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[gospel-of-mary.insanejournal.com]

WHO: Mary Magdalene & George
WHEN: Sunday morning
WHERE: Mary's apartment
WHAT: Easter is the most favourite time of apostles
WARNINGS: language, drinking, Mary being intolerable

Mary sat at the table in the middle of her crappy little apartment. Everything was pretty much in one room, meaning that from here she could see her bed filled with broken glass, the floor marked with Judas' blood from where she had beaten him on Friday night - the smell was thick and sickening but she didn't much care -, and the window where she waited for George to appear.

She'd had to send him a text after giving him the address, realising that it wouldn't help if he didn't know the only entrance she was allowed to use was coming up the fire escape and in the window. She was pretty sure the text made sense enough, but if George showed up she'd survive. Unfortunately.

Mary refilled her glass with gin.

George stared up at the fire escape, mouth twisted in worry. This was not a nice neighborhood, and the only entrance into Mary's place was a window? Not good. He jumped up to pull the fire escape down, wincing at the creak of metal.

He climbed the stairs several steps at a time until he reached her. George peered in the window before climbing in.

"Mary, are you--holy shit, where did that blood come from, are you all right?"

Granted, the blood smeared across the floor was completely dry at that point, but still.

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 01:09 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"It's not mine," Mary said without looking at it and taking a sip of her drink. She turned in her chair and gave him a drunken, unhappy smile. "Drink?" she asked, holding out the bottle.

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 01:12 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"No thanks, you're drinking enough for both of us," George said, not unkindly. He poked at the blood with his shoe, but none of it flaked off. "Whose is this? Why is there glass all over the place? Did someone break in here?"

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 01:17 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Again that smile that meant nothing more than the numbness of gin. "Ah, not true. If I was drinking enough for the both of us then I would have had enough for me, and I really haven't."

Mary stood unsteadily and with her glass in hand she gestured towards the bloody mess. "That's where I kicked the shit out of Judas and broke his face and I think maybe broke some bits of my feet but-" she shrugged, "-it'll heal."

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 01:25 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"All right." George sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "Do you have a broom? I'm going to clean this up, and you can maybe explain what's been going on? Or at least why Judas was here and you decided to smash his face in."

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 01:31 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"I don't own a broom," Mary told him as though that should be obvious from the Spartan state of the apartment. There really was very little in it that hadn't already been there when she moved in. "I just came back from dying in Israel and you think I've bought a broom?"

She hobbled over to the bed and sat down on the edge, finishing the last of her gin and wondering if she was going to throw up. "And I don't want to talk about Judas," Mary said, dropping her voice.

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 01:48 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
George looked up at her, before nodding to himself and shrugging his coat off. He used it to sweep the glass to one corner where at least no one would step on it. Then he headed over to Mary and sat down next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

"Tell me about Israel? It's been a long time since I've been back."

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 01:56 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"It's ugly," she told him without having to think about it. "I'd never gone back there, not since He died. Maybe after that though- I think I remember preaching, but I don't know anymore what was real and what wasn't." She put the empty glass down on the bed beside her. "It's filled with tourists now, people clamoring to own a piece of him. But he's not there."

She shook her head. "I walked out of that city and into the desert to find him, to find something, but there was nothing there either. And now there's some copy of me rotting under the desert sun." She turned to look at George beside her. "I always told myself that I didn't fit here because my home was there, where I'd been before, where I'd belonged once. But now that I've been back... I don't belong anywhere."

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 02:18 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"You belong here," George said, hugging her gently. "You wouldn't be here otherwise."

He didn't know what to say to her to try and make things better. There wasn't really anything he could say to make it better. He picked at the sheet of her bed with his free hand.

"I went to Israel once, to die. It was after the Crusades had ended and I realized...well, realized that I had done the Crusades, basically. And I wandered around waiting for that lightning bolt out of the sky that would just wipe me out and make it all go away. That would punish me for the things I'd done." He glanced at her and quirked his lips. "It doesn't happen. When you want God to be at His most wrathful, He never is."

