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He remembers on a Tuesday.
If he were alone, he thinks he might have grabbed the nearest blanket, curled into a ball beneath it, and stayed there. Maybe he would have died (killed himself, again) there. Maybe not.
But he’s not alone when it happens, so he’ll never know. It’s probably better this way.
Maybe.
“Hey, man, you alright?”
There’s a hand on his arm. He’s in a body again, and there is a hand on his arm.
He’s forgotten how to be in a body.
“Yeah,” he says, and is surprised at how his voice rings in the air (it’s English, he tells himself, just English), “I’m fine, thanks.”
“If you’re sure. You look like you’re gonna be sick.”
The hand is still on his arm.
He doesn’t know what to say. This new body (but it’s not new it has always been his he’s just more now) is quieter than his last one, but the pain is the same.
The anger is the same.
The love?
Hmm.
Moving on.
“Actually.” The voice is back. “This might be a really weird question, but—”
The voice belongs to one of the students he recognizes from his religious studies minor (because of course, of course, why not—), and while the face is different, the voice is the same (English, though, still English). The name is different, but he remembers (he remembers Peter).
He’s still talking.
“—some friends and I are getting together later tonight, and I was wondering if maybe you’d like to come? It’s just a small group of us, and I think they’d really like to meet you.”
What he doesn’t say is: we’ve been waiting.
What he doesn’t say is: we remember.
Peter (but that isn’t his name now) is watching him, looking hopeful, and he—
He should respond.
He wants—
And yet.
“I can’t, sorry.” He gathers all of his books, shoving them into his bag. The chair screeches against the hardwood floor as he stands, but he can’t bother to mind right now. He can’t bother to do anything right now except get somewhere dark, somewhere quiet, somewhere alone.
Peter (not-Peter) is watching him with sad eyes, but he doesn’t look surprised and who gives a fuck, really?
Not him.
Not now.
Not ever.
“Maybe next time.”
By Thursday morning, he’s somewhere else, and there is no one to miss him.
He spends the first three weeks of his summer break hopping from motel to motel, not going anywhere in particular except away.
By week four, he’s found himself a place in a small town in northern Virginia, all the way on the other side of the country from Peter (not-Peter) and his friends. He spends his mornings working on a farm owned by a man who tells stories about his dead wife and carries business cards with Bible verses printed on the back. The stories are fine, he thinks, but the verses leave him with a howl in the back of his throat that he can’t quite put into words, even on his best days.
He spends his evenings wandering the fields and the surrounding hills, and he’s thinking but he isn’t praying. He doesn’t want to.
Or maybe he does.
Who knows.
Who cares.
His God, maybe. But his God isn’t answering.
He’s not surprised.
He’s mostly angry.
When summer is over, he tells himself and the honey locust (and his God, if they’re listening, but he’s getting the feeling they aren’t listening), he’ll return.
When summer is over, he’ll look Peter in the eye and maybe he’ll have something worth saying and he won’t even cry about it.
(That’s a lie; he’ll definitely cry about it.)
But for now, he has summer.
And then he doesn’t.
Jesus Christ finds him on a Tuesday, because apparently Tuesdays matter now.
“Oh, fuck me.”
“Rude.”
“Go to hell.”
Someone must have decided that last time (following, always following, until there was nothing left) wasn’t enough, because it seems his God has decided to fuck his shit up again, just as he was getting comfortable.
If he was the type of man to pray, he’d be screaming, hurling accusations that will never land and burning himself to death and back with the anger that licks at his throat (tongues of fire that never quite die, never quite heal) and strangles him, over and over and over again.
But he’s not the type of man that prays.
(Or maybe he is. Maybe he wants to be.)
So he spends his time pointedly ignoring the Messiah at his back. Maybe, he thinks, if he ignores him long enough, the man will just go away.
He knows better, but it’s a nice thought, anyway.
He’s been walking for miles, and the man has yet to stop following. The worst thing is, he’s following. “Will you at least walk beside me?” he snaps, and if he sounds angry or frustrated or furious, well, that’s because he is.
“Oh, are we talking now?” Jesus asks him.
“Are we talking now?” he mimics, and he can’t help but twist the words in his mouth, mocking and vicious, but he thinks he’s earned it.
“You’re being childish.”
He sneers. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Well, if you say so then it must be true.”
A sigh now, a gust of sound. “Christ.”
“That’s what they call me.”
“Fucking Christ.”
“Now you’re just being vulgar.”
“You could always leave.”
“I suppose.”
“Then why don’t you?” he challenges (because he's always challenging, isn't he? It's what he was made for).
“I don’t want to.” Something must give his incredulity away, because the-man-who-was-Jesus frowns. “I want to be here.”
He looks away. “You should have gone to the others.”
It’s the first time he’s acknowledge their existence out loud, and it aches, deep inside him, in a part of him he keeps hoping he’ll forget because it’s where all the hurt seems to come from, no matter which body he’s in.
“I want to be here.”
“You’re the Messiah, you should go do something important.”
“I did. I found you,” he says, as if that means anything at all.
“Are you sure?”
For the first (second, third, fourth) time, they touch. Jesus (but not Jesus, what is his name now?) grabs him by the arm and pulls, forcing him to turn and look him in the eye. “I am,” his friend-teacher-a-thing-too-big-for-words (because this is what he was, before he was anything else that mattered) says.
And, oh, he’s breathless again.
“You should go to them,” he says one day, and he means it. He does.
But Jesus smiles at him, and he isn’t so sure anymore.
“You should go to them,” he says, and he knows by now that he doesn’t mean it, but he says it anyway because that’s what’s right, right? The Word made flesh should be with the devoted, the faithful. But here he is, at the betrayer’s back.
But Jesus smiles at him, and he thinks he could die (again and again and again), and he thinks he could be at peace, this time.
“You should go to them,” he says, and they’re just words. And the-man-who-was-Jesus knows it.
And the-man-who-was-Jesus takes his hand. “I will,” he says, “but not without you.”
“They’d all be ecstatic to see you, you know. I’m sure they’ve been waiting for you to show up, ever since I came back. Probably before that, too.”
The man (and maybe that’s all he is and maybe it isn't and maybe it doesn’t matter) smiles at him, and it’s like a promise, finally kept.
And he says, "Let them wait.”
And, oh, it hurts.
But, oh, he wants it.