Papa Emeritus X Reader - Blog Posts

Uno Night

Primo x teen, sleepy reader (Platonic)

Primo finds you asleep, listening to his album.

/ / /

yeah. no explanation. it's 2 am and zoo has sleepy bitch disease (again)

. . .

"Where's the kid?"

A silence fell over the room. Copia looked to his brothers. "Haven't you seen y/n? Surely they're running around here somewhere."

"You know teenagers," spoke Secondo. "You know, when I was their age-"

"We know, fratello. Let's hope they're not following in your footsteps," Terzo interrupts. "They don't cause trouble, generally. Unless they're with the ghouls; then we should have need for concern."

"Oh, lord below, I'm sure they are fine. They're nearly an adult you know. But if you are that concerned, Copia, I will go look for them. The three of you can continue without me."

"Thank you, fratello. I do appreciate it. It is not like them to miss Uno night."

Primo rolled his eyes before walking out the door.

His footsteps echoed loudly throughout the empty hall. There was not a soul in sight; no ghouls, siblings, or even Sister Imperator. He wondered what everyone could be up to; it was most likely that everyone had their own things going on. He imagined siblings in their own private quarters, partaking in their own individual activities. A bit of light reading, perhaps; or watching TV, drawing, writing, working, sleeping.

He wondered what you could be up to. It was possible you were with the ghouls; or maybe you were in your own bedroom, having forgotten about tonight's game. Maybe you were in the kitchen, making a late night snack. Maybe you had elected to spend the night with another sibling. No matter what you were doing, he was determined to discover your whereabouts. He just hoped it wasn't mischievous or dangerous.

As he approached your bedroom, he listened for any signs of life. He heard none, even after he knocked on your door. Opening the door, he discovered your still-made bed; he supposed you hadn't been in there yet for the night. He continued to ponder where you could be.

Next he tried the kitchen. Though he discovered a small group of ghouls that were absolutely up to no good, he didn't find you. He rolled his eyes as Aether swallowed a banana whole with the peel, turning to leave.

"Have you checked the commons?" Called Swiss.

"No, I have not. Is that where they are?"

"They were earlier. 'Dunno if they still are though," Aether manages with a mouthful of banana.

"Ah, well- thank you. I will stop by." He starts walking out the door once more. "Please stop eating the bananas whole!" He calls.

As he heads towards the common room, he wonders what you could be doing there. Sometimes the ghoulettes host game nights, which may explain the halls' emptiness.

Pushing open the heavy oak door, he is met with an empty common room. A fire is roaring in the fireplace, the only defense against the bitter chill that plagues the Ministry at this time of year.

He walks to the center of the room, making his way around the giant couch. Once he does, he spots you.

You're fast asleep, tangled up in a thin green blanket within the soft confines of the couch. You're curled up slightly, chest rising and falling with steady rhythms. He spots your phone, clutched tightly in hand, a pair of earbuds connected and in your ears.

With a sigh, he steps closer to your figure. He carefully removes the earbuds and phone from your grasp, turning it on to pause whatever you had drifted off listening to. He smiles, chuckling to himself when he sees.

You had fallen asleep to Opus Eponymous.

His album.

He leans down to your height. Brushing the hair out of your face, he decides to rouse you.

You stir, a deep whine escaping your lips as you crack your eyelids open. "...Primo?"

"Ah, good evening," he greets, "are you ready for bed, dolce?"

"What?" Your voice is rough with sleep, confusion on your face.

He chuckles. "Let's get you to bed." He reaches out to pull the blanket off of you; you whine, burying your face in your arms. "Come on now, don't be difficult. Bedtime, let's go." You don't move, breaths steadying once more. He sighs, using his hands to shake you gently. "Bambino, wake up. Bedtime."

Finally, you awaken. You open your eyes fully, brows knitting together in confusion as you use your arms to lift yourself slightly. You suck in a deep breath, unable to form words quite yet.

"Hello sleeping beauty," he teases, "are you ready for bed?"

You rub your eyes, pushing yourself to sit up on the couch. The remaining part of the blanket falls from your form, ending into a pile around you. You sleepily nod.

He helps you stand, smiling at the way you press yourself against his side for warmth. He picks up the blanket and wraps it around your shoulders, then returns your cell phone.

"My dear, I saw what you were listening to. How on Earth did you fall asleep to my album? It is not, eh... very soothing."

"Missed you," you mumble, still too drowsy to think.

"'Missed me?' I am right here."

"Busy."

"Ah, well. Would you miss me a little less if I took you to bed?"

"Mhm."

"Very well. But first we must meet with my brothers. They are very worried about you."

"Huh? Why?"

"It is Uno night. Have you forgotten?"

"Aw... I wanna play Uno..."

"Nope. Bedtime."

"Please?"

"No."

"Can I at least watch for a bit?"

He sighs. "Fine. You may watch one round, but then it is off to bed."

. . .

The others cheered when you entered the room.

"Child, we thought you no longer loved us," Terzo yells dramatically.

"Where were you?" Questions Secondo.

"You, eh... look drowsy," Copia chimes in.

"Napping in the den," Primo says, taking a seat at the table. "They wanted to say hi before going to bed. Isn't that right, y/n?"

You nod. "I wanna watch for a bit though." You sit on the couch a few feet away from the table.

"Just watching?" Terzo whines. "Come on, the games are always more interesting when you join!"

Primo shoots him a glare. "No. They're going to bed after this round. Now who's shuffling the cards?"

You quickly lose focus once the game starts. They're oddly quiet; there's no yelling, no throwing of cards. Instead they talk quietly, calmly explaining their complete and utter rage when being handed a thrice-stacked draw four card. You're still sleepy, so you decide to lie down on the couch for a moment. Only for a moment; after all, the game would be ending soon, and Primo would be putting you to bed.

You curl up, using one of the couch pillows to rest your head on. You toss the blanket over your legs, watching the brothers play with half-lidded eyes. Over time, those eyes begin to close; before long, you're fast asleep.

. . .

Primo sighs. "I knew I should have taken them to bed."

"What?"

"Look."

The four men pause as your sleeping form is noticed.

"Poor thing," Copia mutters, "they must've had a rough day."

"They fell asleep to my album," gloats Primo. "They said they missed me."

"That is such bullshit. They probably had a playlist going and that's the song they were listening to," Terzo tells him.

"I went into their music library to pause the music. They were listening to my album."

The arguing is interrupted when a yawn is heard from your direction. "Whadya talkin' about?" You ask, words slurring from sleep. Your eyes open, and you sit up slightly.

"Don't worry baby, just go back to sleep," Copia says. "We're sorry to wake you."

"Wasn't sleeping," you rub your eyes, "Jus' bored."

"Alright," Primo stands. "That's enough. I should have tucked you in long ago. Come on, time for bed dolcezza."

You whine. "What about the game? Aren't you gonna finish?"

"We already did, long ago," Secondo chuckles. "You've been asleep this whole time."

"Was not."

"Were too."

"Alright, enough. Come on, kiddo. Bedtime." Primo hovers over you now, and helps you to your feet. You're wobbly, still sleepy, and press against him. He smiles, wrapping an arm around your shoulder. "Ah, don't forget your blanket." He picks it up and hands it to you. "Okay, sleepy-time. Come on."

A chorus of "good night, sleep well!" can be heard from throughout the room. Unable to form a coherent thought, all you can think of to respond with is a soft-spoken "Night night." The room goes silent.

You hear Terzo giggle, followed by a loud smack, then; "ooow! What the Hell was that for?!"

Copia stands to bid you goodnight. "Pleasant dreams," he whispers, pressing a kiss to your head. "I would tell you to sleep well, but it already seems that you will." He winks at you. "Good night."

Primo acts as your support as the two of you walk down the hallway. When you yawn for the millionth time, he asks, "Kiddo, did you take something to make you this tired?"

You nod. "I had hives again, so I took three benedryl."

"Ah, now it makes sense."

. . .

"Comfy?" He asks, smirking at the way you're pressed up against him. You're curled up in his bed, half asleep with your head pressed into the crook of his arm. You've only been here a moment, but the drowsiness has already taken over.

"Mhm," you mumble, nuzzling further into him. A few moments later, you're asleep yet again.

"Sorry for keeping you up, kiddo. I would have put you to bed a lot earlier if I'd known." Your only response is light snoring. "Poor thing." He hadn't even been able to keep you awake long enough to make a trip to your bedroom for pajamas; he was thankful you'd dressed yourself in a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie that day. At least you weren't sleeping in jeans.

It hadn't taken him long to coax you onto the bed. You'd laid down first without him, waiting as he got dressed. When he'd returned a moment later, you were already on the verge of sleep, clutching his pillow and laying atop the covers.

Now he's got you cozied up to him, watching as your chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm. He leans over to press a gentle kiss to your forehead. "Night night, little one."

okay but the symbolism behind removing his face paints i'm so normal about this i—

Camellia: Copia x f!reader - Chapter 5

Camellia: n. - A flower which symbolizes a deep desire or longing.

Summary: When it rains, it pours, but the drops wash away the uncertainty swimming in your mind.

Word count: 4.4k

A/N: Thank you all for your patience!! I usually try to keep updates going every 10 days or so, but this one's a little late, so I apologize. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!! <3 If you want to be added to the taglist, let me know!!

Warnings: possible descriptions of anxiety, you and Copia being idiots, mutual pining.

AO3 / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4

You hadn’t known it was supposed to rain this morning. But now that you tilt your face up towards the gray-blanketed sky, you remember that it had been rather dark when you and Copia stepped out of the kitchens. The breeze around you feels sharp and the birds have gone quiet since you emerged from the flower labyrinth. The leaves—small and sparse after having just budded for spring—turn over to reveal their pale undersides. A sure sign of a rainstorm. 

