Copia replies to most of what V has to say in monosyllables and grunts. A noncommittal but affirmative mmn at was it a big change, because it sure was, almost like looking at a different person, but the Ministry -- well. Maybe the Ministry will fix him up, if his face comes out of this damaged in a bad way. Or maybe it won't matter as much and won't be worth the money, now that he's no longer Papa, in front of enormous crowds night after night.
But a few weeks gets a growled, disappointed scoff out of Copia, a swallowed aww and an accompanying twitch. A few weeks is bad. He doesn't want to be stuck here for weeks, especially if V is going to insist on visiting him more than once. Copia's mouth turns down with more flexibility than he expects, almost as though he's in a medium that allows him to be a little more expressive, and he huffs unhappily.
"Well," he says, "Mr. Psaltarian has a lovely little place by the beach. However, he wouldn't let me use it, so, I selected a different one. Same beach. Different house. Close enough not to be too far out of reach, but far enough to say, decisively, 'if you need me for anything, ask someone else! I am on vacation! Ha ha!'"
He gives the explanation with a flicker of brightness as he recalls his brilliant plan to detach completely from the Ministry, but sobers quickly, as he remembers just how out of reach it is. Fuck.
Maybe it was a mistake, too, to expect much in the way of conversation, but Perpetua can't help but feel a little disappointed. He should just focus on the good in this: his brother is alive, after all, despite the odds. Alive and well enough to speak with him at all. There was a time he'd call that a miracle -- now he's not so sure what to call it. Dumb luck?
"Yeah, I know, man. It's a drag." With a sigh, he offers Copia a tight-lipped smile, sympathetic. "We'll get you out there eventually, eh? Better to get you all healed up before your little summer getaway." There's that urge to pat his shoulder again, or the side of his bed, or... something. Something more than standing here with no way to ease his discomfort.
"He wouldn't? Sheesh. What a guy." Perpetua neglects to mention that Psaltarian did, in fact, offer to let him stay at the beach house sometime this summer. (He politely declined. Heat and sun are not his friends.)
"I'm surprised you didn't want to go somewhere farther away. You know? Really, uh, escape for a while." He studies what little he can see of his twin's face, wondering if they will even look like twins after, well, all of this. "But you give the impression of... I don't know. Being a little bit married to your work?"
Well, it's kinder than calling him a control freak.
A couple of things are happening in Copia's brain. One is that he's infuriated at V thinking he's married to his work. How dare he presume that Copia, whose entire life has been dedicated to the ministry since long before he was aware of his parentage, for whom being Papa was the greatest pinnacle of achievement he could imagine, and who stuck the tour out despite the administrative work being miserable and tedious and worse for coming after his time in the spotlight, is overattached to his job and would have had trouble truly disconnecting.
Another is that he's developed through experience a decent sense for when someone wants to approach closer and is holding themselves back, and while Copia isn't consciously thinking about it, he can tell Perpetua's awkwardness isn't because he wants to run. And Copia is given toward hugging himself, though not everyone in his family is the same, and it's sitting under Copia's skin like a pebble in his shoe that he hates V and hates V being nice to him and hates V saying stupid shit and there is also a part of him that wants contact, misses the attention he'd gotten so much of on the stage, and is lonely when held at arm's length by everyone he knows.
Fuck this guy. He doesn't know anything.
"I can escape," he insists. "I can -- I can leave at any time, you know. Well -- usually. Now, the circumstances are a-a little bit different. But I am not married to my work. I am free as a bird! A bird with many, many broken bones."
The irony of the current situation is not lost on him, and it only makes Copia insist more hotly that he can totally quit.
The thing is, Perpetua can relate. While he had chosen his own isolation and marriage to his work freely, it had been his way of trying to quiet the truths he knew were buried within his subconscious. Truths of who he was, what he believed -- or didn't believe. But Copia doesn't need to hear all of that right now, if ever. He holds up gloved hands in defence, unable to help but smile. This is not Copia at his best, of course, but it is fascinating, seeing the real man behind the on-stage presence he'd studied for endless hours.
