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The camp was never quiet.
Even at the latest possible hour, just before the sun kissed the horizon and turned the world bloody red for a horrendous few seconds again, people were milling around. Some, that the Judge may have known in another life, chose to drink and 'socialize'. Their slurring voices filtered through the walls and reached the Judge's silent perch, where they kept watch on the dirt road leading from and to the camp.The Father had sent them here for violence, but the Judge knew to protect too.
They picked at the pink flowers they had collected today while out with the Captain. A truly special man, just like Father had said. The Captain was ruthless with his enemy's and kind to his friends, always a cocky smirk on his face. The Judge recognizes a lot in that man.They gently rip a welting petal from their flowers, holding it up to the wooden mask covering their face to try and discern a smell.When they inhale, they choke on the ash of burning wood and flesh, the sweet odor of evaporating blood. They smell the stale air of the bunker, the sweat of two humans conserving water and the slowly decaying body of Duke, rotting somewhere. The person the Judge used to be had never quite dared to ask where the body was.They choke on the guilt still clogging in their throat, on the knowledge that they survived.
And for a second, they are back there again, inside that bunker.Chained to that stupid fucking shelf, the smell of rot still heavy in the air. Just months after the bombs dropped.Oh, how angry they had been back then. How they spit and hissed at the Father, rattled their chains until their hands bled. Back when they still owned the title of 'Deputy', back when they were still a person. Her hands were bleeding again, her eyes dry with thousands of tears shed. Most of anger and frustration and never when Joseph could see.She could feel the demons nipping at her heels, the unfathomable truth just at the edge of her being, kept at bay with just the force of her anger, pushed back with every hoarse scream, every drop of blood from her wrists.He fed her. It was humiliating, the most degrading thing the Deputy had ever done. She had resisted at first like she had resisted everything else, but her spirit was mere waves breaking against the stone of Joseph's resolve. So he brought her food, in regular intervals that she later learned was once a day, held up a piece of jerky or a spoon filled with beans and weathered her wrath, her kicks, and attempts at biting him.
He hated her, she could see it in his eyes. He hated that she survived and his family hadn't. He hated that she can look straight into his eyes with pride because she killed them.She had destroyed him.And she reminded him every time she refused to eat, refused to bow to him. But the hunger came like it always did. And she had severely underestimated it.Starving is a funny little thing. On the one hand, food was given to her freely with just the insignificant little cost of her dignity. On the other hand, she had held out this long. What were a few more days?And a weaker person might have crumbled when the hunger made her lose several hours, made her head split with a headache like a machine gun fired next to her ear. But she held out because the world was fucked. And maybe, maybe she'd starve.Whatever lay in her future couldn't be pleasant.But this is easy to think, easy to say in the quiet space when Joseph slept or prayed. But to have food before your eyes, it was torture beyond the Deputy's comprehension.In the end, it had been all too easy to give up a piece of her dignity and eat out of Joseph's hand like a good little lap dog.And it wasn't that far a step to allow Joseph to bath her with a sponge because what would a little less dignity really matter?But she hadn't seen, hadn't realized that with each little insignificant permission she granted Joseph, she irrevocably gave away part of herself until nothing was left.Until she sat with bleeding wrists and dry eyes, the darkness kept away with the pure force of her anger and understood that she should have starved.The next day, when Joseph comes from the room he prays and sleeps in, he cleans her wounds and unchains her.
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The Judge silently crouches in a bush, eyes locked on the Captain sneaking into a Highwaymen camp. Their fingers gently stroking their bows string, taking mental note of the wind.They were far enough from the action that a breeze could knock their arrow astray, so constant vigilance was required.The Judge preferred to be closer to the action, to be down there, snapping necks and feeling the hearts of their enemy's bleed out in the same rhythm as the Judge's own, but the Captain had wanted them up here on the hillside, squeezed between the rocks and waiting for a sign. Or for the alarm to start summoning waves of Highwaymen, all ripe for the taking.The Captain said the Judge was allowed to kill those.A seemingly random hand-sign alerted the Judge and, as the Captain commanded, they took aim at a look-out on a wooden tower. The sniper in the look-outs hands turned useless quickly as the Judge's arrow landed true and the Captain could continue through the camp unchallenged. The Judge didn't allow themselves to feel pride for the kill, a sin long purged from their skin.Another sin, another kill as the Judge felt the weary pull of the past, the need to relive something so ingrained in the Judge's being. The promise of pain that would surely follow the memory was what dragged them under, back into the murky waters. Maybe the freezing agony might someday abstain them of the guilt. Life without chains had been surprisingly anticlimactic. She had always imagined that when the handcuffs fell away, she would battle for her life with a religious nut-job, slicing his jugular vein with a broken piece of glass and bathing in the blood while Joseph died a pathetic little death.