As you hold your finger in front of your face to observe the rain drop that had landed on your nose, another falls on the top of your head. Beside you, Copia also lifts his head to look at the sky. He squints and flinches a bit when a drop lands in the middle of his forehead. “Ah, cazzo,” he mumbles, and uses his free hand to swipe it off. The raindrops are fat and heavy, and they scatter the tiny stones of the gravel path under your shoes when they fall. 

Another drop lands on your shoulder. “Should we go inside?” you ask. Immediately you realize that it is a stupid question. Of course you should go inside, crétin. It’s about to rain and you have no idea how long you’ve been outside for. 

That nagging thought tugs at the back of your awareness. The thought that you shouldn’t be taking up so much of Copia’s—Papa’s—time. He’s a busy man, and he probably doesn’t have time to walk the entire garden path during working hours. 

But… he had offered. And if you could, you’d walk the entire loop just to spend more time talking with him. 

“Yes… that is probably a good idea,” Copia answers with a small smile. 

He doesn’t want to go inside. He wants to keep holding your hand, keep walking on the secluded garden path until the sun goes down and it grows too cold to stay outside. And even then, he wants to take you back to his office, light a fire, and share a kettle of tea with you and talk some more. Maybe kiss you once or twice, if you’d be willing. Satan knows he would be. 

But you can’t spend what could very well be your last full day at the Abbey just killing time. He knows he should take you back and walk with you to the library. Copia knows he should encourage you to keep trying with Elizabeth’s diary until Sister Imperator is literally pushing you out the door, but he wants more time. He needs more time with you. This can’t be over yet, it can’t. It hasn’t even started, this thing that exists between you. 

The trees begin to shift a little more, a soft whooshing sound blowing with the breeze as the leaves and coniferous needles brush together. 

You blink once, twice, and then it’s pouring. 

“Diable ci-dessous!” you curse, swiping your free hand over your face as if that would help keep the water out of your eyes. The rain very quickly soaks through your habit and the wind bites at your skin. 

Copia squeezes your hand. “Sorella, come, come!” He tugs you into a run along the path. The gravel crunches and moves under your feet, making you both stumble every few steps. Your hands clutch together like a lifeline. 

Through the sound of the ever-growing rainstorm, you can hear the shouts of Siblings working in the garden who had also been caught in the weather. You can’t discern any words. The wind and the rain and the sound of your soaked shoes drowns out anything else, except for the bright laughter bubbling up from the man beside you. 

The rain falls in sheets, and you find yourself laughing with Copia. It’s ridiculous, this situation you’ve found yourself in. Like the sky had heard you speak to each other about your less-than-ideal childhoods, and decided to provide you with the clouds over your heads in a more literal sense. 

It takes you a moment to realize that Copia isn’t leading you back up the path towards the Abbey. You’re still running on the gravel past the greenhouses, which are teeming with Siblings hiding from the storm. Looking up through rain-soaked lashes you see the approaching silhouette of the tiny, sort-of-abandoned chapel in the far corner of the Abbey grounds. You can’t make out any details through the rain except for the small spire with its inverted cross. 

Your heart jumps at the thought of being cooped up in the small space with Copia until the rain subsides.

“Here!” Copia calls. He surges forward to the door of the chapel and almost loses your hand in the process. It takes him two tries before he can shoulder the door open, and then he’s practically dragging you over the threshold. His leather gloves are soaked and slippery, but his grip on you tightens until you’re both inside and safe from the rain. He closes the door behind you and it slams against the threshold with a creak and a loud rap of the ancient brass knocker. 

Then, you’re alone. It’s quiet inside the chapel, save for the storm pelting against the old, warped panels of stained glass along the side walls and the frantic beating of your heart in your ears. 

You wonder why a chapel has a knocker. 

You also wonder why such a pretty, quaint little chapel isn’t used anymore. The inside is lined with dark wood pews on either side of a carpeted aisle. The door is made of the same wood, as is the modest pulpit stationed at the front of the room. It stands on a raised platform, and behind it is another, higher platform with what looks to be a long table sheathed in a black cloth which reaches down to the floor. On either side of the pulpit are elaborate iron candelabras empty of any candles. 

The windows on either side of the chapel aren’t elaborate like that of the main Abbey. They each depict a single inverted cross of clear glass, with red stained glass filling the negative space of the arched windows. The walls are thick and built of stone, and each window lines up with a pew. Several books, which you infer are unholy prayer or hymn books, are perched on each windowsill, and you’re very suddenly reminded of Marseille. The stone walls, the tall, narrow windows, the old wood, the books on the sill. 

For a moment, you’re home and you’re very near to tears. 

“Cara,” Copia says softly from behind you. In your reverie you’d turned around to take in every little detail and your back is now facing him. His hand still holds yours, although you’re sure the soggy leather must be making your (and his) fingertips prune. 

Copia had watched you, watched your eyes flit around the chapel as you turned on the spot. He remembers what you told him about your home and realizes that this little building must remind you of it. He had watched your face alight in unrealized comfort and he had watched as your eyes grew glassy when you made the connection. He calls out to you. Cara, he says, and he means it. You are dear to him and it surprises him just how quickly you’d managed to become that way. 

You turn back to him, trying very hard not to let the tears building in the corners of your eyes slip down your already-wet cheeks. But then you see his face. Oh, your poor Papa, his face. 

One might think, for a Ministry with worldwide influence and many, many resources, they might be able to afford waterproof, smudge-proof paints for their esteemed leader, but they hadn’t. 

“Oh, no,” you giggle. It bubbles up in your chest and escapes your lips without your intent. And then your giggle turns into a rather unattractive snort and a full laugh, because your poor Papa looks like Hell. His paints are running down his face and dripping onto his leather vest. The black rings around his eyes have been tracked down his cheeks so that he looks like an overdramatic actress with terrible mascara. The pigment on his lips and beside his mouth have smudged so badly with the rain that he looks as if he’d drank a gallon of black paint. The white paint has almost completely run off, except for where it settles in the creases beside his mouth and between his brows. 

All together, he looks like a rather soggy zebra. 

Copia pouts at you. “What?”

You wish you had a mirror to show him. Part of you feels horrible for laughing at Papa, but you know that the man behind the paint will also find it rather funny. Slightly embarrassing at worst. “Your–” you try to stifle your giggles. “Your paints, they’re…” 

Copia’s eyes widen in realization. “They’re… not waterproof, no,” he says flatly. “Satana, devo sembrare uno stupido.”

He peels his sodden gloves off his hands and stuffs them in the front pocket of his pants. He swipes a finger under his eye and brings it back to find that his fingertip is gray and patchy. 

“No, you don’t look like an idiot,” you try to soothe him, although you’re still slightly laughing. “You simply… look like a man who was caught in a rainstorm with a full face of paints.” “Sì, so, like an idiot.” 

Copia begins trying to wipe his face with his sleeve. It does nothing to actually remove the paint, instead just smudging around his damp skin. Though, you’re beginning to see that his cheeks burn a pretty red through the streaks of whitish-gray paint, and his ears are nearly completely red. You guess that his face might feel just as hot as your own. 

He huffs in frustration, flicking his wet sleeve and causing water droplets to smack against the stone floor. “Dannazione,” he mutters to himself. “Shitty paints making me look like a…”

You remove your veil and bandeau—which are nearly plastered to your head from the torrential downpour—and wring them out. “Sit,” you command gently. Gesturing to one of the pews nearby, you fold your veil into a neat square. 

When Copia continues mumbling to himself and fruitlessly wiping his face, you reach out and tug his sleeve away. “Copia,” you say again, “Asseyez-vous.”

Copia reluctantly obeys. He knows his face is completely red now, for multiple reasons. It’s cold, for one—the rain had felt like tiny daggers of ice even through his shirt, and now that the two of you are in a drafty little chapel with soaked clothes, the air feels even colder. He’d also made a complete and total ass of himself, thanks to the rain. He’d spent so long this morning leaning against his mirror, going over and over the black paints to make sure each line was crisp and clean and perfect in the off-chance he might see you today. It had made him late arriving at his office, but it had led him to bump into you just minutes after his paints had dried, which is when they look their best, in his opinion. 

But the primary reason his face is practically glowing is because you’d commanded him in French. The language sounds sinful on your tongue. And spoken in that gentle but insistent tone… oh, he could come apart from just your words. You could string him along forever if you only speak like that. 

He sits on the edge of a pew with a sigh. Copia knows he’s being ridiculous—it’s only paint—but he’d spent an embarrassingly long time on it in the hopes it might impress you, and here he is, looking like an idiot. 

You approach him. You’re taller than him like this, so he has to tilt his face up to meet your eyes. Before you can overthink, before you can begin to question yourself, you gently reach out to place a finger under his chin and lift his head up a bit more. “Let me,” you say, almost a whisper. Your finger remains on his chin, keeping his head in place as you place your damp veil against his brow and begin to wipe. 

Surprisingly, the fabric of your veil is much more effective than his shirt, and the paint comes off easily. “Oh,” you say, lifting your brows in mild surprise. “It’s working.” 

You notice that Copia’s eyes slid closed at some point. “It feels nice,” he tells you softly. 

“It’s French,” you say with a little huff of laughter, which Copia echoes. 

Yes, he had meant that the fabric of your veil feels nice against his skin. But mostly he had meant that your finger gently tipping his head back feels like so much, all at once, and he doesn’t have words for any of it. It feels like it belongs there. He wants to touch you back, but where? And would you be okay with it, his hands on your hips or your waist or the backs of your thighs? 