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 02:29 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Mary dropped her head, squeezing her eyes shut. "I'm so tired," Mary whispered. "Do you know that I've died a dozen or so times but never seen Heaven? Not Hell either. There's just nothingness." she clenched her fists in her lap. "And every year I wait for this hurt and loneliness to grow smaller and every year it's the same and this year-" she swallowed and looked at George. "I've betrayed so much and all of it was for nothing. I didn't think I even could fall in love again and then-" she clenched her teeth and took a breath. "It all turned to shit."

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 02:41 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"None of us get to leave yet, Mary," George said. "It's the same for me. Do you want to tell me what happened?"

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 02:50 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
Mary stood, moving to grab the bottle from the table and wincing at the pain in her toes. Then she sat back down heavily on the bed, unsure what to say. "That stupid Aztec. It was supposed to be a joke. It was supposed to be me seducing him because I could and because it's what I do and then somehow... I love him so much, George," she admitted, wrapping her arms around herself as she felt herself tearing up. "I thought that part of me was dead but I love him so much and it hurts so badly." She shook her head. "He sent me away. He dumped me. I let him do such things that were against everything I believed but I just wanted to be with him, and then he dumped me."

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 03:07 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
George shook his head. "Let me see your feet. God, your toe is at a bad angle."

He reached out and took her foot in his hands, wincing at the damage. He hoped they wouldn't have to be rebroken to heal. Still staring at her foot, he murmured, "Why did you two fight in the first place?"

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 03:17 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Think I broke them kicking Judas' ribs in," Mary said and despite her upset there was a slight sound of pride in her words.

"Me and Huitzilopitchli or me and Judas?" Mary asked, deciding that it was time to fall backwards on the bed a bit and watch the ceiling move while George looked at her feet.

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 03:22 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
George smiled a little, despite himself. "You need to get these looked at by a doctor. Unless you want me to try and patch them up with bits of torn T-shirt and popsicle sticks. And I'd listen to either story you want to tell."

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 03:35 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Cut 'em off at the ankles," Mary muttered. "I don't want them."

Mary lay there trying to decide which of the shameful stories to tell, and in the end she settled on the one driven by naive love instead of sick lust.

"Huitzilopotchli," Mary said, and his name still moved in her mouth the same way it used to. That foreign sound that still drew his dark eyes to mind. She could remember how proud she'd been when she'd first said his own name to him without it sounding wrong. Her Aztec, her Hummingbird. "I pretended that the differences wouldn't matter," she said quietly, staring defiantly at the roof. "He just... he made me feel important and loved and worth something. When he looked at me..." she swallowed the hard lump in her throat. "Men don't look at me the way he did. I liked that I had to win him over so I overlooked things."

Mary paused and sat up, wanting to see George's face. She spoke flatly. "He kills people. He kills them and he eats them and I didn't ask questions because I didn't want to know. He's a war god who lives on bloodlust, and I'm a slut who was the lover of the man in whose name his people were slaughtered. To say we had some differences might be understating it."

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 03:49 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
George blinked. Blinked again.

Well. That was a string of disturbing news, just one right after the other.

"Okay," George said, laying down next to her so they were eye to eye. "So. I think it's gonna be for the best that you aren't together." He rested a hand on his shoulder. "But the heart wants what the heart wants, I get that. But Mary, he's not going to be the only one who looks at you that way."

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 04:00 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Two thousand years, George," Mary said quietly. "Two thousand years and nothing in that time has made the dull ache of existing without Him stop. Nothing until Huitzi. And I know it's not right," she whimpered, "but I'd sell my soul to make it work. All I want- I just don't want to feel this loneliness all the time."

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-08 04:13 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Getting drunk in your apartment's not going to fix it, though," George said. He reached down and tucked the covers around her, because she looked sad and cold. "Neither is kicking the hell out of Judas and breaking your toes."

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[info]gospel_of_mary
2012-04-08 04:23 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"Neither's anything else," Mary told him. "Can I tell you a secret? I never pray for him to return or that he didn't die, but I pray all the time that I'd never met him. That he'd never seen me, never removed those demons from me. I wish I'd died some unknown girl in Judea instead."

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[info]the_lancer
2012-04-09 10:42 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select
"You're here for a reason," George said, squeezing her shoulder gently. "He wouldn't have found you otherwise. He chose you because he knew people would need you."