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Dewdrop shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. But it’s been the shittiest fucking night, he needs this.
They played a fantastic show and it all went to shit because Sister Imperator just had to fucking die right as they were coming off stage. He needs a break, damn it. So he’s not going to go back inside, even though there’s already someone leaning against the wall of the hotel in the only halfway reasonable place to smoke, and he’s humming Kiss the Go-Goat, of all fucking things.
The rest of the pack is upstairs, piled into Cirrus and Cumulus’s room. When he’d slipped out Phantom had been curled in a ball on the couch, teetering on the edge of a breakdown, insisting that there must have been some sign he missed, because how could he not have known how sick she really was?
Mountain had knelt in front of him. “Listen to me, bug. This is not your fault. We’ve all learned that you underestimate Sister Imperator at your own peril. You get to be the last one to learn it.”
Phantom’s lip had wobbled, Cirrus had said “Oh sweetie,” and Dew had to get out. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the room.
Copia is beside himself, he knows, even though he’s only known for sure that Imperator is his mother for…fuck, has it even been a year? Dew knows he has no business going near him right now. If he can’t even deal with Phantom, he certainly can’t deal with him.
So he’d come out here, paced around the building until he could find a decent place to smoke and listen to the rumble of late night flights landing at LAX. He hadn’t seen another living soul until he’d found this man, standing right where he wanted to be. He nods a hello, leans against the wall a polite distance away, and lights a cigarette.
It’s always a gamble, talking to fans. Maybe this is one of the unhinged ones and the night can go bad in a new and interesting way. But Dew wants to leech off the good energy, get back some of what was lost to the chaos and the crying, and so he says “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
The man startles, and smiles sheepishly. He’s handsome, for a human. “Heh, suppose I have. Were you there too?”
Dew nods. “Hell of a show.”
“It was.” He’s not smoking anything, just staring out at the skyline. It’s not all that much of a view, just solar panels and a parking garage, billboards for personal injury lawyers, the lights of downtown LA twinkling in the distance. Somewhere on a hillside beyond those lights is the Hollywood sign. Aurora had sworn she could see it this morning.
We should have seen it.
Was that Phantom’s voice, or Aether’s, in his head? Dew doesn’t know, and to all the grudges he’s held against Imperator over the years he adds one more, that both of his quints are going to be doubting themselves because she just had to be secretive about everything, even fucking dying.
The man next to him isn’t hiding anything. Excitement rolls off him in waves, even standing still. It’s not anywhere near as good as a whole crowd but it’s enough to take the edge off.
Dew should be cautious, but he can’t help himself. “First ritual?” he asks. He’s not sure whether he’ll say he’s a fellow fan or crew, he’ll see how it goes.
“Yeah. I’ve listened for years, but I’ve never seen them live before. You?” Something about his voice is too familiar. Dew’s too frayed to place it, but it gnaws at him.
“Seen a few, yeah. What was your favorite?”
He sighs happily. “All of it? Fuck, even the ones I didn’t like on the record, they’re something else live. But if I had to pick… Ritual. Well, no, maybe Faith." Dew wonders if he’s got a partner or a friend up in the hotel, someone who wanted to sleep instead of gush about the show, and that’s why he’s out here. "And I love that they did Miasma, gives the ghouls time to shine, you know?”
“Yeah, they were fantastic.” Dew knows Rain would be throwing him a look right now, leave it, but Rain’s not here is he?
They chat for a while, about songs and spectacle. It’s just what Dew needed. What happened after the ritual doesn’t erase what happened during. They gave thousands of people a night they’ll never forget, comfort and catharsis and the pure unholy energy of the music. It mattered. Still matters.
And then the stranger says “Can I tell you something?”
“Go for it.”
“Well, very long story short, I never knew my birth parents. And a few months ago, I got a letter from, apparently, my mother. She’s…I guess you could say she’s part of the band’s management.”
The bottom drops out of Dew’s stomach. He should have stayed upstairs. He’d take holding a crying Phantom any day over continuing this conversation. Somehow, he only says “Oh?”
The man nods. “She invited me to out here to see the show, and to meet her.”
“Did you get to? Meet her?” Dew can hear how his own voice has shifted, but hopes the human can’t.
“Not today, there was too much going on—I mean, obviously, it’s a lot to organize, right?” His voice. How had Dew not realized? His voice is Copia’s, but different, lighter, another accent. “But tomorrow’s relatively free, since they’re in the same venue again. We’re going to meet up for brunch and…just talk about it all.”
Dew takes a long drag on his cigarette. Images are flashing across his vision, two hours ago and now, all at once. What can he say? Sorry, you just missed her.
The other man shakes his head. “You probably think I’m crazy, huh?”
“Nah, I’ve heard crazier. That’s a lot to get your head around though, isn’t it?”
“It is. But…I don’t know, something feels right about it all. Like things are finally lining up the way they were supposed to.”
