. Ioudas was no stranger to replacement. Blood for love, love for faith, faith for treachery. His lips came away from the chalice, wet. He didn't know if Yeshua's eyes were more trained on him than on others.
Do it quickly, Yeshua had said. How quick was quick enough? A month? Ten days? The next hour? What was time, to he who is eternity? The blood—wine?—lingered on Ioudas' tongue, already sour. Ioudas rose from the table, only barely registering the chatter around him. Silently he slipped out, as he so often did, into the night.
The rest was a blur. This must be what destiny felt like, he thought, weaving through different priests, teachers, elders, voice ringing out with a confidence that was not his, saying words he did not mean. And so with a crowd behind him, rattled and thirsty for action, Ioudas headed down to the shores where he knew Yeshua would be.
"Which one is he," said a gruff voice to his left.
Ioudas kept his eyes trained ahead. "The one I kiss," he said, throat dry. "You will see."
Before he could second-guess himself he strode forward, sandals sinking into soft sand. Yeshua turned towards him, and they both knew. Ioudas pressed his lips together. "Rabbi," he let the word ring between them.
They were inches apart, salty wind rustling their robes. It was evening; half of Yeshua's face was shrouded in shadows, brown eyes almost black. And Ioudas wanted to crack his own head open on a jagged rock. Instead he leaned in, a confession on the tip of his tongue, lips slightly parted.
He could feel Yeshua's breath pick up by a fraction. "Would you betray me with a kiss, Ioudas?" The other man murmured, almost genuine.
Their eyes finally met. "I know of no other way," Ioudas replied, as if rehearsed, lines spilling out of him like the waves that lapped on his feet. He watched Yeshua's teeth meet his lower lip, heard before it was spoken, the very well, Ioudas, that tone of acceptance and slight resignation, the one that made Ioudas want to spit in his face, demand you're the fucking Messiah, why the fuck aren't you doing something about anything?
And so, to stop ruin from crashing down early, Ioudas leaned forward and pressed his lips against the corner of Yeshua's mouth.
Both their lips were chapped, Yeshua's from the salty sea wind and Ioudas' from dread. Something was rising within Ioudas, something definite and acute, crowding up against his lungs. Something that meant completion, the last piece of fate, falling into place. Had it really been him, all this time? The frustration, the anger, the deal? But he had taken it; whether it be bait or barter. He supposed that between him and Yeshua's creator, the blame was even.
Chaos erupted behind him. Ioudas only watched, rooted to the sand, as they twisted Yeshua's hands behind his back. Someone to his right screamed; Kepha had sliced off an ear. One of the priests—the same one at the synagogue earlier—came up to Ioudas, said something, gestured at the other disciples. Ioudas nodded dumbly. He was free, now. One becomes free when one accepts his imprisonment. This much he had learned.
He did not attend the trial, not even the crucifixion. He was free now, after all. News about the spectacle buzzed about; he could only look, vaguely in the direction of Golgotha, and try not to picture the trail of blood. The nails, through those weathered palms and feet. Blood, blood, blood that poured out of Yeshua after he had supposedly died, after that lance of destiny ran through skin and sinew. Blood, dark and sour like wine, so abundant there was no need for transubstantiation. Yes, Ioudas was free at last.
He took out the bag of thirty shekels. Slammed it on a table, asked to buy a plot of land. No, not any specific plot, any plot. The one beside the—? Oh yes, that one will do. Twenty seven? Oh. That leaves me with three. Well. Yes, that will be all. Thank you.
Brothers and sisters, we are back at the beginning. From Eden, to earth, to eternal fire. To the centuries to come where we sing the same songs of body and blood. To the plot of land that now belonged to Ioudas, had always been his, had his name in blood, set in stone since that star flickered upon a manger, thirty-three years past. He closed his eyes and thought of wine.
Now Ioudas of Kerioth looks down at the earth he had never tilled yet now must sow. Felt the thickness around his neck, in his throat. Jumped.
"And, falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels spilled out." (Acts 1:18)