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There was a dead cardinal on the window sill.
Copia saw it when he awoke that morning, after finally pulling himself out of bed. He’d spent most of the morning, before the sun had come up, staring at the canopy over his head, pondering the fact that he had just woken up from his last night’s sleep in this room, after calling it his own for nearly five years.
But this, of course, was the Papal suite. And as of today, he was no longer Papa.
The dead cardinal was still on the window sill.
He stared at it through the glass, laying there on the thin stone lip beneath the old, creaking window. The little creature had clearly run into the glass, and with the thick metal protruding from it, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he didn’t survive the collision.
Copia wrapped himself in a thick red housecoat, but he didn’t realize he’d forgotten to put on shoes until he felt the cold, dewy morning grass between his toes. He was just being pulled towards the body of the cardinal, and when he finally saw it from the other side, a pit settled in his stomach, solid and all-encompassing, as its drag towards the center of him ripped open pathways for dread to creep in.
He’d been trying not to think about it, of course, instead just continuing to revel in the moments he had, pretend everything was alright.
But he’d been pretending for a while, hadn’t he?
Pretending that his mother wasn’t sick, pretending that it wasn’t strange to have her tell him she was his mother in the first place, pretending there was no ticking clock over his head, counting down the seconds until he was inevitably replaced.
He’d just continued to go out on stage for them, perform for them — the very same audience he was now expected to abandon, both for the sake of duty and for the simple fact that they had come to expect it. The Clergy, whether they intended to or not, had made the role of Papa ephemeral in the eyes of the general populous. A Christian pope served seemingly forever, unchanging and unending. An Infernal Papa on the other hand? Dime a dozen. But he had wanted so badly to be different.
There was a dead cardinal in his hands, now.
Copia hadn’t even processed he’d picked it up until he was jolted with the realization of how cold it had already become. Its little body was dwarfed by his palms, and there was no sign of any bleeding, at least none that stuck out against the scarlet red of its feathers. To a child, this little bird would just look like it was sleeping. But he couldn’t live in that illusion anymore, that or any other.
“Frater Imperator.”
That voice was familiar to Copia, but the title wasn’t.
As the abbey slowly came to life in the morning sun, Copia would have to get used to hearing that more and more– after all, today was the day he arrived. Copia’s replacement. His mother’s last secret. The new Papa, the title bestowed upon him before he’d even shown his face. Copia was Frater Imperator. The Clergy was in his hands, the Project in his hands…but hadn’t it been before? In a different way, sure, but he had cared for it. He didn’t want it to be this way.
The voice tried again: “Frater. What are you doing?”
“Dew,” Copia addressed the ghoul finally, looking over at him rather than continuing to let his eyes focus on the bird whilst his mind wandered someplace else. “What are you doing out here?”
The water-turned-fire ghoul looked at Copia incredulously, his tail snapping a bit in annoyance behind him as he walked closer. “I asked you first.”
His eyes landed on the little cardinal, and all at once, Copia watched as something shifted. There was a drop in the smaller ghoul’s features, as if he had a realization but didn’t want to share.
The dead cardinal was covered, briefly, by Dewdrop’s clawed hands hovering over his own.
“What’re you doing with that thing? You’re human; it could make you sick.”
“I don’t think that is quite how that works,” Copia replied, trying to smile, trying to chase away that drop from Dew’s face, as it was beginning to feel a bit too much like pity for his tastes.
“Give it here.” Dew’s hands settled over the cardinal’s body, and he didn’t let go until Copia’s hands pulled back. With one of his free hands, Dew reached back out for him, keeping him from closing his palms, still letting them face upwards as he idly focused on the fingers that had once been cradling that dead bird. He often seemed to find comfort in his hands, especially in the rare instances when he wasn’t wearing gloves. “I’ll take care of it. You should go back inside, this thing is just freaking you out.”
“It isn’t freaking me out.”
“Really?” Dew’s eyes snapped up from the cardinal, now turned over and resting upwards in his palm, and Copia realized how weak his argument was when he hoped beyond all hopes that being in the demon’s hand instead of his would somehow allow the bird to take off into the sky. “I think that you think it’s an omen.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in those sorts of things?”
“I don’t,” Dew insisted, “but your little monkey brains are hardwired to look for patterns. It’s what kept you alive before the man upstairs let you think.” He let go of Copia’s hand, his knuckles gently rapping against the side of his temple. “This isn’t you.” He held the bird up, shaking it a bit. “You’re not dead. Other people are dead, sure, but I think they were kind of assholes anyway, and the human I do care about, you, is still kicking, so… There’s nothing wrong about today. Shit’s just changing, like it always does.”
Copia wasn’t sure why, but Dew’s words didn’t settle calmly in his mind, didn’t reach inside him and suture up those tears shorn open by dread. And eventually, he found himself giving voice to why.
