Here Comes The Son (Ghost Band / Papa Emeritus fic)

I'm Your Rock, Baby. I Won't Back Down

Other than being regularly cleaned, not a single book, painting or piece of furniture had been moved since March 2020. It was still Nihil's office, it probably always would be. It didn't matter that he was dead, after all he still used it from time to time and this was one of those times. Although only there in spirit and while transparent with a faint golden glow, Nihil appeared resplendent in his white and gold papal robes with highlights in deep crimson. He was the very picture of authority, despite a fleeting hint of constrained immaturity. Although sometimes excitable, frequently grumpy but always able, it had always been Papa Nihil's way to be unrestrained, brazen, reckless and, in his prime, often oozing with easy and rakish charm. Even now, in death, they were aspects of himself that he still regularly tried to prove he possessed in his need to appear vital and charming to Sister Imperator.

When looking at Nihil's sons, these were the characteristics that had been most notably shared out amongst them, but sadly, never as a whole package to any single one. They had made more than adequate Papas, but none so good that they maintained the role for more than two years. Out of progeny and persuaded by Sister Imperator, Papa Nihil had reluctantly agreed to an interregnum and handed over control to his right hand man, Cardinal Copia five years earlier. Imperator had told him in no uncertain terms that she knew exactly what she was doing and, as usual, she had been absolutely right. Under her resolve and Nihil's guidance, Copia, later to become Papa Emeritus IV, had outstripped the success of all his sons put together in delivering the unholy message and Nihil had to concede and bow to her decision making again.

But now, the morning after Copia's disappearance, she stood in his office before him, wringing her hands with worry and concern for her protégé taken by force from a Ritual with no information forthcoming since. The worry lines on her brow and bags under her eyes told of a worry that belonged to someone who was deeply invested in someone who was perhaps more than merely a colleague.

Nihil loved Imperator deeply - he always had, from the first moment he had laid eyes on her at the party his friend had dragged him along to back in the early sixties. Once he had laid eyes on her, it was as if he could see nothing and no one else. She introduced him to the Ministry immediately and he had embraced it wholeheartedly, eventually agreeing to front the Ghost project with him as singer.

However, it was his foolish ways and uncontrolled libido that had been both his and their downfall. He had been unfaithful many times, with many women, usually with Sisters of Sin, but also with women in his flock. To Imperator's frequent humiliation he would bring another child into the Ministry to be raised by the Sisters. At least three of those occasions had produced sons, who would later become his heirs to his Papacy. Imperator had borne the persistent affronts with fortitude for the sake of the Ministry and love, but the cumulative effect of one insult after another began to weigh heavily on her.

Finally, Imperator herself had fallen pregnant and hoped to provide Nihil with a legitimate heir. Planning to tell him the wonderful news at a party after the Ritual at the Whisky a Go Go club in September 1969 in Los Angeles, her ire was first raised when a woman standing next to her on the balcony overlooking the stage lit up a cigarette. Attacking the woman by stubbing the cigarette out on her forehead for smoking near her and shoving her from the balcony may perhaps have been an overreaction fuelled by the overloaded hormones in her pregnant state but she had reflected later and concluded that she probably would have attacked the woman regardless merely for looking too long at Nihil.

On returning to the balcony, refreshed and ready to continue watching the show, her expression of pleasure crumbled as she saw him openly kissing two other women on stage right in front of her. It was by far the final straw and ended with Imperator leaving him and the Ministry without ever telling him of the baby growing inside her.