Archive of Our Own

Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, whose mercy is very great, rather than into hands of men.

Birdsong and light in the Sistine Chapel.

Thomas thinks he is dead, and then, in short order, he thinks it is a miracle. The hand of God, gentle and merciful, pulling him away from this awful place at the moment he makes the worst mistake of his life.

But it is Aldo’s hands that pull him to his feet, hold his face, and press their foreheads together.

“Thomas!”

The scream grabs his attention despite how the world wavers. He and Aldo both look up as it echoes through the Sistine. Outside, distant screams echo on forever.

Cardinal Angelés is crouched only half visible over his table. He has one hand raised in the air. It is covered in blood. “Cardeal Lawrence, por favor! Benítez - pressa!”

He is dazed and in pain. He is still not sure if he is dead. But he runs anyway.

Vincent Benítez lies pinned beneath a heavy wire frame, the white garments of his vesture quickly turning a darker red than his mozzetta, which lies flung out around his shoulders. His forehead is bleeding, and rubble and dust cover one of his eyes. The other rolls listlessly, without seeing, in circles. Blood pools from his stomach and his arm, which is trapped beneath a ragged edge of the metal shutters.

“Helfen, helfen!” cries another cardinal, not Angelés. “He will bleed out! Help!”

Thomas lunges over the table.

“Cardeal Lawrence, graças a Deus!” He crosses himself sloppily and frantically. “Obrigada, Santa Mãe Maria! Obrigado, Lawrence!” Angelés gasps as he collapses to his knees in shock, and begins loudly chanting in prayer.

Vincent wheezes as Thomas scrambles toward him, ungainly, climbing over the table instead of wasting the seconds it would take to dash around it. His free hand grasps the air erratically. His eye finds Thomas’s.

“Dear Vincent,” Thomas says breathlessly, falling hard to the ground beside Vincent.

“Help, help! He is dying!” cries the cardinal, hysterical.

“No,” Thomas distantly hears Aldo say, “no - he will not.” There is resignation in his voice.

It is not a choice, because Thomas does not think about it. It is not a choice because he always would have chosen this.

He takes Vincent’s hand. As always, he feels a rush of useless fear; will he fail this time?

But no. Of course not. His power has never wavered. It has been the one true constant for his entire life. It comes as easily as ever. As easily as breathing.

Vincent’s eye snaps to him, suddenly aware again, as Thomas grits his teeth, unable to fully stifle a groan of pain. He clutches Vincent’s hand, which suddenly clutches back, flexing with strength that was failing just a moment before, and pours his power into the man and keeps doing so. “The rubble,” he gasps out. “Move the rubble.”

Aldo reaches his side. “Help me,” he says with authority, guiding cardinals in. They are surrounded by their brothers, those who have not fled toward the heavy, locked doors and do not remain frozen with terror in their seats. A few respond more quickly than the others and circle Thomas and Vincent, grasping for the edges of the heavy frame. “On my count,” Aldo says, “straight up. Unus, duo - tres!”

Thomas and Vincent gasp in perfect synchrony as the metal is pulled from where it had been embedded in the flesh of his arm. They gasp in shared sensation, the wound dealt at the same time it is lifted. Through his slashed and fluttering sleeve, the surrounding cardinals watch firsthand as bone mends, muscle knits together, and skin heals. They watch the color return to Vincent’s pallid cheeks. The frame drops an inch as fingers slip away, numb with shock, and Aldo barks at them to focus.

“That’s it,” Thomas says. He does not let go of Vincent’s hand. His voice is breathless and tight, but he leans over Vincent as the cardinals hastily shunt the heavy mechanism off to the side, uncaring as it bounces and skitters across ancient floors. “My dear man, that’s it. Are you alright? Vincent?”

Vincent stares at him, mouth open and covered in blood - his own, although he does not look like a man who has recently bled buckets. His hand flexes.

The doors are thrown open.

+++

The evacuation is slow. Guards and police officers surround them, some from the Vatican’s forces and many brought in from beyond. Thomas knows this means that people must be dead.

The cardinals who have not left yet stare at Thomas from across the room. Monsignors, deacons, and attendants flit about, terrified and dutiful, but the cardinals stand still and stare. Some whisper. First responders descended upon Vincent due to the blood covering his cassock - what will he tell them? What will they think? How far will this spread? An EMT approached Thomas, as well. He suspected she had never visited the Chapel before from the way her eyes drifted to the scenes from Genesis above them with awe. She seemed to linger on the Separation of Light and Darkness. Thomas sympathizes. He can’t stop the thought either:

And God said, “Let there be-”

She tried to guide him to an ambulance, but he refused. He is the Dean; he cannot leave now. Not when this is his fault.