So much of his own performance was, well, just copying his brother. It often felt inauthentic, because it was, and he'd felt like nothing more than a cheap copy because of it. He wonders now if Copia ever felt similarly.
"Okay, okay," he coos, shifting his weight between his feet. "I was not trying to accuse you of anything. It was just an impression." He's about to fold his arms over his chest again when his phone buzzes loudly a few times in rapid succession. With a sigh, Perpetua fishes it from his pocket, but his expression softens when he sees the messages that continue to blow up his phone.
"The ghouls are asking about you," he says, stepping in closer so he can show Copia his screen, where a group chat that had gone quiet since the tour ended is now getting more and more messages as they see Perpetua's viewing them. "Do you want me to tell them you're awake? Mm, and what about the Psaltarians?"
He peers at the screen, shifting just a smidge in the bandages and casts to get closer, paying in a renewed spike of pain to peer a little better. It's clearly text messages, though it looks more like a chat room - Perpetua has a chat room on his phone? With the ghouls? A lot of the chatty ones are names he knows, ones he toured with -- they are asking about him.
how is cardi?
is he awake yet
is he alive
can we see him
can we can we can we 🥺😭😰💀
can we pleeeeease papa
WE KNOW YOU SEE THIS
TELL US ABT CARDI
LET US IN
LET US IN
Copia looks from the screen, to V, then back again, then back to V. He's clearly seeing something unexpected, and doesn't answer right away.
"They...they want to see me," he says, and it stops being a question about halfway through. He'd thought they would have forgotten. Cleaved to the new papa and left the old one behind. Copia supposes he only has limited data; all his predecessors were dead when he took over. He is still alive, and apparently, they want to see him.
"I thought they forgot about the last Papa," Copia says. "You know. When they go to work for a new one."
Maybe, in hindsight, it wasn't forgetting so much as not wanting to talk about a brutal triple murder.
Perpetua leans in nice and close so Copia doesn't have to strain too far forward to read the messages. He scrolls a little to let him see more of them, but they keep getting pushed upward by the new messages coming in every few seconds. He grins at Copia, who clearly wasn't expecting this kind of reaction from the ghouls. See? His visiting can't be all that bad for him.
"Are you kidding? Of course they want to see you," he chuckles, giving Copia the gentlest pat on the shoulder. "They've missed you terribly. Do you know how much they talk about you? It's exhausting." A wink to show he's kidding. It mostly made him feel... jealous. Insufficient. Every bit the cheap knockoff of Copia that he worried so much about being. It wasn't like any of them hated him, but it was easy to tell this was an unpleasant adjustment.
"They did warm up to me, but I'm not you." Exhaling, he tries to put it out of his mind by opening his phone's camera, crouching next to the bed to awkwardly get them both into the frame.
"Say cheese! Or, well, just try to look like you aren't completely miserable?" Another forced laugh and he hits the shutter button a couple times before stepping away, inspecting the photos. They're not great, but they'll do. The point is proof of life.
They talk about him? To V? To a point where it's exhausting?
...
"Well, how about that," Copia murmurs. It's nice to be remembered. To not feel quite so forgotten, so easily replaced in the little group that had traveled, eaten, slept, and performed together, like a family. Maybe. Copia isn't entirely sure, but family is what it had felt like when they'd passed out into their shared Chinese takeout at 4 a.m. on the tour bus.
But I'm not you.
Hearing it loosens a knot that's been sitting in Cardi's chest since he first began to suspect his time was coming to an end. It doesn't untie, not completely, but it doesn't feel quite as tight. He doesn't even hate the pat to his shoulder. V's gloved hand is warmer than he expected, even through the bandages.
"Eh?"
He looks up just in time to hear the click, and this time he recognizes it as a phone camera -- he'd been on the other side of those plenty of times. Copia comes out wide-eyed and staring unsettlingly, shell shocked and possibly like he's being held hostage depending on Perpetua's expression.
"Fuck," he says. And then-- "...how did it turn out? Let me see."
