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He looked like a night terror.
All in black, silk, and leather. With a face hidden beneath silver bones, his skin painted in ink and ivory. One pale eye fixed, equally wild as it was cruel, even from a distance, and the air about him crackling, vibrating with a distant thunder that hailed an inevitable storm. A twin in blood, but certainly not in nature.
“Frater.”
The crowd roared above them, propelled into a frenzy by their new messiah, this nightmare of a man brimming with the love he had just received. Still new and near defenseless to the force that was the wanton admiration of thousands. He was trembling, just barely, and Copia knew what that felt like. He remembered it well, the high. Missed it.
“Papa.”
How terrible he looked, how eerie. His kin, cold as moonlight.
How beautiful.
“Brother.”
Copia stood, still and tense, rooted to the spot as Perpetua approached him, dismissing the hands of their staff fussing with his hair, his clothes, fixing his Papal paint. The waning distance only intensified the burn in Copia’s chest, had the war waging between his bones threaten to conquer his months-long resolve. It’s me, his rage wailed and cried and roared, I’m Papa.
And jealousy, too. Like acid, it bubbled deep down inside his gut; the very ground all his emotions fought tooth and nail on for the upper hand.
Not you!
Had he not given it his all? Had he not proven himself, with all that he had, and still had left to give? Was he not the sun they had wanted him to become? No, that he was, undoubtedly. Shining so brightly Copia would have gladly caught fire, if only it had meant he could stay on that stage, in that spotlight, for longer. Forever. Forever.
Burning alive, and on and on.
Instead, Copia was eclipsed by the moon before him.
Usurped by the brother he had never known, tossed aside to serve as Frater Imperator like an afterthought, because it fit the plot of their scheming mother’s ultimate revenge on a notorious cheater; a man she had made Papa, then undone again, like his uncles, like himself. Until there was him.
His twin, so unlike Copia. So cold and serene, where Copia was warm and likeable. His movements far from practiced by routine, but his singing as clear as a bell chiming for a midnight mass. Their congregation so quick to follow in their rapture, chanting: Perpetua. Perpetua.
“For us,” his brother said then, with his gloved hands reaching up to cradle Copia’s face like someone he cared for, and Copia could not bear to look at the moon any longer. So overcome, Copia shook with rage, with grief and loss for all the love he thought he deserved, but had never received. All that injustice crumbled down on him like a landslide, burying him under a mound of loathing, pity and white hot ire.
And there, at his lowest, when his light threatened to die out for good, did Perpetua lean in to kiss away his tears. First left, then right. Cruel mouth kind and sweet.
Copia clung to Perpetua’s shirt by the time the cool mask pressed against his forehead, his instincts screaming at him to lash out. To push and shove, to throttle and maim, to destroy his brother right where they stood, yet all Copia’s battered heart could muster was hold me, hold me, hold me.
“For you, fratello,” Perpetua whispered, squeezing the hands at his chest so full of murder, their iron grip loosening as the sincerity of those words struck Copia like lightning, caught up in the storm he had tried to avoid for so long.
For you, a sentiment so novel to Copia, he didn’t know what to do with it as he stared and blinked, eyes wide and wet. One green, so vastly forlorn, one ghostly pale. Nothing had ever been for him. Not his childhood, not his parents, not even his twin. And least of all the love and achievements Copia had collected over the years, all sacrificed for a higher purpose. Taken for granted. His life, a mere surrogate.
For you, Perpetua’s eyes promised beneath his polished skull. One green, tinged in deep melancholy, one ghostly pale, just like Copia’s own. And then, his brother nodded in grim determination, eventually taking his terror and his moonlight away, with steadfast steps, back towards the stage like a black knight towards his battlefield. Back where he belonged.
The crowd clamored; drums and guitars and bass rumbled into song again, and above it all, Perpetua sang like he was meant for it. From the very beginning.
Copia hated his brother.
But there, without a doubt, Copia knew that he loved him all the same.