But when he had freed her, the silence billowing between them, it had felt inappropriate to shatter it, to disrupted their locked gazes, two predators assessing each other.She had let him clean her, never breaking eye contact.She had waited for him to pounce, to finally kill her.But he didn't.When she realized that, she had thought something along the lines "Well if he won't I should do it.” But the moment after the chains fell had passed and to now spring forward would be awkward. Wrong.Joseph should be granted a worthy death, not because he deserved it, but because the Deputy needed his death to mean something, to signal the end of an era.So she bid her time, waiting for the right moment, for the fates to align and the just opportunity to arise. She ate at his table and shared him in prayer, only because Joseph had decided that her newfound freedom should mean that she had to participate in his belief. And even if she decided not to come into his room by the time he started praying, he would scream loud enough that his voice echoed from the concrete walls, seeping through the tiniest cracks to wherever she was hiding.It was easier to just attend his mass.And it was at that very mass, the ninth she sat though, that the moment for Joseph's death came.Joseph had gotten sloppy, the dagger he used to slice his sins into his flesh sitting forgotten on the little table by his bed. So when his back turned towards the wall where someday an altar out of vague thoughts and scribbled notes should hang, gazing through the walls to the door, the door that would surely open to hell on earth if ever touched, that she took the knife and brought it in a smooth and practiced motion to Joseph's head. In the last possible moment, he turned, dodging the knife by a mere breath and punched her in the stomach.No amount of practice could keep a human from doubling over, eyes wide with shock and before the Deputy could react, Joseph rammed his elbow directly into the soft spot of her skull.When she woke up she was chained again, black spots dancing in front of her eyes the only thing keeping her from screaming her rage into the world and pulling on the handcuffs like an entrapped animal.She should have tried to sever her artery with the cuffs.Joseph came back with pliers, his eyes colored a strange mixture of fondness, disappointment, and hate. "My Child," he said, gripping her cheeks hard enough to open her mouth. "Must you hurt me so? Your Father? You sin, again and again." Joseph pushed the unforgiving metal into her mouth and panic flooded her veins. She struggled against her bounds, the weak sting of old wounds reopening forgotten in the tidal wave of horror before her. "But I will help you, I will cleanse you."Joseph pulled and her vision turned white.She screamed past the pliers in her mouth, past the pain, and past the guilt. Still, she heard Joseph say: "And for each sin, I shall take a tooth." The alarms blared.The Captain had been sighted and with his reputation, no one had hesitated in calling for backup. The Judge felt a little thrill go up their spine and their lip stretching into something like a smile while they cocked an arrow and took aim.While the arrow flew and landed true, they had already grabbed another and prepared it. While they waited for a guard to leave cover and the Captain fought for his life, they ran their tongue over their gum, never meeting a tooth.
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In was later that very day, when the sun had dipped below the horizon and a rare silence had folded over the camp like a warm blanket, that the Judge stood in the common bathroom, for once blessedly empty.As soon as the drinking and the celebration for another day survived started, someone would be in here, clogging the toilet with shit or puke.It was a small time frame, but the Judge knew how to work with time frames. They had lived in New Eden, full with people devoted to Joseph's word but all too curious about what was under the mask.So they hurried through the motions, a sponge bath for their mangled body, crouching naked in a corner, ready to hide if someone should enter, watching the bloody remains of today's work running down the drain. Putting on their clothes, body still wet with haste, always felt like relive, even if the mask had to stay off for a little while longer. Cleaning their mouth with water and toothpaste, gurgling the clear fluid that prevented infection, was unfortunately quite mandatory. The Judge had learned that lesson hard and well.The mirror over the sink was a punishment.The Judge was sure that Father, wherever he might be, was laughing at them now. For, in the great scale of things, it had not been long ago that they had smashed all the mirrors in the bunker and burnished everything reflecting.He had humored them then, observing them with the exasperated eyes of a Father obliging his child. They had hated those eyes, the Judge remembered. Had seen the fondness in them and saw pity. Maybe it had been pity, back then. The Judge hadn't changed their Father yet.What bleak days it had been, the Judge thought and met their eyes in the mirror. The Deputy stared at the mirror, trying to overlook her sunken cheeks where teeth were supposed to stretch the flesh and her sickly pale skin.It had been almost three years since the bombs fell and only one year since Joseph stopped leaving the cuffs hanging on their usual spot, forever taunting her, and put them in a drawer.She let her fingertips roam her face, gracing her nose, her cheekbones, her brow. The flesh felt dead.Joseph leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, visibly shouting his disapproval. He didn't need to say vanity is a sin, my child, completely misinterpreting what she was doing. He thought that she marveled at her new form, at the revelation written across her skin. But he was wrong. This wasn't vanity, it was mourning.“I need a mask,” she said. In the shadows of the mirror, she saw ghosts.Joseph sighed. Even before he spoke, she knew his answer. “I will not give you something to hide behind.”She narrowed her eyes, poison in her voice. “You doubt my conviction?”Joseph frowned. He didn't look disapproving but like standing before a puzzle he couldn't solve. The Deputy knew that she was that puzzle because she knew Joseph better than he knew her. Because he had never tried to know her, had only imitated all that he said to his usual sheep, completely forgetting that she was a wolf. Because he couldn't grasp her faith, her way of worship. He didn't know what she was worshiping for he never saw the depth of her guilt.Joseph didn't stop her when she marched into the kitchen and he stood by while she cut her our tongue out. He cauterized the wound when she couldn't move from the pain, tremors rocking her body. He nursed her back to health, sitting at her side with the same contemplating face, so close to the puzzle's solution.It was when he presented her with a wooden mask, colored white with waterproof stain, that his eyes widened with understanding apprehension and awe.He fastened the mask in place and stared at the surface with astonishment. He gripped her head with the sudden urge of a revaluation, the corners of the mask pressing into his skin.He smiled. Someone banged against the door. “Open up! I need to shit!”The Judge flinched. Well, more in a way of slowly blinking back into reality, like from a pleasant dream. They quickly fastened the mask, their hands pressing into the edges, wishing they were sharp.When they pulled up the hood from their furred coat, the door opened, revealing just a fast blur past on the way to the toilet. The Judge thought it might have been the Captain. Reaching sounds from the toilet disproved his earlier claim.