He knows it's probably going to be shit, he looks like shit right now, but vanity is a sin and Copia can't contain his curiosity.
It strikes Perpetua as odd that Copia doesn't expect the ghouls to have missed him -- wasn't it obvious? The fans miss him, but the ghouls miss him even more. And while it had made him jealous, it also made him more impatient to finally meet him. If he was so great why was a newbie like him taking the reins? Bloodline or not, it didn't seem like he'd been ready to pass the torch.
Before giving his brother a chance to look, Perpetua sends off the selfies to appease the group chat. Inevitably they will be roasted -- he's told he takes "old man" selfies -- but this is more about, you know, proving he's alive and well(ish).
"Here," he finally says, leaning in with his phone to show him the pictures. "Not our best angles, I fear. But we'll have time to take better ones once you're a little less bandaged up, eh?"
Because, well -- he's really hoping they can get some quality time together before Copia runs off on his little beach holiday. Judging by the messages streaming in at the top of his screen, he's not the only one.
THANK LUCIFER
cardi!!!!! hi cardi!!!
tell him i say hi!!
WHOA what bones didnt he break???
🥺 is he ok papa???
This time he doesn't have to force his laughter. He's pretty damn fond of the ghouls himself, so making them happy is always a pleasure. He doesn't even feel jealous now, just... relieved. Whole, in a way. One great mystery of his life can begin coming to a close.
"Should I tell the Psaltarians you're awake? I can wait a little, if you don't want to be bombarded just yet."
"No, no, it's very good. I look very good," Copia says when he sees the pictures. "The bandages, they're very, ah, rugged."
What's worse is that he isn't even searching for a nice thing to say out of politeness. Copia means every word. Perpetua is great at taking pictures. That fucker.
He almost doesn't notice that V wants to take other pictures together, later. It hits Copia like a boomerang to the back of the head -- V wants to hang out. Doing what, the devil only knows, but Cardi has no idea how he feels about that. On the one hand: Sister was right, V is apparently curious about him, and did want to meet him, and he's not acting like a nasty conniving thief determined to cuckoo his twin out of his lifelong goals. He's telling him the ghouls missed him, and it isn't even a lie. But on the other, it's fucking V, who is still a thief, and Copia hates him.
Uncomfortable and guilty sits the knowledge that Cardi wrote a number of unkind, if uninspired, things about him on the internet, and Perpetua is here, and doesn't know.
"Eh," he says, finding a change of subject. "You can tell them. They will be here when they are here, and not a minute before." It almost comes out profound. "Besides, it's not as though I have anything better to do. I've already gotten a night's sleep, yeah? Pretty much?"
The next few weeks promise to be very, very boring. More boring than paperwork. But hey, the ghouls remember him, and are sending all caps messages about how glad they are that he's alive. He's glad that he's alive. That's not nothing.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2026-03-29 02:28 am (UTC)But a few weeks gets a growled, disappointed scoff out of Copia, a swallowed aww and an accompanying twitch. A few weeks is bad. He doesn't want to be stuck here for weeks, especially if V is going to insist on visiting him more than once. Copia's mouth turns down with more flexibility than he expects, almost as though he's in a medium that allows him to be a little more expressive, and he huffs unhappily.
"Well," he says, "Mr. Psaltarian has a lovely little place by the beach. However, he wouldn't let me use it, so, I selected a different one. Same beach. Different house. Close enough not to be too far out of reach, but far enough to say, decisively, 'if you need me for anything, ask someone else! I am on vacation! Ha ha!'"
He gives the explanation with a flicker of brightness as he recalls his brilliant plan to detach completely from the Ministry, but sobers quickly, as he remembers just how out of reach it is. Fuck.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-31 02:57 am (UTC)"Yeah, I know, man. It's a drag." With a sigh, he offers Copia a tight-lipped smile, sympathetic. "We'll get you out there eventually, eh? Better to get you all healed up before your little summer getaway." There's that urge to pat his shoulder again, or the side of his bed, or... something. Something more than standing here with no way to ease his discomfort.