“I met you when I was Cardinal. I met you when the Project, when all of this became mine. And now, on the day that it isn’t mine anymore, when—” He hesitated, the words stopping in his throat until he forced them forward, his anxiety uncaring of any secondary fears about Dew’s desired level of commitment. “—when you won’t be mine anymore…I find a dead cardinal. Right outside my window.”
Dewdrop chuckled, his head falling to the side, soft black hair spilling over his shoulder and making Copia wish he could be lying in bed right now, those strands falling over his shoulder and his chest as Dew made himself comfortable, not unlike a cat sunning.
“You really think that what they call you will suddenly make me give you up?” Dew chastised him, albeit playfully. “You’ve got it all wrong. You’re mine. You invited me in, sweetheart, and you’re not getting rid of me that easily. You’re not getting rid of any of us that easily.”
Copia’s eyes fell back onto the cardinal, and Dew’s hand closed around it.
“C’mon. Let’s get you inside.”
As Dew led him back into his bedroom, Copia wondered not for the first time who had been the one to decide to bring this furniture in. It was ornate, almost stately , and while the vanity felt like something out of a gothic manor, he had to admit, it was nice for putting on his paint.
Of course, he wouldn’t be doing that anymore.
But Dew sat him down on that little stool all the same, putting the cardinal on the counter, resting on a tissue he’d pulled from the box close by, as he instead focused on finding Copia something to wear. He rifled around through old cassocks and robes, tour outfits Copia had delighted in getting away with wearing other places, until he finally settled on a black suit jacket he hadn’t ever touched.
He didn’t dress him, of course, instead happy to sit on the edge of the bed, watching as Copia got ready, but once he’d put on what had been handed to him? Dew corralled him into sitting back down again, leaning over his shoulder, his hands resting on the tops of his arms.
“You look good in black, you know. Always dressing us in it when it’s clearly your color too,” he commented idly, opening an ornate jewelry box and thumbing over the pieces inside.
That item, despite its age, was new to the room, brought to him when Siblings of Sin sorted through his mother’s personal effects. But despite its origins, Dew still seemed to find something he liked; a complex broach with a chain; the clasps being made of bright rubies, and the chain holding a black Grucifix at its center.
His hands smoothed over Copia’s chest under the guise of finding the proper place to put it, eventually pinning it on high enough that the Grucifix itself rested more squarely over his chest. Copia could see in the glass how Dew’s tail swished a bit, the ghoul clearly admiring his handiwork.
“Excuse me, Frater?” A voice called from the other side of the door, making Dew’s tail go from a languid swish to a tight snap back and forth. “We have just received word that Papa’s plane has landed. Are you prepared to greet him?”
Dew snapped his head towards the door, sharp teeth bared. “He will be if you give him a minute!”
Judging by the fact that the voice on the other side of the door remained silent, his attempt at intimidation had clearly worked. Like night and day, he relaxed once more.
He turned his attention back to Copia, relishing in slowly doing his makeup, brushing back his hair. Dew was, for all intents and purposes, dressing Copia up like a doll, but he found that he didn’t mind it. Today was terrifying, the implications on his future staggering. And yet, despite it all, Dewdrop was remaining a constant. Promising that his ghouls would remain a constant.
“I think we’re just missing one thing.”
Dew’s hand drifted over to take hold of the cardinal again, and in the curved glass of the vanity, Copia watched in muted awe as Dewdrop’s hand ignited. Smoke plumes curled out from between his fingers, ashes and small cinders popped in the air, but eventually? He opened his palm again, revealing the cardinal’s skull, somehow perfectly preserved amongst a small pile of ash.
Dew plucked it out, dusting off his hands to the side, before taking a white ribbon out of the jewelry box and threading it through the skulls’ orbital sockets. He leaned down, guiding the end of the ribbon behind Copia’s neck, lovingly tying the item in place and tucking the evidence under the collar of his shirt.
“There. You see?” Dew leaned in close, their heads brushing against one another as he met Copia’s gaze in the mirror. “I can’t bring the cardinal back for you. But he never really left, did he? He just changed.”
Dew kissed Copia’s cheek, some of that infernal heat still lingering in his lips, transferring to his cheek and warming the skin there pleasantly.
“Now, go show this new guy who’s in charge, huh? I’ll be waiting for you.”
Copia stood from the soft seat at the vanity, glancing back at himself in the mirror only one last time. Dew seemed to have no intentions to follow him, instead making himself comfortable on the bed, as if telling Copia there was no reason to give away the space just yet… That he would have to come here to return to him.
And as the Frater Imperator made his way through the halls of the abbey for the first time, waiting in front of the double doors he was told this new Papa would enter through, he found his hand resting over the little cardinal’s skull over his throat.
There was a dead cardinal on his window sill this morning.
But death, in many ways, was a friend. Death reminded him of what he had to look forward to. And Death reminded him that this was not the end.
Now, the cardinal’s skull was wrapped around his pulse point, shifting minutely in time to his heart.
In a way, the cardinal still lived. In a way, it had never left.