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Timber the dog was very curious. It liked to sneak up on the Judge and initiate a surprise cuddle. Even at very inopportune moments, like scouting an enemy camp.Luckily, this time they were back at Prosperity because the Captain had chosen to take the bear out. Judge hoped that was only a euphemism, not that the Captain would either want to assassinate or adopt a wild bear. Truly, one pet bear was one too many for one life.Timber rubbed itself along the Judges chest, yipping and waggling its tail like they wanted to take off. The Judge could feel themselves smile as they began aggressively petting Timber.The dog clearly was in heaven.“Having fun?” asked a voice from above. The Judge stopped petting Timber, all to the dismay of the dog, and slowly looked up to their least favorite person in this camp.Gina stood in front of them like she would stand behind a podium, declaring war. “We need to have a talk, you and I.”The Judge slowly rose, brushing their hands off on their pants. They nodded.“Listen. I know what shit you've been through, you heard what I've been through. It's fucked up but we can't change that. Just accept it and move on, so we can all have a bit of peace from the brooding.”The Judge frowned. Gina couldn't visibly see that, but the Judge knew that their whole body frowned with their face. And by her now crossed arms and stormy expression, she had noticed that.“You want to pay so bad, don't you? You want to hurt and you keep hurting yourself because you think that this is your fault? That this is your penance? Well, boohoo but we all have our demons to face. What happened, happened. You can't change that, you just have to live with that,” she said. The Judge couldn't help themselves, they flinched, their hand reflexively reaching for the safety of their mask. Gina noticed that, with eyes focused on their hand like a laser.“And if you need a mask to do that, fine. But at least be honest with yourself. Is this stupid piece of wood hurting you or is it actually helping you?” She pointed directly at their forehead. “Because I think this is just another thing to hurt you. And I think it's time you stopped hurting yourself for things that were not your fault and start trying to make amends.You don't need forgiveness from some God. You need forgiveness from the people. And let me say it here and only once. I forgive you.”It was said with such force that the Judge needed a moment to process what Gina was saying. And when it hit, the Judge's eyes widen and the world stopped for a moment. Then they exhaled and the birds started singing again and the wind blew warm over Prosperity. The Judge thought this might be a good moment to cry. But their tears had long since run out, so they just turned away, back to Gina and facing the sinking sun.Two people forgiving them was nothing against the millions who had paid the price, who could not forgive. But it soothed their broken soul a little, running over the cracks and tears like warm wax. Not enough to close rifts, but a start.The guilt will never leave.The Judge thought they had accepted that. Had thought the constant pain was just a result of that pit inside of them. Repenting was never to erase that guilt, but to ease it. Make bearing it another day easier.But maybe, just maybe, the Judge could find that ease in forgiveness and not in pain. The guilt would never leave and the penance never stop, but maybe.The Judge closed their eyes, their head back and feeling the warmth of the sun through their mask. Maybe the war inside them, raging since the world burned, could finally come to an end.The world inside their head would be forever scarred, but maybe it was okay to plant new seeds in the dead soil. Maybe it was okay to hope that someday, in the distant future they may have forgiven themselves. And, for hopefully the last time for a long while, the Judge opened their eyes and let themselves remember. The door to the outside world had haunted them into their dreams. As soon as Father had suggested going to the surface first, the nightmares had started. Faces, long losing their features, screaming at them from the dark. It had made them crawl to their Father, begging him to wake.He always would, taking them into his arms, gently rocking them. He would whisper about his God, cleverly put on par with the monster inside them called guilt. The Father had learned that about them, so long ago.And that knowledge had shaken him, the level of conviction they had for their guilt had shocked him. And then he had understood, and with that had come change.He had seen his followers and had recognized that he had made a clear difference between sheep and family. Had seen how he had divided his people with his actions. Had seen how the only logical conclusion to that could have been revolt.As he saw the weight of his actions in their eyes, he had truly understood his people's pain and he had grown.It had been such a beautiful process; they couldn't miss witnessing it. Like watching a plant grow, the Father had grown, twisting out of his shell, ripping flesh from old wounds. It had been a violent, beautiful revelation.That day, when then cocoon fell and the Father appeared, they had sworn themselves to him. No out loud but in their mind, a most powerful bond forged in the searing heat of war.That conviction had drawn them closer together. He needed them to look past the mask, into their eyes and see his own guilt reflected up back at him. To affirm that after all, he was still human. And they needed him to see their own monster, their own soul, caged in the confines of their rips, pacing along the bones.Sometimes they felt sadness when they saw the crippled and corrupted wolf, the growth of stone and scab clumping in its fur, remembering the days that wolf ran free, healthy. Sometimes they felt a deep satisfaction because they paid. They pay.This time, in front of that cursed door, they only felt abandonment when they looked at that wolf. And when they rose their head to meet Joseph's gaze, there was loss in those eyes.They would leave him.They had raged and argued, in their own way, when Father had first suggested them to go up to the surface alone. He had promised that it was safe again, that the radiation was gone. Despite the years they have spent together, he still reads them wrong. They had thrown out a hand, between him and them and he had understood.“I need to continue my exile. I still need to learn the ways of God anew. I can't lead my children when my head is full of doubt” he had said, taking their hands in his.In the end, like always, he had won that argument.So they were to go to the surface alone, find the remaining flock and kept them safe until the Father could return.Their hands shook.“Don't worry, my child. Nothing will happen to me here” he said. They could just shake their head. Wrong again. The Father started again. “You fear for yourself, in the outside world. I will give you one lesson.”The Father caught their eye again, holding their gaze strong. "The guilt will never leave," he said it, timber shaking. "The guilt will never leave and penance never stop."He took one cheek into his hand, the mask's edges pressing into his skin. “Never stop paying penance.”They nodded.The Father sighed, his shoulder slagging in relieve and his hands falling. They pretended not to miss the touch. Not so close to a Goodbye.“Then, from this day forward, you shall be called the Judge. For you are my will and my conscious. Be my hand, the Father's hand and be my Judge.”The Judge turned away from the Father, back to him and facing the door. Rust and weather had tried to break through but it still stood steady, opening for the Judge with just a little force. They didn't turn back when they ascended the last step.“My Child,” Father said. The Judge couldn't bear to turn around. “I forgive you.”Those words, spoken from that mouth, should mean something. But they did nothing, nothing in the face of that void inside them, that void inside the world where before life was. So they began their travels to find the last of the Father's flock and prepare them for the arrival. They would protect them and then when the Father's use of them ended, they would continue their search until every soul that they had damned were repented.Until penance was earned, they would pay.