So, he settles for shutting his eyes and clenching his hands on his knees to resist pulling you closer. You’re standing between his knees, which are spread wide enough to accommodate you without touching the sides of your legs.

He wants something. Something innocent, not presumptuous, because he really doesn’t know how you feel about him at all. He lets his legs fall closed a bit more, until the bends of his knees just barely brush against your legs. His pants and your habit are absolutely soaked but he can feel the warmth of your skin through the fabric, and oh, he’d never guess that leg-to-leg contact could feel so intimate. 

Copia opens his eyes when you gently drag your finger over his hairline to brush back the hair stuck to his forehead. You’re so focused on your task, as you always are. Your hands are cold and gentle as you wipe away his ruined paints. He wants to take your hands and kiss every finger until they’re warm again. 

Slowly, carefully, you uncover new expanses of Copia’s face with each pass of your veil. You press a little firmer into the lines along his forehead and between his brows to completely clear his skin. His eyes are closed again, and you’re partially grateful because if he had looked at you like that any longer, you might have leaned down and kissed him. His freckled cheeks or his strong nose or his lips, you don’t know. 

Somewhere between wiping the paint from his mustache and chuffing your veil under his chin, you begin to shake. 

“Tesoro.”

“Hm?”

“You are cold,” Copia says, his voice barely above a whisper. You can feel his warm breath on your fingers as you drag your paint-ruined veil over a spot of white you’d missed. 

“I’m alright,” you say. It’s partially true. Yes, you’re cold, but you don’t want to think about it or else you’ll really be cold and there’s nothing here to warm you up. Realistically you know it’s your habit; it’s soaked through and so are your socks and shoes. But it’s also the realization coursing through you that you have feelings for this man. 

Lucifer, they had developed quickly. It had been so easy for him to push past the barriers you’d set up around your heart and mind. He’d just walked right in, lit a cozy fire within your soul and asked you to call him Copia. And you let him. He’s carving a place in your life that you’d gladly have him occupy, and it scares you. 

He makes you forget why you try not to get attached. He looks at you and you forget the pain of leaving everything behind when you were eleven, which you are deathly afraid of having to do again. 

You’re brought out of your thoughts when Copia’s ungloved hand gently takes yours. You cringe at how clammy your hands must be compared to his warm ones, but you don’t pull away. “Sathanas, tesoro, your hands are like ice,” he says. His other hand comes atop yours to sandwich it between his own. 

You feel like you need to run. Your heart kicks against your sternum as your eyes meet his own. 

Copia’s face is bare now. His freckles stretch across his cheeks and over the bridge of his nose, with a few scattered on his forehead and chin. You want to rip your hand out from between his own and tumble out the door into the rain. You want to bring him closer and trace little patterns into his freckles. Satan, you don’t know what you want. 

You want to protect yourself from hurting again. 

Copia, on the other hand, knows exactly what he wants. But he can practically see your mind working, churning back and forth between whatever turmoil is going on inside your head. As he sits in front of you, he can see the exact moment when you begin to panic. He can feel your hand begin to shake in his. He knows you’re not blind, or ignorant. He knows that you both know there is something happening, that it has been happening since you met, that it’s big. And he knows you’re scared of it, what it could become, what it could mean. Darling, he knows.

So, he stays silent. If he says anything or does anything, you’ll flee. This thing between the two of you is delicate, so delicate and new and foreign that any sudden movement will shatter the careful balance you hold in the little chapel. Anything but silence will cave the roof in and drench you all over again. Copia stays silent and holds your hand through your own tempest, and lets your eyes explore his face in search of answers he hopes you’ll find.

“I don’t want to go,” you whisper after another moment. “I want to stay and figure it out.” 

Copia doesn’t know if you’re talking about Elizabeth’s diary, or this thing between you and him, or both. Honestly, neither do you. 

He squeezes your hand tenderly. “Let’s get you back to the Abbey then, eh?” 

“It’s—” your eyes dart to a window, “it’s still pouring, Copia.” Copia simply smiles at you, leaning in as if to tell you a secret. “What’s a little rain going to do, cara? Ruin my paints?” 

~~~

By the time you make it back up the hill, to your dorm, to the shower, and into dry clothes, the lunch hour is long gone. You hadn’t realized how long you’d spent with Copia that morning. It had been just past nine when you left Sister Imperator’s office, and now it is well past two in the afternoon. Somehow it felt like only minutes had passed in the cozy little chapel, and in that chapel you made the terrifying realization that no matter how long you spend with him, it will never be enough. 

You can’t think about that right now. 

Right now, you need to get to the restricted room. You’re halfway out the door of your temporary dormitory, slipping on your only spare pair of shoes as you desperately hold onto the idea you had when you and Copia were about halfway up the hill. 

With your shoes already soaked through, you and Copia had struggled to find traction on the sodden grass. With each step you found yourself slipping backwards, hands flying through the air until you regained your balance, or until Copia firmly grasped it in his own and didn’t let go. The two of you trekked your way up the hill, slipping and sliding and giggling at the absurdity of it all. Your hand would find his own whenever it would slip from his grasp, like they were magnetized. It felt natural, seeking his hand. Even if it was only for balance. 

As you slowly made your way up the hill, soaked and shivering, one thought prevailed in your mind. You only have today, you kept thinking. If you don’t figure out the diary, you’ll only have today. 

It was true of two situations. You have one word of the diary—Today—and you have only today if you can’t decipher the rest. 

You took a step forward, and slid back slightly. Copia’s hand steadied you. 

Only today. Elizabeth. Today. Copia. Today. 

Today. 

You’d stopped completely, just standing in the near-freezing rain. Copia had looked back at you like you were insane (which you might be), and tugged on your hand again. “What is it?” He’d shouted over the rain. 

You’d begun to climb the hill with a renewed vigor. “Today!” 

Copia had no idea what you’d meant by today, but he couldn’t question it when you were pulling him up the hill. It was like you’d suddenly found your footing in the wet grass, and he was glad of it. His shoes were completely drenched and he was shivering nearly as violently as you were. He didn’t need to understand what you were talking about right now. All that mattered was getting you (and himself) out of the cold. He can ask you later. 

Later, he’d thought. Would there be a later?

Yes, there would. As he watched you climb the hill towards the kitchen door, still clinging to his hand and helping him up, he’d decided there would be a later. Sister Imperator may control every other aspect of the Abbey and his life, but not this one. Not you. 

The Siblings working in the kitchen had looked at the two of you like you were crazy when you burst through the door, sopping wet and dripping onto the tile. Perhaps it was a mix of confusion and surprise—you’d wager that none of them had seen Copia without his paints before. You feel immensely privileged that you’d been the first, that you’d been the one to take them off. You’d been the one to strip away Papa. 

“Eh,” Copia had said, looking back and forth between you and the Brother who had smiled at you earlier, “We— I— sorry. We’ll be going, yes—”

He’d grabbed your hand again and pulled you through the kitchens the way you came that morning. Once you both had stepped out into the refectory, which was thankfully empty at this time of day, Copia stopped again. The sounds of his ruffled shirt and your habit dripping on the floor echoed in the large room. “Be honest with me, cara. How bad is it?” 

You’d struggled to hold in a laugh. “It’s… not as bad as you think,” you’d told him. In truth, it wasn’t. But you realized then that you’d missed a spot of paint in his hairline, which now trailed down his forehead in a distinct white line. Without thinking twice, you reached up to swipe it away with your thumb. “I can’t imagine I look any better.” 

Copia huffed a laugh through his nose. “We… should probably go get cleaned up,” he’d said. “I wouldn’t want you to catch a cold.” 

“You either, Papa,” you said, and Copia had mourned the loss of his name on your lips. He understands—within the walls of the Abbey, he is Papa and you are Sorella. But perhaps he could make an exception for you. 

You and Copia had parted ways then, to wash up and resume your duties. All the way back to your dorm and through the time it took to shower and change, you’d recited the word today in your head like a prayer. Even now, as you quickly walk through the corridors on the path you've taken every day for the past week, you repeat today, today, today as if you would lose the thought if you didn’t.

If Elizabeth is the key to the first word, perhaps today is the key to the second. Two steps forward, one step back. The hill in the rain. You must look back before you can forge ahead.

With practiced ease, you open the diary’s lockbox and place it onto your usual desk. Having donned the pristine white gloves again, you unfold the linen and the gold embossment on the cover catches your eye. You smile. Soon, you promise to Elizabeth, you will live again in these pages.

The familiar string of letters greets you as you open to the first page of writing. You write the sequence again on a blank sheet in your notebook, the letters flowing from your pen with ease after having written them hundreds of times already. 

LzlhelzhkxbgwfqmnJkcfolBfbalBoiovtsheq.

You already know that the first five letters translate to today, so you cross them out. Underneath the next letters, you write hodie again and again, as you’d done with the word Elizabeth the first time. Your hands are shaking. Please, please, please…

You trace your finger over the letter grid, quickly mapping each letter of the cipher to its partner in the key. L of the cipher and the H of the key map to an E on the grid. You jot down a messy E. Z of the cipher, o of the key, l on the grid. And so on, until you’re confident you’ve found the next word when the deciphered letters stop making sense. 

The second word in the line reads electus. Chosen. 

Without translating the whole sentence, hodie electus could mean a number of things. Word order does not matter in Latin—hodie could be the subject of the sentence, or the object, or an arbitrary time frame. 

Your heart is beating hard in your ears. You continue, using electus as the new cipher key. 

The next word is sum. The Latin word for self, or I. 

Hodie electus sum. Today I was chosen. 

Sweet Satan, you think. Your breath comes shallow and quick. Holy Hell, I’ve figured it out.

You continue, your hands flying back and forth between the corresponding letters of each new key and the grid, double and triple checking to make sure you map the correct letters. Your head feels light, your chest heavy. Like if you dared to look away from the diary or your notebook or the grid, you’d find that you were wrong. You must translate this first sentence before it shifts and your idea doesn’t fit anymore. 

It’s easy to find where the first sentence ends, because it is isolated in its own paragraph in the diary. That also tells you that it’s an important statement; important enough to be separate from the rest of the text, which is a continuous flow of letters down the page. 

The final word of the cipher confirms your suspicions that Elizabeth wanted to keep her diary a secret for a long time. The final word deciphers as Papae, the Latin possessive form of Papa. 

Hodie electus sum ut Primus Motor Papae.

Today I was chosen to be Papa’s Prime Mover.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tag list: @bonelessghoul @gbatesx @the-did-i-ask @leah-halliwell92 @archive-obsess @rosacrose @nikkyatyourservice @sodoswitchimage @portaltothevoid @lightbluuestars @thesoundresoundsecho @stephnthangss @enchantedbunny @jackson5611-blog @copiasprincipessa @kadedoesthings @justheretoreadleavemealone

Camellia: Popia x f!reader - Chapter 2

Camellia: n. - A flower which symbolizes a deep desire or longing.

Summary: You start work on Elizabeth's diary, and finally get a good look at Papa.

Word count: 5.5k

A/N: Hey hello, I hope you enjoy this chapter! It's a bit of a monster, but worth it, I promise!

Warnings: Mentions of reader having religious trauma

AO3 Link / Chapter 1