"He wouldn't? Sheesh. What a guy." Perpetua neglects to mention that Psaltarian did, in fact, offer to let him stay at the beach house sometime this summer. (He politely declined. Heat and sun are not his friends.)
"I'm surprised you didn't want to go somewhere farther away. You know? Really, uh, escape for a while." He studies what little he can see of his twin's face, wondering if they will even look like twins after, well, all of this. "But you give the impression of... I don't know. Being a little bit married to your work?"
Well, it's kinder than calling him a control freak.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-31 03:40 am (UTC)A couple of things are happening in Copia's brain. One is that he's infuriated at V thinking he's married to his work. How dare he presume that Copia, whose entire life has been dedicated to the ministry since long before he was aware of his parentage, for whom being Papa was the greatest pinnacle of achievement he could imagine, and who stuck the tour out despite the administrative work being miserable and tedious and worse for coming after his time in the spotlight, is overattached to his job and would have had trouble truly disconnecting.
Another is that he's developed through experience a decent sense for when someone wants to approach closer and is holding themselves back, and while Copia isn't consciously thinking about it, he can tell Perpetua's awkwardness isn't because he wants to run. And Copia is given toward hugging himself, though not everyone in his family is the same, and it's sitting under Copia's skin like a pebble in his shoe that he hates V and hates V being nice to him and hates V saying stupid shit and there is also a part of him that wants contact, misses the attention he'd gotten so much of on the stage, and is lonely when held at arm's length by everyone he knows.
Fuck this guy. He doesn't know anything.
"I can escape," he insists. "I can -- I can leave at any time, you know. Well -- usually. Now, the circumstances are a-a little bit different. But I am not married to my work. I am free as a bird! A bird with many, many broken bones."
The irony of the current situation is not lost on him, and it only makes Copia insist more hotly that he can totally quit.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-01 02:54 am (UTC)So much of his own performance was, well, just copying his brother. It often felt inauthentic, because it was, and he'd felt like nothing more than a cheap copy because of it. He wonders now if Copia ever felt similarly.
"Okay, okay," he coos, shifting his weight between his feet. "I was not trying to accuse you of anything. It was just an impression." He's about to fold his arms over his chest again when his phone buzzes loudly a few times in rapid succession. With a sigh, Perpetua fishes it from his pocket, but his expression softens when he sees the messages that continue to blow up his phone.
"The ghouls are asking about you," he says, stepping in closer so he can show Copia his screen, where a group chat that had gone quiet since the tour ended is now getting more and more messages as they see Perpetua's viewing them. "Do you want me to tell them you're awake? Mm, and what about the Psaltarians?"
no subject
Date: 2026-04-01 05:12 pm (UTC)He peers at the screen, shifting just a smidge in the bandages and casts to get closer, paying in a renewed spike of pain to peer a little better. It's clearly text messages, though it looks more like a chat room - Perpetua has a chat room on his phone? With the ghouls? A lot of the chatty ones are names he knows, ones he toured with -- they are asking about him.
how is cardi?
is he awake yet
is he alive
can we see him
can we can we can we 🥺😭😰💀
can we pleeeeease papa
WE KNOW YOU SEE THIS
TELL US ABT CARDI
LET US IN
LET US IN
Copia looks from the screen, to V, then back again, then back to V. He's clearly seeing something unexpected, and doesn't answer right away.
"They...they want to see me," he says, and it stops being a question about halfway through. He'd thought they would have forgotten. Cleaved to the new papa and left the old one behind. Copia supposes he only has limited data; all his predecessors were dead when he took over. He is still alive, and apparently, they want to see him.
"I thought they forgot about the last Papa," Copia says. "You know. When they go to work for a new one."
Maybe, in hindsight, it wasn't forgetting so much as not wanting to talk about a brutal triple murder.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-01 06:36 pm (UTC)"Are you kidding? Of course they want to see you," he chuckles, giving Copia the gentlest pat on the shoulder. "They've missed you terribly. Do you know how much they talk about you? It's exhausting." A wink to show he's kidding. It mostly made him feel... jealous. Insufficient. Every bit the cheap knockoff of Copia that he worried so much about being. It wasn't like any of them hated him, but it was easy to tell this was an unpleasant adjustment.