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Back here, standing in the water, watching the Father's lifeless body glide to the ground, the Judge felt as if that should mean something as well. They thought that surely a tear would be appropriate now. But the Father, Joseph had died like everyone else. Silently and without reward.And the Judge stayed behind.They knelt down, letting their hand run through the streaming cold water. A few pink petals caught in their fingers, flush with health and life.That something this beautiful, this alive existed, even with their faults and mistakes, that had to mean something, right?Maybe Gina's forgiveness could be enough, maybe it was time to let Joseph go?“Are you okay?” asked the Captain. He had a kind face. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.“Heeh,” she said and it meant I'll be fine.And for the first time in a long, long while, that sounded no longer like a lie.
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The camp was never quiet.Even at the latest possible hour, just before the sun kissed the horizon and turned the entire world bloody red again for a horrendous few seconds, people were milling around. Some, that the Judge may have known before their rebirth, chose to drink and 'socialize'. Their scents and sounds permeated the air, full of life and the love for it, and their slurred voices filtered through the walls and reached the Judge's silent perch where they kept watch on the dirt road leading to the camp.Their Father had sent them here for violence. But the Judge knew how to protect too. No matter how they had failed in that prospect, gloriously horrifyingly failed, when they had chosen their prideful fight above the people they had sworn to protect. Those choices felt so foreign, so far, now, for the person they had been molded into. ‘The past was the past’, the Judge failed to lie to themselves.
They picked at a bundle of pink flowers squeezed in between the belt of their quiver and their chest. The Judge had collected these fragile blossoms earlier today while out with the Captain, another raiders’ camp that required a bruised fist closed in judgment for it threatened the safety of the remaining lambs. He was a truly special man, the Captain, just like Father had said. He was ruthless with his enemies and kind to his friends, always with a cocky smirk on his face and a solution in mind. They recognized that man, the myth of regrowth he tried to build with callused hands. The same calluses used to be on their hands but now only nubs remained on their fingertips from drawing a bowstring. But the way they differed, those were the important parts. The Captain knew how to heal, had been taught in it, while the Judge knew only destruction and ruin.The truth of their contemplation cutting too deep, they gently ripped a welting petal from their flowers, holding it up to the wooden mask covering their face to try and discern a scent. When they inhaled, though, they choked on the ash of burning wood and flesh, the sweet odor of evaporating blood. They smelled the stale air of the bunker, the sweat of two humans conserving water and the slowly decaying body of the bunker’s owner, rotting away somewhere from sight. The person the Judge used to be had never quite dared to ask where it rested. They suffocated on the guilt still clogging their throat, on the knowledge that they had survived when many others, much more deserving, had been denied that right. And for a second, they are back there again, inside that bunker-
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-chained to that stupid fucking shelf, the smell of rot still heavy in the air. Just months after the bombs dropped.
She spat and hissed at Joseph whenever he deigned to grace her with his mug, rattled the chains until her hand were slick with blood. Back when she owned the title of 'Deputy', back when she was still a person.And, yet again, her hands were bleeding, fresh scabs ripped open anew, her eyes caked with thousands of tears shed. Most of anger and frustration. And never when Joseph could see. She could feel the demons nipping at her heels, creeping in the shadows, as a perpetual shiver chased down her spine while she ignored, with all her might, the unfathomable truth just at the edge of her being, kept at bay by the force of her anger, pushed back with every hoarse scream, every drip of blood from her wrists.He fed her. It was humiliating, the most degrading thing she had ever done. She had resisted at first like she had resisted every other change, but her spirit was mere waves breaking against the stone of Joseph's resolve.So, he brought her food, in regular intervals that she presumed was once a day, held up a piece of jerky or a spoon filled with beans and weathered her wrath, her kicks and attempts at biting him. He hated her, she could see it in his eyes. He hated that she survived and his family hadn't. He hated that she could look straight into his eyes with pride because she had killed them. She was the arbiter for the conclusion to his crazed attempt at subjugating the people of her home under his new testament. He had attempted to save them like a butcher comforts the pig as he cuts it to pieces and she had stopped him.She had destroyed him.And she reminded him every time she refused to eat, refused to bow to him, that hers was an indomitable spirit. The wrath of the people he had tortured with his cult. But the hunger came, like it always did. And she had severely underestimated it.Starvation was a funny little thing. On the one hand, food was freely given to her with just the insignificant cost of her dignity and soul. On the other hand, she had held out this long. What were a few more days?And a weaker person might have crumbled when the hunger made her lose hours, made her head split with a headache like a machine gun fired right next to her ear. But she held out because the world was fucked because of her. And maybe, hopefully, she'd starve.Whatever lay in her future couldn't be pleasant.Of course, this was easy to think, easy to say in the quiet spaces when Joseph slept or prayed. But to have food in front of her eyes, when her entire being crumbled and twisted under the force of her hunger? It was a torture beyond comprehension.So, in the end, it had been all too easy to give up a little piece of her dignity and eat out of Joseph's hand like a good lapdog.And wasn't it just another small step to allow Joseph to bathe her with a sponge? What would a little less dignity really matter, in the grand scheme of things? She was lying in wait, a wolf in the bushes, and she needed her strength and health to make him pay. But she had failed to consider, hadn't realized, was that with each little, insignificant permission she granted Joseph, she irrevocably gave away part of herself until nothing remained.Until she sat with bleeding wrists and dry eyes, the darkness enveloping her with the sound of a million silent screams, and understood that she should have starved.
It was the next day when Joseph came from the room he prayed and slept in, that he cleaned her wounds and unchained her. Yet.