~~~

You’ve been hunched over this damned diary all day. 

Sister Imperator was right. None of the Abbey’s translators or archivists would have been able to read Elizabeth’s writing because she had written in a cipher. With no spaces between words and with no obvious keyword to decipher her entries, the first page of her diary looks like nonsense. Just absolute gibberish. 

But to you, it isn’t. 

With each passing hour you spend at a small table in the restricted room, you admire Elizabeth more and more. She was smart as a whip and even more clever. You figure that, if she wanted her diary to be kept secret, she could have simply destroyed it. Burnt it, ripped it, buried it, dipped the whole thing in black ink—anything surely would have been easier than creating a cipher which has no discernable pattern. 

She didn’t destroy it, though. She wrote on each page, front and back until the entire book was filled, and then she hid it. If something is truly never meant to be found, it won’t be. Which leads you to believe Elizabeth’s diary isn’t a diary at all. It’s a record. 

A record of what, you have yet to be sure. It is secret enough for Elizabeth to want it to be discovered someday, but only after she is long gone. That intrigues you enough to sit hour after hour over this book, trying every word you can think of that might be the key to the cipher. So far you have crossed off ‘Satan’, ‘Lucifer’, ‘Beelzebub’, and other aliases of the Dark One. You hadn’t expected those to work, because Elizabeth seems smarter than that, but you had to try just to rule them out. You also tried words like ‘chapel’, ‘altar’, and other imagery of the Satanic Ministry, with no luck. You thought perhaps the first five letters of the entry were the key to the second five, or vice versa. You tried again with the first six letters, the first two, three, four. Nothing. 

The only words you have been able to read are the dates of each entry, the month and the day, which she wrote in the top-left corner in plain English. Those were not much of an accomplishment to decipher.

You sigh and sit up straight for a moment. Your back is sore after hours of slouching and writing. The once-crisp notebook under your pen is nearly half full of incorrect keywords and mistranslations. The small window on the far wall of the restricted room has grown dark and no sounds echo to you from the hollow of the atrium. 

You’d gotten up to find something to eat (and to uncross your eyes) during the dinner hour. Tonight you opted for a hot meal but decided not to stay in the refectory. You don’t know if food is even allowed in the library but all the Siblings who work there were at dinner, so you snuck it in anyways. You aren’t careless, though, so you ate your dinner at a different table, far away from the one where Elizabeth’s diary and your notebook sit open. That had been a few hours ago. 

As far as you can tell from the small window in the door, the lights in the library have been dimmed for the night. No one came and fetched you to tell you that it was closing, so you assume it stays open at all hours. Your own desk lamp is the only source of light in the restricted room. 

You rise from your workstation and move towards the closed door. Such an enclosed room tends to get stuffy and humid, and it’s still too chilly outside to open a window. You gently prop open the door to let in the relatively fresh air of the library. No one said you couldn’t keep the door open when you’re inside the room, only that the door must be locked when you aren’t. 

Returning to your desk, you can already feel the cooler air drifting through the bookshelves. You’re content to work for a few more hours like this. It feels wrong to give up for the night when you have nothing to show yet. It feels wrong to stop working when you have something to prove, and somewhere to return. 

The night here is eerily silent. At home in Marseille, if you open your dormitory window and sit on the end of your bed to look out over the water, you can hear the soft lapping of water against the marina docks. If the wind carries just right, you can also hear the creaking of masts and cables as the sailboats list back and forth in the water. Sometimes the gulls stay out at night during the summer months, calling for one another from their perches on a bow pulpit. The breeze carries the saltiness of the water and the sweetness of the hillside wildflowers into your dormitory, illuminated only by a small desk lamp and the moon—

A sound from outside the room breaks you from your reverie. Your consciousness whips back to the present, to the Abbey. The ghostly scent of salt and flowers fades, replaced by old leather and dust and ink from your pen. 

You raise your eyes to look through the open door when you hear another sound. There’s no one visible to you—whoever they are must be between shelves, looking for a late-night romance novel to put them to sleep. 

You haven’t figured out why the romance section is so tucked away yet. Though, perhaps if erotica is shelved nearby, the librarians would want any wandering hands to stay hidden. Not that lust is shameful here—it’s the Satanic Ministry, it’s actually encouraged—but the library is not the place to get hot and heavy. 

Knowing that someone is nearby distracts you terribly, and you decide to stop for the night. The little analog clock hanging next to the door reads past midnight. At this hour, you likely won’t get much done anyway. You need sleep and a proper breakfast to let your mind work. 

You take the time to gently wrap Elizabeth’s diary in the white linen and return it to its lockbox. The rest of your things don’t take long to gather, having only brought the one notebook and a few pens, plus your empty dinner box. You close the door behind you as you exit, fishing through your habit pocket to find the key. It and the key to your dormitory are affixed to a single keyring which jingles as you fumble with it one-handed, but you lock the door successfully and turn to make your way to the staircase. 

Rather, you try to make your way. 

As soon as you turn around, a figure emerges from the bookshelves. You promptly run into him, which sends your materials to the floor and your mind reeling with apologies. “Oh, je suis vraiment désolé—Er, I’m so sorry!” you bluster, holding your now-empty hands out to plead for forgiveness. You kneel to gather your things into a messy pile, then stand and finally meet the eyes of the poor soul you’d accosted with your body. “I should have been more careful, but it’s late so I thought…” 

They’re the same eyes you’d met yesterday, in the refectory. Still striking, still surrounded by black, but up-close and more relaxed. And no white paint. Just the black upper lip and the black eyes of Papa Emeritus the Fourth. 

“It’s, eh, it’s quite alright, Sister,” Papa says with an awkward little laugh. You notice he’s not wearing his robes or his mitre. In fact he’s not wearing anything that might remotely indicate that he’s the Antipope. He wears a simple black t-shirt and red sweatpants, and gray fuzzy slippers that have the eyes and whiskers and pink nose of a rat which you thought looked cute when you’d knelt down. 

But he’s still Papa, and you still barreled into him like a brute. 

You try to smile but it feels more like a grimace. “Still, I shouldn’t have just…” you gesture with your free arm. “I’m sorry. Are you alright?” 

Papa pats his chest like he’s searching for injuries. You hit him hard, but not that hard, and it makes you laugh softly. “I’m fine. Quite good. Still in one piece,” he says. “Are you? And why are you here so late?”

You blush. “Oh, does the library close at night? I’m sorry, no one came and told me, I just assumed…” 

“No, no,” Papa reassures you, waving a hand in front of himself. “No, it doesn’t close. But it’s usually empty at this time of night, you see.” 

You nod in understanding. “It is pretty late.” 

“It is,” Papa echoes. “So… pardon my asking, Sorella, but why are you still awake?”

“I was, um,” you try to explain, looking down at the messy pile of translation work cradled in the crook of your elbow. “I was working on Elizabeth’s diary, but it may take longer than I expected.”

Papa’s face seems to light up at your mention of your work. “Oh! Forgive me, yes, I should have known,” he rushes out. “You are the, eh, visitor? From Marseille?”

You nod and give him your name. He repeats it softly to himself, as if to remember it. You doubt he will, but you won’t hold it against him—there are many, many Siblings at the Abbey and many names to remember. So if he manages to distinguish you from the rest of the crowd, you will be pleasantly surprised. Not to say you don’t have faith that he could, but… well. You’re running yourself in circles. 

He narrows his eyes slightly, but pauses for a moment. “I saw you yesterday, at dinner,” he tells you. 

So much for not remembering a face in the crowd. You mentally kick yourself. 

“Ah, yes,” you chuckle nervously. “I’m not the biggest crowd person.” Papa chuckles. “Yes, I noticed. To be honest, neither am I.” 

That’s hard to believe, coming from him. To be Papa is to be a figurehead, a symbol of unwavering faith and devotion to the Olde One which the entire Satanic Ministry worships. One must be a bit of a crowd pleaser in order to be successful in his position. “It doesn’t seem that way, Papa,” you tell him. “You command a room very well, from what I’ve heard.” 

