Chapter Text
Copia dreamt that he was falling, deeper and deeper down a never-ending inky abyss, picking up more and more speed as he fell, air ripped out of his lungs as he choked on wind. He kept falling, no end in sight, the pressure against his chest feeling almost as real as the strain in his lungs.
Copia woke up. Knocking his head against something as he tried to sit up, eyes opening.
It was dark around him, darker than his room ever got, darker than even his not-really-only-sorta office was when he couldn't be bothered to turn on the desk lamp, that sat precariously between paperwork and his computer.
In fact, it was almost too dark.
And what had he even hit his head against?
He made to move his hand, but his arm felt too heavy to even try for more than just a minute flick of movement. Now that he noticed it all of his limbs felt heavy, like they had been weighted down with lead. His entire body feeling sluggish, stiffer than it had ever felt upon waking up. Dread started creeping up on him, as he failed again in moving more than a few millimetres, but it was only as he let out a shaky breath, that he realized what he had hit his head against.
Glass.
His breath fogged up the space just above his face.
The slow, creeping dread quickly turning into fear. Breaths coming quicker even as he tried to keep them steady. The air getting warmer at each stuttered exhale.
How much air did he even have in this thing?
How long had he been sleeping, wasting precious time, precious air-
He didn't even remember falling asleep, nor leaving his office. What he did remember though was asking Phil, the nameless ghoul with a name, to leave.
Oh, had they tried to kill him too?
Did the High Clergy decide that he wasn't useful enough, now that he was Frater? Had they decided that he was to join the other Emeritii, in his own crystal clear coffin?
Another stuttering breath, the fog over his face growing bigger still even as the glass in the centre cooled down, transparent once more.
He was going to die.
He was going to die, after they had already laid him down in a coffin. After they had botched their attempt and that didn't really matter, now, did it?
He was going to slowly suffocate, alone in the mausoleum where the rest of his family rested, all while his fucking twin took the place that was meant for him.
The next breath almost took the shape of a sob, but only almost. His eyes stung, the little he could see growing blurrier, the air in the coffin was getting heavier and harder to breathe in.
He was going to die and-
Another stutter of a breath, his chest almost hurt by how tightly fear and desperation were twisting around his lungs and heart.
He pushed through the leaden feel in his limbs, fingers splayed over the glass as he tried to push at it with as much force as he could .
He was going to die and it wasn't fair!
It wasn't fucking fair!
After everything he had done for the Ministry, so many years, wasted looking at a finish line he had thought he'd never truly reach and after he got it, after he finally got his wish, got his revelation that he too did in fact have a family, ripped from him so that he could raise to the top, he lost everything.
Forgotten like a piece of old, rejected merchandise, in a office that wasn't even really his own.
Used and discarded like his half-brothers before him.
And now they wanted to kill him too.
Probably thought they already had. Not even having the fucking decency to make sure he really was dead before locking him in a coffin.
He pulled his hands back and then hit the coffin lid again and again and again. Sight blurry, hot tears running down his face, breath a panicked stuttering mess, if his voice wasn't stuck so firmly in his throat he'd be sobbing, maybe screaming.
But it was useless, the lid didn't even move, nor crack. The coffins where made for transport, after all, glass resistant so that they could cart them around during tours, he knew that, he knew, but he had almost hoped...
He didn't want to die. Not like this.
Surrounded by the corpses of his family, alone, slowly suffocating like a spluttering flame under a glass.
He hit the lid again, only distantly noticing the thud being followed by a clear clatter like claws on glass, not that it mattered, whatever that was. Because he was going to die unless he managed to get this fucking coffin open.
He barely even noticed the glimpse of glowing purple at eye-height at his left, focused as he was on trying to get the damn thing open, even as breathing got harder and harder with the added movement. He barely noticed until he heard the clear clicking of bone heels on marble, a fast staccato of someone running.
He barely even turned his head, when a darker shadow loomed over his coffin, glowing purple eyes staring straight at him, wide in shock as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing, then a hiss as claws sharper than obsidian cut through the seal of the lid, near ripping the thing off, in fact that was exactly what the ghoul did immediately after.
Lid shattering as he let it fall, the sudden sound almost making him flinch after the silence he had been surrounded by in the last who even knew how long.
Copia sat up, now that he could, he only vaguely realized something falling back as he did. His mitre, because of course they dressed him in his papal robes –nobody cared about Frater Imperator after all, they had forgotten him the moment he was not up there on the stage anymore–, if he hadn't been as busy as he was trying to catch his breath, trying to calm his heart that was beating as fast as that of a rabbit hunted by a wolf, if he wasn't doing all of that he'd laugh.
The ghoul was still staring at him, wide eyed, like he was an unholy miracle that had taken a tangible form.
He kind of was, wasn't he?
At least if one didn't consider the fact that they had probably just botched his-
Wait...
Copia looked up at the ghoul.
If the High Clergy had tried to have him assassinated, was he even safe with a ghoul here?
Without a thought, Copia tried to make some distance, breath still uneven, forgetting about his situation of still being in a coffin, the tilt against the low glass edge, tipping him over.
If he wasn't as scared as he was he'd be mortified by the inelegant scramble his heavy limbs got to as he tried to not fall, the ghoul though was faster.
Too warm arms wrapped around him, stopping him from almost cracking his skull on the way down. Copia tried to get out of the hold, but his movements were too slow, too uncoordinated, like his body wasn't used to the way he moved.
Still he tried even as the ghoul held him tighter, careful but still trying to stop him.
Copia was aware that he was flailing, that he was acting more like a scared kid than the fifty-something year old man that he was, but he couldn't stop.
The fact that he had almost died and the fear that he maybe still would, making it hard to do much more than futilely trying to get out of the ghoul's hold. His sight was at this point just as blurry as it had been before, his breath just as fast, heartbeat so fast and strong it felt as if it was in his throat.
The ghoul was saying something but he couldn't hear it over the sound of his own panicked breathing, his hands clutching at the ghoul's arms as more ghouls came into the Mausoleum, their eyes just as wide as the other had been.
Finally Copia managed to push a word through the knot in his throat, a creaking letterless sound, in a voice that didn't sound like his own, too smooth even in its creakiness.
A quintessence glow, a lighter lilac than the ghoul's purple gaze, joined the light in the other's eyes as he tried to calm him down, but Copia was too afraid, blind to his own logic at this point.
The only thought in his blindly terrified brain a mantra of 'I don't want to die'; And he must have said something, he must have because a hurt sound left the ghoul.
“You are safe,” the ghoul was saying, over and over, soft, yet desperate for him to believe his words. His voice sounded thick with tears left unshed. “You're safe, nobody will hurt you again,”
And Copia wished he could believe that, he really did.
But he couldn't because he knew what the High Clergy did once an Emeritus wasn't needed anymore, even without his mother at the helm.
He knew.
He knew, and-
One of the other ghouls in the room did something and the flickering light of the sconces on the walls broke through the darkness, glinting over the ghouls silver masks and...
the golden clawed gloves he was wearing.
What?
“I won't let them hurt you ever again, Terzo,”