If the rumors are true, if Copia’s being forced out, then this is—
This is too much for one day, is what this is. Dew finishes his cigarette, looks out at the skyline one more time. Huge things hidden in plain sight. “Fuck it’s late,” he says. “I’ve gotta head to bed. I hope it goes well for you, man. I really do.”
The man turns to face him fully. He knows it’s coming, and still only just manages not to flinch at the sight of the white eye. “Thank you,” he says, soft and sincere.
Dew doesn’t tell the pack when he gets back upstairs. They’ve all been through enough tonight.
***
It feels like a lifetime since they were last in Inglewood. Dew had been hoping Copia would come out to this last ritual, but in the end he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t stand being back in that neighborhood, he’d said, but Dew suspects it’s the meeting with Perpetua that he’s putting off.
This time, he’s alone when he leans against the building to smoke. The crew’s end-of-tour party is happening inside, so he expects to be joined by some of them eventually, but not—
“Well,” says Perpetua, “fancy meeting you here.”
Dew stares at him. “Are you kidding me? You’re gonna get clocked.” There are too many fans at this hotel. Not five minutes ago Dew walked past a woman in the lobby wearing a Ghost shirt—the Lachryma shirt, even, with Perpetua's face on it. He shouldn’t have left his room until call time tomorrow, even unmasked and unpainted like this.
He just shrugs. “Maybe. But I had to. For old times’ sake.”
“So you remember our last meeting here, then?”
“I do.” Perpetua leans against the wall, closer than last time. He sighs. The pure joyful energy from that night is long gone. “I’ve wanted to ask about that for a while, but truth be told I didn’t know how.”
“That makes two of us.”
They stare out at the city. It’s a warm evening for February, a welcome change from the cold of most cities on this tour. Perpetua breaks the silence. “How much did you know, back then?”
“Nothing,” says Dew. “I had no idea you existed until you said who your mother was.”
“But you knew, then? Who I was talking about?”
“I did.”
“And you knew she was dead?”
“I did.”
Silence. Dew doesn’t turn to look. The traffic’s starting to slow down for the evening, cars passing in twos and threes instead of a steady stream.
“Those words stuck in my head, you know,” says Perpetua. “ ‘I hope it goes well for you.’ Very carefully put.”
“I couldn’t have told you.”
“No. You couldn’t. Not sure I’d have believed you if you had.” He sighs again, a deep breath in and out to reset his nerves. Sometimes he reminds Dew so much of Copia it hurts. “I was really hoping to talk to Copia, about that night.”
“I wouldn’t.” Out of the corner of his eye he sees Perpetua tilt his head. “It was bad.”
Perpetua scoffs. “No, really?”
“I mean like he wasn’t all there. He was…dissociating? Whatever the fuck you call it, I don’t know, but it was… I don’t know how much he’d be able to tell you.”
Dew could tell him. He’s never told him he stood over Imperator as she was dying. As the medics had worked on her, her eyes had opened for just a second, barely able to focus. Dew’s old mask may well have been the last thing she ever saw.
He could tell Perpetua about the change from person to corpse, the thinnest slice of an instant between the two. He doesn't think that humans can sense it as clearly as ghouls, when a soul disconnects from a body. He'd known before the medics had.
But he doesn’t tell him. He’s not sure he really wants to know. He smokes his cigarette and stares at the skyline and the question that he both does and doesn’t want answered is heavy in his chest.
Fuck it, there’s only one more night. How bad can it be to find out? “How much did you know back then? About all this?”
“Almost nothing.”
“Really?”
“I had my suspicions. I mean.” He gestures at his eye. “You have to wonder, right? But all I knew for sure was that Imperator was my mother, and she wanted to offer me a job in the Ministry so we could have time to get to know each other. Or so she said. I never imagined she meant this.”
His energy is an open book, just as it had been that night, and there’s no shadow of deception in him. He didn’t know he was being set up to supplant his brother. It’s a comfort, and yet, it’s not. “Got a bit more than you bargained for, huh?”
“Ha, no shit.” They’re quiet for a while, watching the sunset. It’s the prettiest the sky’s going to be all night, all pink and yellow and orange. Finally, Perpetua speaks. “It’s… Hm. It’s odd.” He gestures broadly. “All of this. I wish it had gone different, start to finish, you know? But at the same time, I’m glad I get to be part of it. If that makes sense."
“It does.” Dew doesn’t like to think too much about it. He misses how things were then, and he knows he’s going to miss how things are now. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad we get to do it with you.”
Perpetua looks at him for a long moment, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Dew. For everything.”
“Don’t get sappy on me now,” he says, though he doesn't shrug off the touch.
His friend grins, a little ghost of that first smile he saw in this exact spot. “Either I’m sappy now or I say nice things about you all on stage tomorrow, take your pick.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare.”