A smug little grin grows on Papa’s lips, and it suits him. Smiling suits him. “So word of my immense charisma has traveled all the way to Marseille, yes?” he asks, mostly teasing. But a small lilt in his voice betrays that he really does wonder. What does this foreign Sister think of him based on word of mouth alone? And does his person size up to his reputation? 

You laugh. “It has,” you say. “Forgive me if I have a hard time believing you are uncomfortable in a crowd.” 

Papa tuts his tongue, his grin growing into a fond smile. “You should have seen my brother.” There’s a small sparkle of reminiscence in his eye as he says this, and you wonder which of the three other Papas he speaks of. You’ve heard different stories about all of them. 

His eyes drop to the papers and notebook in your arm, then back up to your face. “But, eh, you are settling in well, Sorella?” he asks. 

You can tell he wants to change the subject, so you let him. “Yes, Papa, thank you,” you smile. 

“That’s not very convincing.” 

You release an airy laugh and drop your head. He can see right through you. “It’s very different here,” you say. “Marseille is… small. Cozy. Secluded. Not to say that I don’t like it here, because it really is very nice—”

“It’s crowded,” Papa cuts you off. It’s soft, and not intended to be rude, but to agree with you. “And big. I understand.”

Your shoulders drop, but you hadn’t realized they were raised in the first place. “It’s not home,” you find yourself admitting. 

He nods. “And so you work late into the night because you do not want to sleep in an unfamiliar bed.” 

You stare at him for another beat. He seems to know what you’re feeling even before you do, because yes, your bed here isn’t the same as the one back home, and suddenly you’re very close to crying. Don’t cry, don't cry, don't cry…

“May I tell you something, in confidence?” Papa asks. His voice is low and gentle. It soothes you. His eyes search your own, flicking back and forth between them, and you begin to understand how this slightly awkward man in rat slippers is able to enrapture an entire chapel of people. 

You nod. 

“I miss being a Cardinal,” he tells you. “Truly, I do. Becoming Papa has been the only goal I can ever remember having, ever since I was old enough to care. But as soon as I ascended I…” He pauses. His mouth opens and closes, like he’s trying to decide whether or not he should finish his thought. 

He sighs. “What I mean to say is, There is no shame in missing where you used to be.”

You hold his gaze for another long moment, wondering what it is he was going to say. His words linger in the silence between you and you let them. As soon as he became Papa he… what? 

“Thank you, Papa,” you say quietly. The moment feels almost intimate, like he’d confided his biggest secret to you. But for all you know, he tells every Sibling he comes across the same thing. It’s his duty to counsel everyone under his roof, visitors included. 

No, you chastise yourself. Papa doesn’t seem like the kind of man to have practiced lines for serendipitous meetings… but you are still learning not to assume the worst of people. You had been far too young when you learned not to trust anyone, even those deserving of it. But Papa… he seems genuine, and it’s all you can do (for yourself and for him) to believe that he is. 

You realize that this is the natural end of your conversation. That now is when you should say goodnight, nice to meet you, see you around, but you don’t want to. You can’t tell if it’s because you’ve been on your own all day, or because it’s late and you’re tired, or because the air around him seems to grow warmer and more… comfortable. Papa radiates an aura of peace that you haven’t felt since you received Sister Imperator’s letter nearly a week ago.

“If I may ask, Papa,” you start, just as the silence begins to grow awkward, “what are you doing awake at this hour?”

Papa’s eyes turn down, and a small smile graces his lips. “Ah, I was just looking for something to read,” he says, and you nearly laugh at yourself for asking such an obvious question. Of course he’s looking for something to read. The two of you are standing deep in the bowels of the library. 

Oh, who are you kidding? Papa likely came here to find a book in peace, not speak to some foreign Sister. Who are you to keep his attention? 

“I see,” you say, in your practiced voice. “Well. Good luck, and I hope you find something, Papa.” 

Before you can blurt out any more feelings to him, you turn and walk briskly towards the winding staircase that leads you to the first floor. 

~~~

Copia watches you retreat, slightly confused and halfway ready to call your name to make you stay. Something had changed in your demeanor just before you left, and he wants to ask if you’re alright, or if he said something wrong and caused you to close yourself off like that. Was it his little comment about missing the past? No, no, it couldn’t be—your eyes had been wide and searching, but you weren’t offended. Your brow had furrowed but not out of disgust. 

He’s not as clueless as most people think he is. Just because he has a hard time finding the right words to say what he’s thinking doesn’t mean he’s stupid. In fact, Copia prides himself on his ability to read people. His ability to speak as eloquently as he does in his head… that’s another story. 

When he’d first seen you in the refectory yesterday, you had already been looking right at him. He was curious about the straggler who’d wandered in so timidly. Your face isn’t one he’d seen around the Abbey. If he had, he would’ve remembered you because frankly, you’re striking. 

Copia doesn’t know why he hadn’t connected the dots sooner. It seems obvious that a brand new Sister should appear only weeks after Sister Imperator mentions bringing someone in to translate the document that had been found. Your presence had been a single talking point during some meeting or another, and if he’s perfectly honest, most Clergy meetings seem to blend together into nonsensical mush when he thinks back on them. Your mention of Elizabeth’s diary had reminded him of a few vague details. But the rest of that discussion, unsurprisingly, slips his mind. 

He finds himself feeling guilty. He’d been at that meeting, he knows for certain. The paperwork to confirm your temporary transfer had landed on his desk and he’d signed it. He must have. Your file must have been sent over from Marseille ahead of your arrival, why hadn’t he seen it?

Copia runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. He should have welcomed you to the Abbey himself. He should have sought you out and personally offered his hospitality, because he knows what it’s like to be across the world from home. He knows how lost and alone you feel. He’d felt it himself, after he transferred to the Abbey as a newly-appointed Cardinal. 

I miss being a Cardinal, he’d told you. And it’s true, he does, but he misses being an Archbishop more. He held less sway within the Satanic Ministry as an Archbishop, but he was allowed to stay in Italy. His home. 

As soon as he’d ascended to the rank of Cardinal, Sister Imperator had called him to the Abbey as a permanent transfer. Sure, his brothers had all been transferred from Italy one by one as they were called up to the Papacy, so he had family at the Abbey. But they had all been busy, constantly, and so had he. 

You’d told him you miss home, and a very strange, very tender part of him wants to comfort you. 

~~~

You replay your conversation with Papa all the way back to your dormitory. Stupide, stupide, stupide… 

He told you that he’s not much of a crowd person, and then you go and tell him that his Abbey doesn’t feel cozy enough for you? And you nearly knocked him over in your haste to return to a bed that you told him isn’t as good as the one in Marseille. What a way to thank him for opening his home to you! Thanks, Papa, but here are all the reasons why your Abbey sucks.

“Fille stupide,” you mutter to yourself. The sound echoes off the walls of the dark, empty corridor. The wall sconces are dark for the night, so the only illumination comes in the form of pale blue stripes of moonlight along the tiled floor. 

When you finally reach your dormitory and softly shut the door behind you, you take a moment to breathe. You’d been walking rather briskly in order to get back. Your fingers clench so tightly on the edge of your notebook that your fingernails are white, and your joints creak as you release your hold. The slap of the spiral-bound book seems loud when you drop it onto the small desk below the window, reverberating around the room. There are no posters, no tapestries, no curtains to absorb the sound like there are at home. 

You loathe the sound. You loathe the echoes. You loathe the tip-tapping of heels on the pristine floors of the Abbey. You loathe the muffled sounds of laughter coming from a dormitory a few doors down. You loathe how desperately you want to find something to hold onto here, something that feels personal. And you loathe how you crave familiarity despite the fact that you’ll return to Marseille as soon as that little book is translated. 

You practically rip your habit off—a habit that is uniform in France, but sets you apart here—in favor of your sleep clothes. Climbing into the small bed, you begin to recite your prayer in every language you know. It’s a habit you’d developed as soon as you began learning a second language at the ripe age of nine. Only then, the prayers had been directed at the cruel, unforgiving Catholic God. 

Salut Satan, notre Ténébreux juste et indulgent…. Ave Satana, il nostro Tenebroso giusto e indulgente…. Salve Satanás, nuestro justo y perdonador Oscuro…. 