Life without chains had been surprisingly anticlimactic. She had always imagined that when the handcuffs fell away, she would battle for her life with a religious nut-job, slicing his jugular vein with a broken piece of glass and bathing in his blood while Joseph died a pathetic, little death. But when he had freed her, the silence billowing between them, it had felt inappropriate to shatter it, to disrupt their locked gazes, two predators assessing each other.She had let him clean her wrist, never breaking eye contact.She had waited for him to pounce, to finally kill her.He didn't.When she realized that, she had thought something along the lines of ‘well if he won't, I am gonna do it.’ But the moment after the chains fell had passed and to now spring forward would be awkward. Wrong. Joseph should be granted a worthy death, not because he deserved it, but because she needed his death to mean something, to signal the end of an era.So she bid her time waiting for the right moment, for the fates to align, and the just opportunity to arise. She ate at his table and joined him for prayer. The latter was only because Joseph had decided that her newfound freedom should mean that she had to participate in his ‘faith’. And should she refuse to come to his room by the time he started praying, he’d scream his psalms loud enough that his voice echoed in multitudes from the concrete walls, seeping through the tiniest cracks to wherever she was hiding.It was easier to just attend his mass.It was at that very mass, the ninth she sat through, that the moment for Joseph's death presented itself.
Joseph had gotten sloppy, the dagger he used to slice his sins into his flesh sitting forgotten on the side table by his bed. He had turned towards the wall where the beginnings of an altar out of vague thoughts and scribbled notes grew like mold, gazing through the walls to the door, the door that would surely open to hell on earth if ever touched. Only when she was sure he was caught deep within his fanatic faith did she take the knife and brought it in a smooth and practised motion to Joseph's head.But in the last possible moment, he whipped around, dodging the blade by a mere breath, and punched her in the stomach. No amount of practice could keep a human from doubling over, eyes wide with shock, and before she could react, Joseph rammed his elbow directly into the soft spot of her skull.When she woke she was chained, again, the black spots of concussion and nausea dancing in front of her eyes the only thing keeping her from screaming her rage into the world and pulling on the handcuffs like an entrapped animal. She should have tried to sever her artery with the cuffs.Joseph came back with pliers, his eyes colored a strange mixture of fondness, disappointment and hate.
“My Child,” he said, gripping her cheeks hard enough to open her mouth, “Must you hurt me so? Your Father? You sin, again and again.” Joseph pushed the unforgiving metal into her mouth and panic flooded her veins. She struggled against her bounds, the weak sting of old wounds reopening forgotten in the tidal wave of horror before her.“But I will help you, I will cleanse you,” Joseph pulled and her vision turned white. She screamed past the pliers in her mouth, past the pain and past the guilt. Still, she heard Joseph say, “And for each sin, I shall take a tooth.”
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The Judge crouched silently in an impossibly lush, blooming bush, eyes locked on the Captain’s back as he sneaked into an enemy’s camp. Their fingers were gently stroking their bows’ strings, taking mental note of the wind. From this distance, the faintest breeze could knock their arrow astray, so constant vigilance was required.The Judge preferred to be closer to the action, to be down there, snapping necks and feeling the hearts of the enemy bleed out to the same rhythm as the Judge's own, but the Captain had wanted them up here on the hillside, squeezed between two rocks and waiting for his signal. Or for the camp’s alarm to start summoning waves of raiders, all equipped with lives ripe for the harvest.
The Captain had said the Judge was to kill those. And the Captain’s word was law, his orders carrying the weight of the consequences as the Judge’s shoulders were bowed and broken from where they had failed to carry theirs.A seemingly random hand sign alerted the Judge and, as the Captain commanded, they took aim on a lookout atop a rickety, wooden tower. The ramshackle sniper in the lookout’s hands turned useless quickly as the Judges’ arrow landed true and the Captain could continue through the camp unchallenged.
They didn't allow themselves to feel pride for the kill, a sin long purged from their skin.Another sign, another kill, as the Judge felt the weary pull of the past, the need to relive something too ingrained into the Judge's being. The promise of pain that would surely follow the memory was what dragged them under, back into the murky waters. Maybe the freezing agony might someday abstain them of the guilt.Yet, they remained in the present, the Captain’s ease with murder calling to the wrath inside them like the first drop of water on parched earth. They truly were similar, in all the wrong ways. But the world as the Judge had carved it required men like the Captain and they couldn’t begrudge him the violence. It was their sin that forced his hand, it was their fault that he had to turn away from a life of growth to reaping sinners. Maybe Joseph's will had been for the Judge to be reaped as well, after their work was done. It would be a fitting end.The alarms blared.The Captain had been sighted and with his reputation, no one had hesitated in calling for backup. The Judge felt a little thrill go up their spine and their lip stretching into something like a smile while they cocked an arrow and took aim. The arrow flew and landed true, and they had already grabbed another, notching it. While they waited for a guard to leave cover and the Captain fought for his life, they ran their tongue over their gums, never meeting a bone.It was later that very day, when the sun had dipped below the horizon and a rare silence had folded over the camp like a warm blanket, that the Judge stood in the common bathroom. For once, it was blessedly empty.
As soon as the drinking and the celebration for another day survived started, someone would be in here, clogging the toilet with shit or puke. It was a small time frame, but the Judge knew how to work with time frames. They had lived in the Father’s new colony before they were sent off to do the Captain’s bidding, full of people all devoted to the Word but all too curious about what was under their mask. They couldn’t begrudge them their childlike curiosity, for they were children, and the Father’s first and only Judge, masked and deadly silent, was naturally the topic of much speculation.
