A/N:

Mosom Kezem is Pilate's line in Hungarian. Sounds much cooler than I wash my hands, no?

Bear in mind this is a FANFIC, based solely on Jesus Christ Superstar the movie and show. My knowledge of actual theology is nil and I don’t pretend otherwise. No real angels were harmed in the making of this chapter ;o)

Enjoy.

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He woke up every morning with blood on his hands.

He told himself it was just because of how tightly he clenched his fists in his sleep.

He told himself they were just dreams and sometimes during the day he believed it, sometimes after hours without a bite of food or drop of water, sometimes if he cut deep enough (high up on his hip where no one would see; he had enough problems already without people knowing he'd gone mad), sometimes when his body hurt badly enough he could believe that this was real, only this. He could tell himself that the agonies of the night were not really that important.

But then when night fell, no matter what he'd told himself during the day it happened again. He would eventually fall asleep. The dreams would start. They were different every night, each one some bright new horror that shocked him to his core no matter how hard he'd tried to prepare himself during the day. (It never occurred to him that deliberately crafting ever bloodier daydreams might not be the best way to combat his nightmares.).

Some nights he would kill the people he loved. Other times, it was himself he saw killed, slowly and usually after a long deliberation by men in pale robes who asked him simple questions that he tried, tried, to answer… only words wouldn't come, or they came in a language that nobody could understand. It wasn't til after they'd staked him out in the sun and left him to bake, not til it was only the scavenging wild dogs around to hear him, that he could speak properly… and then of course he had plenty to say, only there was nobody around to hear or to help.

Sometimes it was nothing so overtly sinister. Once it was just darkness, utter and absolute darkness. He was sure he was blindfolded. At first he demanded that it be removed, and then he just endured in silence for a while, then he asked, then begged, and finally when he realized he could move his hands he tried to tear it off himself… only to find that there was no blindfold, that the darkness was there to stay. He woke up with long bloody scratches down both sides of his face that time, and took to trimming his nails before bed and sleeping with a lamp lit.

Another time the dream was very simple: he was sitting at a table and a man was asking him to spell his name. Letter by letter, slowly, as he carved it into a stone. Pilate, the man droned as he wrote. Again, please. P…? He wasn't sure what was so awful about that dream, but it – like the others – kept him awake all the rest of the night.

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TBC.

One more chapter coming. Please let me know what you think so far!!