You continue until you’ve exhausted all the languages you know, and then you start over again with a different prayer. And again. And again, until somewhere in the middle of your Portuguese Hail Lilith you drift to sleep. 

~~~

You wake the next morning in a much better mood. Perhaps last night you’d just been frustrated and overtired from working from dawn til far past dusk, but the bright birdsong from outside sounds happier today. It follows you from your dormitory, down the corridor and to the main hall, where the sounds of the breakfast hour echo out into the large space. 

You could walk into the refectory if you wanted, without feeling intimidated (at least not as much as the day you arrived), but you don’t have much of an appetite this morning. Instead you take your time walking the length of the main hall. There are sculptures in spaces between the wood benches that you hadn’t noticed before. You find one you recognize, and it doesn’t surprise you that the Abbey houses a replica. 

La génie du mal is a welcome sight. The Marseille Abbey also keeps a replica, although it is slightly smaller than this one. It’s a depiction of a fallen angel chained to a rock, with a crown held loosely in one hand while the other runs through his hair. His stone face is solemn but the bat-like wings splaying from his back seem to welcome you, as if saying, Hello child, do you remember me? 

Yes, you do remember. You remember being eleven years old and traveling to Liège at the whim of your parents. You remember touring Saint Paul’s Cathedral and pretending to marvel at the Catholic imagery that you didn’t understand (or care for) at the time. Every depiction of Jesus on the cross looked the same. Every statue of a veiled Mother Mary reminded you to be chaste and pure and subservient to a God who thinks you a lesser being. 

And then you’d seen him in the chapel of the Cathedral, placed at the back of a pulpit which wrapped around a stone pillar. The four sculptures of saints (whose names you don’t bother to remember) stood at the front of the pulpit, facing in towards the pews, as if standing guard over the sculpture. La génie du mal was tucked into the back, hidden from view, but you knew something must have been there. Why else would not one, but four saints be guarding a single pillar, when there were dozens lining the interior of the chapel? 

So you’d slipped from the watchful eye of your parents while they were distracted by the tour guide, and rounded the pulpit to see the backside. He was there, carved in white marble and stationed in the niche between two curved staircases. The elaborate stained-glass windows cast speckles of yellow, blue, and violet over his body, and he glowed in the sunlight like he was a real angel fallen to Earth right in front of you. 

You visited him a lot, afterwards.

You learned later that the pulpit was commissioned to represent “The Triumph of Religion over the Genius of Evil,” but you thought—and still think—that it was executed rather poorly. The four statues facing inward protect only the Cathedral from La génie du mal, but he, facing outward towards the windows, can see the rest of the world. Anyone looking into the chapel for refuge or guidance would only see him, colorful and bright, through the holy scenes of the stained glass. 

You jump nearly ten feet in the air when a voice beside you snaps you from your thoughts. “Beautiful, isn’t he?” 

You look to your left and catch the mismatched eyes of Papa. You hadn’t even heard him come up beside you. “Oui—ah, yes,” you say, swiftly correcting your French to English. 

“You know,” Papa says, looking back to the marble replica, “the original was commissioned because the first version of it was too, eh, sexy.” 

You do know, but the fact makes you laugh anyway. “The first version is nothing compared to this. It makes me think that the artist made this version even sexier, just to spite the Catholics. And to avenge his brother.” 

Papa turns to you fully now, with his hands clasped behind his back. He wears a smart black suit adorned with an elaborate grucifix on the lapel. It’s a far cry from the sweatpants and t-shirt from last night, but no less comfortable. You can’t help but notice that the suit is tailored to perfection. 

“His brother?” he asks. 

You nod. “The original sculptor was the younger brother of this artist,” you explain, gesturing to La génie. “It’s a bit of a slap in the face for them to ask his own brother to redo his work. I can imagine they both felt a little slighted.”  

Papa chuckles. “Perhaps just a little.” 

A brief pause falls between the two of you, and you begin to wonder just how long it will take for the silence to grow awkward. So far you haven’t reached that point. Not with Papa, at least. 

“It would have been nice to have the original piece,” Papa says unhurriedly. “I can’t imagine the Catholic Church would have agreed to let us buy it.” 

You turn to look at him briefly, letting out a small laugh. “If the price was high enough, I’m sure they would have,” you say with an almost imperceptible edge of bitterness. “But I do think its place at Liège is where it belongs.” 

“Have you been?” Papa asks you, his eyebrows slightly raised as he turns to meet your gaze. 

“I have,” you answer. You don’t elaborate further on the nature of your visit. “That’s not to say I don’t believe it would have a good home here, Papa. I just think that the irony of its placement is lost on the Catholics.” 

He asks about it, and you explain. His eyes never leave your face as you talk. You don’t feel scrutinized like you had under Sister Imperator’s gaze, though. Papa’s eyes are warm and interested and you could swear they almost glow in the morning light. He nods and hums with each point you make, seeming genuinely intrigued by your argument that La génie holds more influence facing outward rather than inwards. 

It’s a subject you’re passionate about. La génie had set you on a path towards the Satanic Ministry that day. By age eleven you already knew you didn’t want to be Catholic despite your parents’ efforts to instill their beliefs on you, but you didn’t know exactly what you believed in. Until you saw him, solemn and still, his magnificence hidden behind a stone pillar at Liège. 

Despite Papa’s careful listening, you realize you must be rambling and cut yourself off. “Sorry, Papa. I don’t mean to talk your ear off.” 

“Oh, no!” Papa says, shaking his head. “No need to apologize, Sister. I enjoy listening to you speak.” 

Heat blossoms over your cheeks. You almost miss how his own face flushes a slight shade of pink. Almost. 

“Eh, I mean—” Papa begins to fiddle with his own fingers. “What I mean to say is that you make a lot of good points. Yes.” 

It’s obvious that he’s nervous over the comment he made. It was straightforward and a little flirty, and you know that in the bright hall he can most likely see the pink beneath your skin. Maybe he hadn’t meant for it to come out quite so… well, flirty. Or maybe he thinks he overstepped a boundary, that he said something he shouldn’t have? It was just a comment about listening to you talk, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Satan, why are you so flustered all the sudden? 

You give him a small smile. “Either way… thank you, Papa. I should, uh—”

“Yes, me too—”

“Right, have a good day,” you say, a bit quicker than is necessary, and turn on your heel to start towards the library. 

~~~

Once again, Copia finds himself watching you go. 

Rationally, he knows that you’re not upset with him. You didn’t leave because of something he’d said or done that made you uncomfortable. If that was the case, he hopes that you’d tell him. He would hate for you to feel unwelcome or upset, especially because of him. 

But oh, how your eyes shone while you spoke about La génie. 

Hearing footsteps approaching from his right, Copia turns and finds Terzo looking rather smug as he strolls towards him. He wears a big, stupid grin on his face and looks at Copia like he’d just discovered the stash of sweets on the bottom drawer of his bedside table. 

“And who was that?” Terzo asks with feigned innocence. He comes to a stop next to Copia and clasps his hands behind his back. They both stare at La génie. 

Copia chews the inside of his cheek. “Who was who?” 

Terso tuts his tongue. “Oh, don’t be coy with me, fratellino. We both know I’m talking about the Sister you were just ogling.” “I wasn’t ogling,” Copia protests. Terzo is always teasing, always nudging, always subtly poking fun at him for no reason other than he finds it fun. That’s what little brothers are for, Terzo says. To poke fun at, and to teach the ways of the world. “And we both know that you know who she is.” 

“Ah, yes, I do know,” Terzo says with a shrug. “But I wanted to hear what you had to say.”

Copia looks at his brother. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Terzo says, “you seemed quite invested in that conversation just now. And then you turned a very obvious shade of red, and she walked away. Forgive me, I’m a gossip.” 

Copia laughs. “There’s nothing to gossip about, Terzo. She told me about this sculpture and where the original is housed. That’s it.” 

Terzo tilts his head, leaning in slightly. “That does not explain why you both were so red in the face, fratellino.” 

Copia sighs and runs a hand through his hair. So it was obvious, even from down the hall. “I… may have said that I like listening to her speak.” 

“Oh,” Terzo says flatly. He sounds almost disappointed. “I thought you might have told her something else.” 

“What? Why?” Copia asks. “Was that a weird thing to say?” 

Terzo chuckles, shaking his head. “No. It’s a perfectly good compliment. But you both turned so red that I thought you invited her to your chambers.” 

Copia nearly chokes on his own saliva. “Wh–what?” he sputters. “Terzo, I barely know her.”

“Well, I wouldn’t think so with the way you were looking at her!” Terzo says, his voice pitched higher to his own defense. “‘My darling, you speak so beautifully, it is like birdsong in the early morning. I simply cannot resist the way you look—’” 

“Stop—”

“‘—in the sunlight. Your eyes shine so brightly and your mouth moves so gracefully—’” 

“Terzo, I—”

“‘—that I can’t help but wonder what it might feel like on my—’” 

“Okay,” Copia throws his hands up. He storms off towards the refectory for breakfast. 

Terzo’s laugh echoes through the main hall as he jogs to catch up with Copia. “What? I’m only saying what I thought you said.” 

Copia hadn’t said any of those things to you, but that doesn’t mean he hadn’t thought them. It’s true; your eyes did shine in the sunlight streaming through the windows, and your mouth did move gracefully. Although those parts of you are attractive to him and he’d readily admit that you’re beautiful, it was the way you spoke that caught him. You seemed to forget your timidness, your reservations. You spoke freely and enthusiastically, like you’d forgotten you were speaking to Papa and instead spoke to a friend. Copia wonders if La génie holds some significance to you outside of just being an interesting sculpture. 

Copia resolves to ask you the next time he sees you, and he finds himself hoping that it’s soon.

Camellia: Popia x f!reader - Chapter 1

Camellia: n. - A flower which symbolizes a deep desire or longing.

Summary: You are a translator for the Ministry. You receive a letter summoning you to the Abbey for a project involving an ancient diary with a mysterious author, but you find yourself wishing you were back home. That is, until you meet the charming Papa Emeritus the Fourth.

Word count: 4.4k

A/N: Hi all!! This is the first long-form fic I've ever written and decided to publish, so I hope you all enjoy!! The first chapter is mostly setup and scene building, so not a lot of interaction with our beloved Copia. But there will be more, I promise!!

Warnings: none for now but there will be some in later chapters.

AO3 Link

Prologue

“Will you help me move this box?” the Brother of Sin says. 

Wordlessly, the Sister of Sin stops what she’s doing and maneuvers through the crowded, dusty basement room to help the Brother. The two crouch down, bracing their hands against the box of books. It leaves behind a path carved into the layers of dust as it slides across the wooden floor. 

Once the box is pushed a few feet out of the way, the Sister lets go and, losing her balance, falls to her hands and knees from the crouching position. She cries out in surprise when her hand sinks through the floorboards as one of the slats gives way. The hole is only a few inches deep and filled with dirt and cobwebs, but the Sister’s hand falls onto something softer than wood. 