So they hurried through the motions, a simple sponge bath for their mangled body, crouching naked in a corner. Always ready to hide if someone should enter, they watched the bloody remains of today's work run down the drain. Putting on their clothes, their body still wet with haste, always felt like relief, even if the mask had to stay off for a little while longer. Cleaning their mouth with water and toothpaste, gurgling the clear fluid that prevented infection, was unfortunately quite mandatory. The Judge had learned that lesson hard and well.The mirror over the sink was a punishment.The Judge was sure that the Father, wherever he might be, was laughing at them now. For, in the greater scale of things, it had not been long ago that they had smashed all the mirrors in the bunker and burnished everything reflecting. He had humoured them, then, observing them with the exasperated eyes of a Father obliging his child. They had hated those eyes, the Judge remembered. Had seen the fondness in them and saw pity. Maybe it had been pity, back then. The Judge hadn't changed their Father yet.
What bleak days it had been, the Judge thought and met their eyes in the mirror.
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‘The Deputy’ stared at the mirror, trying to overlook her sunken cheeks where teeth were supposed to stretch the flesh and her sickly pale skin. It had been almost three years since the bombs fell and only one year since Joseph stopped leaving the cuffs hanging on their usual spot, forever taunting her, and put them in a drawer. She let her fingertips roam her face, gracing her nose, her cheekbones, her brow. The flesh felt dead. Joseph leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, visibly shouting his disapproval. He didn't need to say ‘Vanity is a sin, my child,’ completely misinterpreting what she was doing. He thought that she marvelled at her new form, at the revelation written across her skin. But he was wrong. This wasn't vanity, it was mourning.“I need a mask,” she said. In the shadows of the mirror, she saw ghosts.Joseph sighed. Even before he spoke, she knew his answer.“I will not give you something to hide behind.”She narrowed her eyes, poison in her voice, “You doubt my conviction?”Joseph frowned. He didn't look disapproving but like he stood before a puzzle he couldn't solve. She knew herself to be that puzzle because she knew Joseph better than he knew her. Because he had never tried to know her, had only imitated all that he said to his usual sheep, completely forgetting that she was a wolf. Because he couldn't grasp her faith, her way of worship. He didn't know what she was worshipping for he never saw the depth of her guilt.Joseph didn't stop her when she marched into the kitchen and he stood by while she cut her tongue out. He cauterized the wound when she couldn't move from the pain, tremors rocking her body. He nursed her back to health, sitting at her side with the same contemporary face, so close to the puzzles’ solution.It was when he presented her with a wooden mask, coloured white with waterproof stain, that his eyes widened with understanding, apprehension and awe.
Joseph fastened the mask in place and stared at the surface with astonishment. He gripped her head with the sudden urge of a revaluation, the corners of the mask pressing into his skin. He smiled.
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Someone banged against the door, “Open up! I need to piss!”
The Judge flinched. They flinched in the way of slowly blinking back into reality as if awoken from a pleasant dream. They quickly fastened the mask, their hands pressing into the edges, wishing they were sharp. When they pulled up the hood from their furred coat, the door opened, revealing just a fast blur past on the way to the toilet. The Judge thought it might have been the Captain. Reaching sounds from the toilet disproved his earlier claim.Timber the dog was very curious. It liked to sneak up on the Judge and initiate a surprise cuddle. Even at very inopportune moments, as in: scouting an enemy camp.
Luckily, this time they were back at the camp because the Captain had chosen to spend this day fortifying the reinforcements along the camp’s perimeter. Timber rubbed itself along the Judges chest, yipping wildly and wagging its tail like it wanted to take off. The Judge could feel themselves smile as they began petting it.
The dog clearly was in heaven.“Having fun?” a voice asked from above. The Judge stopped petting Timber, all to the dismay of the dog, and slowly looked up to the mighty figure of the Captain, blotting out the sun and haloed by it. He stood in front of them like he would stand behind a podium, declaring the fates of the world, “We need to have a chat, you and I.”The Judge slowly rose, brushing their hands off on their pants. They nodded.“Listen, buddy. Can I call you buddy? I’m gonna call you buddy,” the Captain began and the Judge would think it to be nerves, on anyone else, “I kinda looked into your history, I know, I know, dick move, but I was curious! And I think you’re way too hard on yourself. You know, with the whole silent brooding thing you’re doing. Wait, shit, is that insensitive?”The Captain waved his hands around like he could wipe the Judge free of guilt. As if it was that easy to just forgive and forget. They frowned. The Captain couldn't possibly see that, but the Judge knew that their whole body frowned with their face. And by his now crossed arms and confused demeanour, he had noticed their hidden expression.“Listen, I’m sorry about mentioning the ‘not speaking thing’, I wasn’t thinking,” he said, completely misunderstanding them. But the Judge couldn't help themselves, they flinched, their hand reflexively reaching for the safety of their mask. Suddenly self-conscious, they wished, prayed, for the easy understanding shared back in the bunker. The Captain noticed their aborted movement, with eyes focused on their hand like a laser, “Why do you keep wearing that mask? I don’t think I ever asked,” he pointed directly at their forehead, “Because I kinda feel this is just another thing you use to hurt yourself.”The Judge curled in on themselves, sunk to the ground again, wanting to be small, wanting to disappear. Something about them must have been pitiful enough for the Captain to kneel down, next to them. Timber abandoned the Judge’s clutches immediately and happily received the lazy pats of the Captain’s broad hand.“Hey, hey, don’t do that,” the Captain admonished gently but the Judge flinched as if he had hit them, “Don’t go all inside yourself. What did that ‘Father’ dude even tell you? Ah-, shit, wait, you can’t answer that. Uh, didn’t he tell you, like, that you caused the collapse because you killed his family? Nod if I’m close.”The Judge was conflicted. The way the Captain phrased that, full of disbelief and ridicule, it did sound like a quite ridiculous notion. But the Judge had been a non-believer in a past long gone too and the world had bathed in fire for it. He needed to understand, properly understand, so they broke their vow of silence and wrote in the dirt below their feet.