"They did warm up to me, but I'm not you." Exhaling, he tries to put it out of his mind by opening his phone's camera, crouching next to the bed to awkwardly get them both into the frame.
"Say cheese! Or, well, just try to look like you aren't completely miserable?" Another forced laugh and he hits the shutter button a couple times before stepping away, inspecting the photos. They're not great, but they'll do. The point is proof of life.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-01 07:21 pm (UTC)...
"Well, how about that," Copia murmurs. It's nice to be remembered. To not feel quite so forgotten, so easily replaced in the little group that had traveled, eaten, slept, and performed together, like a family. Maybe. Copia isn't entirely sure, but family is what it had felt like when they'd passed out into their shared Chinese takeout at 4 a.m. on the tour bus.
But I'm not you.
Hearing it loosens a knot that's been sitting in Cardi's chest since he first began to suspect his time was coming to an end. It doesn't untie, not completely, but it doesn't feel quite as tight. He doesn't even hate the pat to his shoulder. V's gloved hand is warmer than he expected, even through the bandages.
"Eh?"
He looks up just in time to hear the click, and this time he recognizes it as a phone camera -- he'd been on the other side of those plenty of times. Copia comes out wide-eyed and staring unsettlingly, shell shocked and possibly like he's being held hostage depending on Perpetua's expression.
"Fuck," he says. And then-- "...how did it turn out? Let me see."
He knows it's probably going to be shit, he looks like shit right now, but vanity is a sin and Copia can't contain his curiosity.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-02 07:29 pm (UTC)Before giving his brother a chance to look, Perpetua sends off the selfies to appease the group chat. Inevitably they will be roasted -- he's told he takes "old man" selfies -- but this is more about, you know, proving he's alive and well(ish).
"Here," he finally says, leaning in with his phone to show him the pictures. "Not our best angles, I fear. But we'll have time to take better ones once you're a little less bandaged up, eh?"
Because, well -- he's really hoping they can get some quality time together before Copia runs off on his little beach holiday. Judging by the messages streaming in at the top of his screen, he's not the only one.
THANK LUCIFER
cardi!!!!! hi cardi!!!
tell him i say hi!!
WHOA what bones didnt he break???
🥺 is he ok papa???
This time he doesn't have to force his laughter. He's pretty damn fond of the ghouls himself, so making them happy is always a pleasure. He doesn't even feel jealous now, just... relieved. Whole, in a way. One great mystery of his life can begin coming to a close.
"Should I tell the Psaltarians you're awake? I can wait a little, if you don't want to be bombarded just yet."
no subject
Date: 2026-04-02 07:52 pm (UTC)What's worse is that he isn't even searching for a nice thing to say out of politeness. Copia means every word. Perpetua is great at taking pictures. That fucker.
He almost doesn't notice that V wants to take other pictures together, later. It hits Copia like a boomerang to the back of the head -- V wants to hang out. Doing what, the devil only knows, but Cardi has no idea how he feels about that. On the one hand: Sister was right, V is apparently curious about him, and did want to meet him, and he's not acting like a nasty conniving thief determined to cuckoo his twin out of his lifelong goals. He's telling him the ghouls missed him, and it isn't even a lie. But on the other, it's fucking V, who is still a thief, and Copia hates him.
Uncomfortable and guilty sits the knowledge that Cardi wrote a number of unkind, if uninspired, things about him on the internet, and Perpetua is here, and doesn't know.
"Eh," he says, finding a change of subject. "You can tell them. They will be here when they are here, and not a minute before." It almost comes out profound. "Besides, it's not as though I have anything better to do. I've already gotten a night's sleep, yeah? Pretty much?"
The next few weeks promise to be very, very boring. More boring than paperwork. But hey, the ghouls remember him, and are sending all caps messages about how glad they are that he's alive. He's glad that he's alive. That's not nothing.