She lifts her hand to find that there’s a small leather-bound volume hidden face-down in the small crevice. The Sister can hardly imagine how long it has been there, with how thick the grime lies on the back cover. 

This room of the Abbey’s basement had been long forgotten, until Sister Imperator tasked these Siblings of Sin to clear out the room to make way for new storage. They had half expected to find a ruby-encrusted sarcophagus in the room, with how ancient and opulent the Abbey is. So far the only things of interest they have found are books—it seems that the only items stored in the room are books. 

The Sister gently removes the book from the hole in the floor and replaces the wooden slat. Even through her gloves she can tell that it is close to disintegrating. The distinct orange of rotten leather lines the edges of its binding and a few corners of pages fall to the ground. 

“What’s that?” The Brother asks. 

The Sister carefully turns the volume over so that she can read the front cover. It, too, is covered in dust, so she gently brushes it with her hand in order to read the embossed leather cover. Having been face-down in the crevice, the gold leaf illuminating the embossment is preserved and it shines in the low light of the basement. 

“It says…” the Sister squints to read the small letters, “...Elizabeth.” 

“Elizabeth? Who’s Elizabeth?” 

The Sister turns over the book once more. “I don’t know, just… Elizabeth.”

Chapter 1

The ride from the airport to the Abbey is a long one. The car you had been picked up in took you through the city and the suburbs, to the rural outskirts of civilization where the coniferous trees block much of the sunlight. The winding roads, dotted in late-afternoon sunbeams, feel endless as the car climbs into the hills. It’s been a silent ride, and rather awkward (at least, you feel that it’s been awkward) because the helmeted ghoul who drives the sleek black sedan has not said a word. 

You knew that the Abbey has ghouls. A few abbeys do, as they are big enough to warrant summoning help, but your home chapter is not. This is the first time you’ve met one. 

You wonder if they’re all so stoic, or if the driver simply doesn’t have anything to say. He isn’t impolite, but you wish he would say something, anything to make the drive a little more bearable. You want to ask him about the Abbey–what the Siblings are like, what Papa is like. How many Siblings live there full time? How big is the library? You’ve heard that the ghost of a former Papa haunts the corridors, is that true? Hundreds of questions brew in your mind, but the ghoul remains silent and you’re left feeling like an unwelcome guest in a strange country.

You already miss home. 

The Marseille abbey, your home for the better part of your adult life, is a medieval stone structure built on a hilltop south of the Marseille city proper. The ornate, stained-glass windows of its chapel face west over the Mediterranean so that the sunset streams into the room during Black Mass. The walls are old and drafty, and keep faded tapestries in a constant state of fluttering. The linens line the walls of the refectory in between tall, narrow windows which also overlook the sea. If it were not for the inverted crosses and scenes of the unjust fall of Lucifer, one might think the atmosphere in the chapel—and the rest of the small abbey—is almost holy.

The windows in the Sibling dormitories are small and south-facing, with deep stone sills and wood frames that have somehow managed to survive the ages (although they hardly open without a fight.) Your own dormitory windowsill is lined with personal prayer books. Each has about a hundred loose papers sticking out. They are your translation practice, your way of staying versed in every language you know, because you know the prayers by heart at this point. The papers are experiments: which language makes the prayer sound better, sound prettier? Which language makes the most sense? Which language makes the prayers the shortest, the longest? 

No matter which language you use, to you the prayers sound the most beautiful in your mother tongue. That is how you’d memorized them, after all. Yet… you wish there had been room in your single suitcase to take your prayer books with you. 

“We’re almost there,” the ghoul says, snapping you out of your homesick reverie. His voice is deep and softer than you’d expected. There’s no spurt of hellfire from his mouth as you’d half-thought there would be, and no low rumble in his words that might signify he’s more beast than man. The ghoul, despite his bug-eyed mask, seems shockingly human. 

He steers the car through tall wrought-iron gates which seem to open automatically. You can see the tall peak of the Abbey’s bell tower peeking through the trees, and suddenly the reality that you’re very, very far from home hits you. 

You unfold the crinkled envelope in your hands and reread the letter for the hundredth time that day. 

Dear Sister, 

I hope this letter finds you well. 

We at the Abbey have recently uncovered a very important document which we require your expertise to translate. However, this document is extremely fragile and cannot be transported in the post. Papa Emeritus IV and the rest of the Clergy request your presence at the Abbey as soon as possible. 

We expect this project to take several months. Enclosed is a one-way ticket for you to travel to the airport closest to us, from which a car will transport you to the Abbey. We will discuss plans for your return to Marseille when you are nearing the end of your work here.

We anxiously await your arrival. 

Sincerely, 

Sister Imperator

The letter itself is quite presumptuous. Sister Imperator had assumed you were not busy, and assumed that you would be able to drop everything and travel halfway across the world for a months-long project. And then to use Papa’s name to exaggerate the importance of this mysterious document which she hadn’t even disclosed the nature of? 

Well… you can’t exactly say no to the woman who practically runs the Ministry’s affairs. 

The car takes a bend in the Abbey’s endless driveway and emerges into a clearing. Sitting far back on a sprawling lawn is a massive, imposing stone structure. The rows of trimmed hedges and flower bushes do little to soften the gothic hardness of it. Two pointed bell towers loom over the steep roof of what must be the chapel, with stained glass windows stretching up at least two storeys. The central image is of Baphomet, in his iconographic pose. The setting sun glints off of his golden halo. Sweet Satan, you think, your eyes tracking the window as the car rounds the drive. Baphomet alone must be taller than the entire height of Marseille. 

The ghoul pulls the car to a stop in front of the wide steps leading up to wooden double doors. A woman stands there, her hands clasped in front of her and her back straight, like the matron of this grand palace. You suppose she is–the severity of her expression alone leads you to believe that it’s Sister Imperator who waits for you.

You step out into the chilly air and shut the car door behind yourself. The ghoul already has your suitcase in hand and gestures for you to walk up the stairs before him. You wish he’d let you carry your own suitcase, if only to give your hands something to do, but you are far too stunned to ask. Climbing the shallow stone steps feels like stepping into another world. A world in which you feel far too plain to exist. 

“Sister,” The woman greets with a smile. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes, which squint at you beneath slightly furrowed, well-groomed brows. She strikes you as someone who is all business, all the time. “How was your journey?” 

You return her smile as best you can. She speaks to you like you don’t understand English. “It went well, your dark eminence.” 

She seems a little surprised that you respond so fluently, but she quickly fixes her face into another warm grin. “I am glad to hear it,” she says. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. I’m sure you must understand that this document is very important, and quite fragile. We would not risk losing it in the post.” “Of course,” you nod. “If I may ask, Sister Imperator, what is this document? You did not disclose it in your letter.” You gesture to the envelope safely stored in your jacket pocket. 

Sister Imperator turns to step inside the slightly ajar wooden door and you assume she wants you to follow. The ghoul accompanies you over the threshold, but at the wave of a hand from Sister Imperator, he turns down a narrow corridor with your suitcase and disappears around a corner. 

You are still a bit too overwhelmed to thank him. Instead, you look at the woman beside you. “The ghoul will bring your luggage to a room we have prepared for your stay,” she explains at your silent question.

She continues down the main hall, deeper into the Abbey. Your footsteps echo through the atrium, bouncing up to the high, painted ceilings and off the stone walls. There are a few wooden benches pushed back against the wall, with pots of surprisingly lush houseplants on either side. Framed oil paintings line the walls: some depicting biblical scenes, some of landscapes, and a few large, dignified portraits. You can tell by the distinct Papal paints in each portrait that the subject is a Papa, and you wonder which one depicts Papa Emeritus IV. You’ve never seen an image of His Unholiness before. 

After a few moments of silence, Sister Imperator speaks again. “We found the document last month, in one of the storage rooms in the Abbey’s basement.” She likes to use the royal ‘we’ a lot, you think. 

She continues. “One of our archivists believes that it is at least five hundred years old. It is very fragile, you see, and so we ask that you handle it with the utmost care as you work with it. We would prefer it if you used gloves. And frankly, Sister, I believe that you would want to. The leather is fairly rotten.” You stay silent as you follow slightly behind her. You’ve worked with old, rotten books before. The pages nearly crumble apart in your hands and the leather splits easily, but it’s nothing you can’t handle. 

“We believe it is a journal—a diary, rather, of someone very important in the Ministry’s history.” You find it strange that she doesn’t immediately disclose whose diary it might be. “Who, if I may ask?” “Elizabeth.” Sister Imperator’s voice is clipped as she answers you. She gives no further explanation. Just Elizabeth. 

There are millions of women named Elizabeth in the world. It is very likely that there is more than one important Elizabeth in the Ministry’s history as well. It’s a fairly common name, especially five hundred years ago (if the archivist is correct). For all you know, this document could be some random Sister’s sexual logbook, and documenting her sinful indulgences was her way of praying to the Lord Below. 

You break out of your ponderance over possibilities when Sister Imperator turns a corner to walk down another, slightly narrower (but still wide) corridor. She speaks again. “The book is to be kept in a lockbox at all times when you are not working with it. Under no circumstances is it to be removed from the Abbey library without my express permission, or the permission of Papa. Is that understood?” 

“Yes, Sister,” you answer hastily. Her tone of voice as she lays down the law makes you feel as though you’ve already made a mistake. 

“Now. The reason we need you, Sister, is because none of our own archivists or translators can figure out what language the journal is written in.” 

This piques your interest, and also slightly flatters you. “What do you mean?” you ask.

She releases a long-suffering sigh. “The writing is jumbled. It is a mess of letters and sometimes numbers, with no spaces whatsoever.” 