‘Three shackles to chain Armageddon. I killed broke the shackles. My wrath brought the end. As foretold, I am the White Horse.’The Captain frowned down at the letters, the Judges writing hard to decipher because of their shaking hands.“Soo-,” the Captain drew out the sound like it could grant the clarity the Judge bled for, “This ‘Father’ prophesied the end of all times and it just happened to be that his family members were these ‘chains’? Not gonna lie, that whole compound stank to hell and back like a proper cult, but it’s like. A cult cult.”The Judge shook their head, he didn’t understand, he couldn’t understand. They were too similar, the Captain and the person they used to be. She, too, had laughed in the face of Joseph’s declarations. She had seen the way he tried to prepare their home for war and had seen suffering and torture. She had seen a madman, delusional, crazed, and in desperate need of new anti-psychotics. But he had been right. He had been right. When the blood of his family soaked her hands and she appeared before his church to lead him towards justice, wrathful, prideful, the sky had exploded in yellow and red. It was no coincidence. It couldn’t have been. It was all their fault. It was their sins.The Captain sighed as if he could read their innermost thoughts, “Did I ever tell you what I was doing before the collapse?”The sudden change in topic threw the Judge, turned their stomach and made their knees shake, suddenly unsteady where they kneeled. They shook their head.“I was military, did you know that?” the Captain began, didn’t wait for the Judge’s answer as his eyes turned wistful and wet, “I was a proper soldier, just following orders to fight in a war I had no hand in starting or ending. Well, I guess it is ended now.”He fell silent for a moment, caught in memories and far, far away. Timber pushed its wet snout into his hand, shaking him out of his own head. He cleared his throat.“Anyway, I didn’t know right from wrong, like at all,” the Captain continued, absentmindedly petting Timber, “I mean, it’s not exactly in the job description to think about any of the bullshit we were doing. You just do what you’re told, consequences be damned. It was easy. Nothing’s your fault, ya know?”The Judge did.“That all ended, though, when, shit-,” the Captain pushed a hand through his hair, scratched at his scalp as if there was an itch within his brain, “Let’s just say I did something I couldn’t stop thinking about and leave it at that, yeah? I wasn’t alright in the head, was seconds before running away and leaving that life behind. But my commanding officer, I guess he saw right through me, he sat me down, cracked contraband we had confiscated earlier, and we just-, I dunno, we just talked.”There was a perpetual shake within the Judge, like a starved beast within their chest clawing at their ribs. Maybe it was longing that punched the air from their lungs, maybe it was the realisation that the Captain wasn’t the man the Judge had thought him to be. Maybe the Father had been wrong about him. That thought scared the Judge beyond anything.“We hit it off immediately, me and him. He had that dry humour, he was so funny,” the Captain’s voice was heavy with an emotion the Judge recognised like a face in the mirror, “And talking through all the shit I’d been through, it really helped you know? He really listened. I did end up leaving the army but we stayed in touch, met up a bunch of times when he was on shore leave.”The Captain fell quiet again, yet this time the silence felt different. It was filled with endless possibilities, decisions never made and now impossible, the grief of losing someone.“I don’t know if he’s still alive,” the Captain said, voice wet, and the Judge was wracked with the weight of responsibility, “Shoddy timing from the collapse, not gonna lie, ending life as we’d known just when I’d finally grown a pair to-”The Captain broke off, indecision and pain warring within him. The Judge couldn’t help themselves, they reached out a hand to place it on his shoulder. But before they could touch him, they spotted a small fleck of blood on the side of their thumb, remembered the eyes they had turned unseeing with these hands. How could they do anything but harm and destroy? The Captain didn’t need more blood and violence but they didn’t know anymore how to give anything else.
Still, against all odds, the gesture alone seemed to have given the Captain something akin to strength to continue.“Sounds stupid to say out loud now,” the Captain laughed, rubbed at his eyes, “I was gonna confess. Had a whole plan, super embarrassing. It involved my old dog tags of all things, can you believe it?”A wheezing breath left the Judge, a horrid mockery of a laugh. A thought grabbed them, a curiosity, and they denied themselves the conclusion. What was a name really? Did they need to know this stranger’s name? This person they condemned? Did they deserve it?“Fuck, I haven’t told anyone about this, it’s making me all mushy,” the Captain’s smile was self-deprecating, flagellating, “But you’re a good listener, thank you. Feels good to get it off my chest.”The Judge shrugged, they didn’t know how to take that compliment. It’s not like they could do anything but listen.“I had a point with all this, gimme a second,” the Captain screwed his face in thought, running along the strings of the conversation, before his face cleared, “You used to be police, right? Some people in camp call you ‘deputy’, don’t they?”Again, the Judge shrugged. It was not a name they laid claim on anymore, it was just another shackle to a past of sin and desolation.“They also said you raised hell here, before the collapse. Uh, excuse wording, that’s probably not really what you wanna hear,” the Captain grinned before all mirth left his face and it turned stony and serious. He placed a hand on their shoulder with the weight of the entire world, “What I mean to say is, you helped a lot of good people. You saved a lot of people from this ‘Father’. From what I understand, he did a bunch of really fucked up shit and you stopped it.”The Judge stared at him blankly. They had saved no one, their actions were what ruined the world.“I don’t know why you think you’re responsible for, like, nukes, and I don’t think me telling you that you are not is not gonna convince you,” the Captain’s eyes were blue, the Judge had never noticed before, “But. With all you now know about me, know what I lost. Believe me, I mean it when I say it wasn’t your fault. And, if you need it, you need to know, need to understand. I forgive you.”It was said with such force that the Judge needed a moment to process what the Captain had said, the sincerity behind his words. And when it did, the Judge's eyes widened and the world stopped for a moment. There was a buzz inside their head, a shake that started within their chest and rippled out like a tide wave through their veins into their entire body. Far away, over mountains covered in lush green and pink and reds, a dog howled like a wolf at the moon.Then they exhaled and the birds started singing and the wind blew warm over the camp. The Judge thought this might be a good moment to cry. But their tears had long since run out, so they just turned away, back to the Captain and facing the approaching dark chasing the sinking sun.Two people’s forgiveness was nothing against the millions who had paid the price, who could not forgive. But it soothed their broken soul a little, running over the cracks and tears like warm wax. Not enough to close rifts, but a start.The guilt would never leave.The Judge thought they had accepted that. Had thought the constant pain was just a result of that pit inside them. Repenting was never to erase that guilt but to ease it. Make bearing it another day just a little easier.But maybe, just maybe, the Judge could find that ease in forgiveness and not in pain. The guilt would never leave and the penance never stop, but maybe.