The possibilities immediately start to stack in your mind. Latin from the Roman era tended not to use spaces, a practice called ‘scriptio continua’. Ancient Greek also did this… but wouldn’t the in-house translators be able to read it? 

“I cannot explain it well enough,” Sister Imperator says. “You will have to see, Sister.” 

The two of you come to another set of large double doors. Sister Imperator pushes one open and steps inside, holding it open for you. You slip past her into a huge, bright room, filled with hundreds and hundreds of bookshelves. Immediately you are hit with the scent of old books and parchment paper, and the gentle sounds of turning pages. To your left sits an ornate wooden desk with one Sibling standing behind it. They are sorting books onto a three-tiered cart, presumably to put them away in the correct order. You accidentally make eye contact, but they smile politely and you respond in kind with a little wave. 

You avert your gaze upward towards the open second floor, which wraps around the large atrium and is protected by a dark oak bannister. A few Siblings linger on the catwalk, carrying books or making their way towards the wide staircase that opens to your right. The bottom floor of the atrium houses several wooden tables where another smattering of Siblings sit. Most other tables are empty save for an abandoned book or two. 

The late evening glow shines down into the room from a large, circular skylight in the middle of the ceiling. There are desk lamps and overhead lights scattered about but none have been turned on yet. 

It reminds you of the University library.

“Come,” Sister Imperator says after allowing you to gaze around the massive library for a moment. “The lockbox is in the restricted section. You will receive your own key while you are here but you are required to return it, directly to myself or the Head Librarian, before you leave.”

She leads you up the carpeted staircase and deep into the bowels of the second floor. Towards the back corner, where the shelves are labeled ‘Fiction - Romance’, there is a wooden door tucked against the wall. A sign beneath its small glass window reads ‘RESTRICTED’. Sister Imperator fishes a rather noisy set of keys from her pocket and finds the correct one to unlock the door. She pushes it open with a squeak that feels loud in the quiet of the library. When both of you are in the room and the door is shut behind you, she removes an identical key from her keyring and hands it to you. “Your copy,” she says. “Do not lose it.” 

The room isn’t cramped, but it is small compared to the atrium. A few single-person desks sit along the back wall, while the walls on either side of you are lined with glass boxes. Each box is shaped similarly to a narrow cubby, and houses a single book. Printed labels on the front face of each box display a box number and the name of the volume stored inside. 

“Your key allows you to access any of these boxes,” Sister Imperator explains to you, “but I do not expect you to require any of them, except for the diary you’ll be working with. It is kept in box number seven, which is here,” she points to a box about halfway up the rightmost column of cubbies. Using her key (still attached to the incredibly jingly keyring), she gently unlocks the box and it glides out like a drawer. 

You step beside her to look down into the glass drawer. The diary is wrapped in white linen, but you can see the faint brown color of the leather through the cloth. “The archivist requests that you keep the white cloth under the book at all times,” Sister Imperator says. She reaches down into the box and gently retrieves the diary, careful not to jostle the cloth too much. “It will protect the leather from further decay.” You don’t need her to explain how preservation works, but you appreciate it anyway. It saves you from having to ask, or endure another awkward silence. 

She places the book down on a nearby table and slowly unwraps the cloth. Already you can see small flecks of brown and orange sticking to it where the leather has rotted, but it seems to be fairly well preserved in light of its age. On the front cover in small, embossed gold letters is the name Elizabeth. 

“Elizabeth,” you say, understanding. 

“Elizabeth,” Sister Imperator replies. “That is the only word we have managed to decipher. Hopefully you will be able to help us with the rest.”

You nod. “I believe I can.” 

She wraps the cloth loosely around the book once more, and returns it to its box. “I do not expect you to start tonight, Sister. We will give you time to settle, and have something to eat. But from tomorrow morning until you are done, this is your sole responsibility. Do you understand?” 

Her sudden, almost intimidating tone surprises you. You bite the inside of your cheek–a nasty habit you’ve had since you were a child. “I understand, your Dark Eminence,” you say with another nod. 

Her face softens, as does her stare. “Please, just Sister is fine,” she says. You follow her again as she begins to lead you out of the Restricted room. “I believe the dinner hour is to start soon. I will show you to your dormitory, and then leave you to get settled.” 

She brings you back through the library and the main hall towards where you’d seen the ghoul disappear with your luggage. The dormitory hall is a long, narrow corridor with windows on one side and doors on the other. Each door is marked with a number and a nameplate, and in between each door are wall sconces lit by incandescent bulbs. Halfway down the hall there is an opening to a stairwell which, you assume, leads up to the second floor of the dormitories. You walk past many, many doors, some of which have two nameplates, until you reach the very end of the hall where there are unmarked doors. Sister finds her keyring again and unlocks one, then removes the key and hands it to you. 

“These rooms here are the guest quarters. They are typically not suited for long-term stays but we have prepared yours to have everything you will need. If you need anything, ask Sibling Superior and they will make sure that you receive it.”

Sister Imperator turns to leave, but then turns around. “You know, Sister,” she says, with a curious look. “For someone of your expertise, I thought you would have been… older.” You can’t tell if it’s praise or suspicion in her voice. “Yes, well,” you stall. How are you supposed to explain that language just comes naturally to you and that it’s not your fault you’re not old and wrinkly? “I suppose once you learn one language, all the rest come easy. Especially romance languages.” 

“Hm,” Sister Imperator hums, sizing you up for a moment. “Find me at the end of the week and we will talk about your progress. I’m sure you will know your way around by then.” 

It seems her well of kindness has run dry.  

~~~

If the loud ringing of the bell didn’t tell you that the dinner hour had started, then the steadily rising sounds of a crowd did. You can hear the murmurs of conversation even through your closed door. A few Siblings emerge from the dormitory next to yours, their chatting and laughing growing quieter as they walk down the corridor towards the refectory. The old wood floorboards creak above you from the movement of Siblings who occupy the second floor. All around you there is an excited bustle, and yet you don’t feel like joining it. 

You have never liked crowds. Especially crowds of strangers. And these strangers all seem to know each other, if the echoes of loud conversations tell you anything. 

But your stomach does rumble, and you feel rather weak from a day of travel, so you decide that it’s best to eat something before you go to bed. Once the corridor seems clear again, you quietly slip out your door (patting your pocket to make sure you remembered your key) and make your way to the refectory. Sister Imperator hadn’t shown it to you but you can make an educated guess as to where it is. 

When you emerge into the main hall, you see a few Siblings occupying the wood benches that had been previously empty. They all hold trays or to-go boxes on their laps. Some speak animatedly, enthralling their friends with stories from their eventful day, while others sit quietly beside each other and eat. You think that it might be nice to sit somewhere to eat so that you feel a bit more connected to the Abbey, but all of the benches are occupied. The ever-growing roar from the refectory does not seem too appealing, either. 

The large room is across the main hall from the library. When you turn the corner you see that it’s not as grand as the atrium, and that it only occupies one level. There are sheer curtains hung over the windows, which allow the sunlight to illuminate the room but keeps it from growing too warm. Siblings, Clergy members, and ghouls alike sit at long wooden tables not unlike those of your home Abbey. But these tables alone are longer than the entire length of the Marseille refectory, and once again you’re reminded that you’re quite far from home. 

No, you can’t eat here. Not tonight. 

There is a long counter stretching nearly wall-to-wall to the left of the door, where a dwindling line of Siblings make their dinner selections. Whatever meal the kitchens had prepared smells delicious but you find that you don’t have the appetite for it. However, close to where you stand in the doorway and nestled in the space between the wall and the counter, are a few baskets of fruit arranged on a small table. The baskets are nearly empty, with the only indication of their contents being the small pops of color peeking through gaps in the woven pattern. 

Despite not wanting a hot meal, you are hungry, and so you enter the refectory and move towards the baskets. You opt for two good-sized oranges–although the bananas do look perfectly ripe–and turn to leave as quickly as you came. Your eyes briefly sweep over the crowd and land on a long table, perpendicular to all the others, situated on a platform at the opposite end of the refectory. The platform isn’t tall, but it is just enough to raise the table’s occupants slightly above the Siblings. The table is entirely composed of men, save for Sister Imperator, who seems to be talking to an older man with Papal paints and long blonde hair–is that Papa?

You look at the others occupying the table, and find that no less than three are also wearing Papal paints. 

Marseille is a tiny Abbey. At any given time, only about ten Siblings reside there at once. And so there is no need for an upper Clergyman to be stationed there. Instead, the Chapter is run by Bishop Beaumont, who (until now) is the highest ranking member of the Satanic Ministry you have ever met, let alone seen. 

So, to be faced with not one, but four Papas, all in the same room, makes your heart thump with nerves. You recognize them all from the portraits in the main hall, but in person they are all so much more… just more. And yet you still don’t know who is who. 

Of course, you know that all four of the most recent reigning Papas are brothers, the order of which was determined by age. The man who Sister Imperator is talking to must be Papa Emeritus I, or Papa Primo, as you’ve heard him called by Bishop Beaumont. The other three look relatively close in age, and so you truly have no idea which man currently holds the helm and steers the ship. 

You realize you’re staring when you make eye contact with one of the Papas. You nearly gasp in surprise, as if you shouldn’t even be on the same plane of existence as him… and yet your eyes met. Of course one of them would have caught you eventually, you think. You were practically ogling them from across the room. 

Hastily, you turn and make your way back out of the refectory and into the main hall. Your eyes fall on the nearest portrait. The Papal paints of the subject match the ones of the man you’d just been caught staring at. You blush as if his portrait could think, and had just caught you a second time. Your eyes flick down to the gold plate affixed to the frame, and read the words. 

PAPA EMERITUS IV.