The Judge closed their eyes, leaned their head back and felt the warmth of the sun through their mask. Maybe the war inside them, ignited since the world burned, could finally come to an end. A ceasefire. The world inside their head would be forever scarred, but maybe it was okay to plant new seeds in the dead soil. Maybe it was okay to hope that someday, in the distant future, they might have forgiven themselves.And, for hopefully the last time for a long while, the Judge opened their eyes and let themselves remember.
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The door to the outside had haunted them into their dreams. As soon as the Father had suggested going to the surface, the nightmares had started. Faces, features long lost, screaming at them from the dark. It had made them crawl to their Father, begging him to wake. He always would, taking them into his arms, gently rocking them. He would whisper about his God, cleverly put on par with the monster inside them called guilt. The Father had finally learned that about them, so long ago. That knowledge had shaken him, the level of conviction they had for their guilt had shocked him. And then he had understood, and with that had come change. He had seen his followers and had recognized that he had drawn a line between sheep and family. Had seen how he had divided his people with his actions. Had seen how the only logical conclusion to that could have been revolt. As he saw the weight of their action in their eyes, he had truly understood his peoples' pain and he had grown.It had been such a beautiful process, they couldn't miss witnessing it. Like watching a plant grow, the Father had grown, twisting out of his shell, ripping flesh from old wounds. It had been a violent, beautiful revelation. That day, when the cocoon fell and the Father appeared, they had sworn themselves to him. No out loud but in their mind, a most powerful bond forged in the searing heat of war.
That conviction had drawn them closer together. He needed them to look past their mask, into their eyes and see his own guilt reflected back at him. To affirm that, after all, he was still human. And they needed him to see their own monster, their own soul, caged in the confines of their rips, pacing along the bones. Sometimes, they felt sadness when they saw that crippled, chained dog within his eyes, remembering the days when the wolf ran free, healthy. Sometimes they felt a deep satisfaction because they paid. They pay.This time, in front of that cursed door they only felt abandonment when they looked at that wolf. And when they rose their head to meet Joseph's gaze, there was loss in those eyes.They would leave him.They had raged and argued, in their own way, when Father had first suggested them to go up to the surface. Alone. He had promised that the surface was safe, that the radiation was gone. Despite the years they had spent together, he still reads them wrong.They had thrown out a hand, between him and them and he had understood.“I need to continue my Exile. I still need to learn the ways of God anew. I can't lead my children when my head is full of doubt,” he had said, catching their hands in his.
In the end, like always, he had won that argument.So they were to go to the surface alone, find the remaining flock and keep them safe until the Father could return.
Their hands shook.“Don't worry, my child. Nothing will happen to me here,” he said. They could just shake their head. Wrong again. The Father started over, “You fear for yourself, in the outside world. I will give you one last lesson.”The Father caught their eye again, holding their gaze, strong.“The guilt will never leave,” he said it, the timber of his voice shaking them, “The guilt will never leave and penance never stops.”
He took one cheek into his hand, the mask's edges pressing into his skin.“Never stop paying penance.”They nodded.The Father sighed, his shoulder slagging in relive and his hands falling away. They pretended not to miss the touch. Not so close to a Goodbye.“Then, from this day forward, you shall be called the Judge. For you are my Will and my Consciousness. Be my hand, the Father's hand and be my Judge.”The Judge turned away from the Father, back to him and front facing the door. Rust and weather had tried to break through the metal but it stood steady, still, opening for the Judge with just a little force. They didn't turn back when they ascended the last step.“My Child,” Father said. The Judge couldn't bear to turn around, “I forgive you.”Those words, spoken from that mouth, should have meant something. But they did nothing, nothing in the face of that void inside them, that void inside the world was before life sprung forth. No salted earth grew flowers, no brooks started coughing up water.So they began their travels to find the last of the Father's flock and prepare them for the arrival. They would protect them and then, when the Father's use of them ended, they would continue their search until every soul that they had damned was repented.
Until penance was earned, they would pay.
▲▼▲
But they were not the only one in need of paying penance. Where the Judge had wished for death, the Father had refused to deliver it upon them. Maybe he had known that his God would ask for the biggest sacrifice from him for the good of his people. At the foot of a giant, dried-up apple tree, the Captain had taken the Father’s life. Standing in the foot-deep pond that surrounded the tree, watching the Father's lifeless body glide to the ground, the Judge felt as if this, too, should mean something. They thought that surely a tear would be appropriate now. But the Father, Joseph had died like everyone else. Silently and without reward.And the Judge stayed behind.They knelt down, letting their hand run through the stagnant, cold water. A few pink petals caught in their fingers, flush with health and life. That something this beautiful, this alive existed, even with their sins and mistakes, that had to mean something, right?
Maybe the Captain's forgiveness could be enough, maybe it was time to let Joseph go?“Are you okay?” asked the Captain. He had a kind face. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.
“Heeh,” she said and it meant ‘I'll be fine’.And for the first time in a long, long while, that sounded no longer like a lie. They left the corpse by the stump of the tree and, unobserved, the pond unclogged back into a river as a single apple grew on the lowest branch.