“Ah, Tomasso, always fretting and frowning.” He looks away from the paneled ceiling and directs his blankest, most English expression at Tedesco, the first of the cardinals since Aldo left to approach him. “Why so dour? Don’t you know that you, my friend, are a made man?” There is a sharp edge of cruelty outlined by disappointment in Tedesco’s voice. “Now that we know how this will go, I suppose I can speak my mind a bit. Cat, what do they say? Out of the bag and skinned?” Tedesco laughs demonstratively, bobbing his shoulders up and down. “I won’t lie for you, Tomasso, count on that. One measly miracle, and poof - we have a new pope! What would these people think if they knew all that you have done?”

“I hope they never do,” Thomas says.

“Ah, but you saved Benítez’s life. The cardinal from Kabul. I saw him walking around here somewhere, upright and unharmed, still covered in blood, though. In this scenario, he is Lazarus, and you are-”

“That is blasphemous,” Thomas snaps.

“Bah,” Tedesco says. “You accuse me ? Tell me, Tomasso, who do you think of when you pray? God, or yourself?”

Thomas walks away.

+++

Ray stares at him. Thomas covers his eyes with his hands. “Already?” he murmurs. “How far has it spread?”

“Rumors only, Your Eminence,” Ray says promptly. His words come automatically but he is still staring. He does not even hand Thomas the thick stack of papers he holds.

“No, Ray,” Thomas says. He is so tired. Before the conclave, he would not have been able to imagine being more tired than he already was - not since he finished chemotherapy, at least. But, he thinks, Man plans, God laughs. He must pray for forgiveness for that as well. “Not only rumors.”

Ray wavers. Thomas wonders if he is going to faint. “Eminence?”

He should leave right now. If he was smart, or perhaps just brave, Thomas would leave the Vatican behind entirely. He would worry about those one hundred and eight cardinals another day. “Come, Ray,” Thomas says. “There is much work still to be done. Before tomorrow.”

+++

“-these animals!”

Fifty-two deaths and counting. If Thomas had been anywhere else in the city, he might have been able to help. But he was not.

“My brother Cardinals.” He looks up. Vincent, like he always seems to be to Thomas, is outlined in light. Covered in dust and blood. Alive.

There were worse outcomes to this day. He reminds himself.

+++

He convenes briefly with his fellow liberals in a stairwell, though he dreads the prospect. Angelés shows up with Villanueva. Rocco and Sabbadin look shell-shocked, as though the bomb has left them deaf and blind and altogether senseless and they are still not aware of the world again yet - but Thomas knows it is not the bomb they are thinking of.

“You will be Pope,” Angelés says with an easy confidence, “as is right. As is God’s will.”

Thomas shakes his head slowly. “I have to disagree with you, Angelés.”

“My niece,” he says, quick and impassioned, drawing the attention of the blank-faced cardinals. “My niece, she is graduating in a month, Thomas, going to college in the Fall. She lives and breathes, loves, and prays because you saved her life.” Rocco’s eyes widen. Sabbadin finally looks up. “You are God’s will enacted.”

“No,” Thomas says. “No. I am just a man. And - and as Pope - you must understand that I - I can help, you know more than anyone. I can help more tangibly the less attention I receive.”

Aldo finally speaks up. “Do you honestly think there is a choice?” Thomas feels the statement like a betrayal. “Really. Honestly. Do you think that? One hundred cardinals personally witnessed the greatest miracle on Earth in a thousand years and you think you haven’t put the fear of God into them already?” He shakes his head, lips tight and arms folded. “It was already your game, Thomas. But you’ve just taken out all the other contenders.”

“No,” Thomas says. “That cannot be so. He - you all saw-”

“I’m afraid this won’t be a productive conversation,” Aldo interrupts, turning to the others. “I’m sorry for having called you here. I’ll try to visit each of you later tonight. We can get our stories straight then.”

“You saw,” Thomas says, as the other cardinals reluctantly trail off, casting glances backward, awed glances that Thomas doesn’t want, “I voted for myself, Aldo, I cast that last vote in my own name, and the world around me imploded.”

Aldo gives him a disgusted look. “You cannot earnestly believe that was God, blowing up the Sistine Chapel. You aren’t so important as-” But he cuts himself off.

Thomas’s hands are shaking as he wraps them around himself, trying to squeeze warmth back into his extremities. He remembers the grim acceptance he felt earlier, the call to duty when he told Aldo that he would be called John. It is gone from him now. All that is left is fear and the knowledge that he has been seen.

Aldo sighs. He paces a few steps and then stops, and his hand finds its way to Thomas’s shoulder. “You might try to claim that this was the first time, or that you had nothing to do with it.” Aldo shrugs and bends his head forward slightly. It is a poor attempt at comforting Thomas and they both know it. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Tedesco’s gonna rat you out. Angelés and Villanueva won’t be able to resist defending you. The others - well. There isn’t much point in lying now, is there? It is, technically, a sin.”

“Is it?” Thomas whispers. “I’ve been sinning my entire life, then. I cannot - what can I do, as pope? What - what can I do when they know ?”

“What you’ve always done?”

Thomas shakes his head. “What are - what are we thinking? This is - this is foolishness. Isn’t it? To even have this discussion? As if there are any options, really?”

He wants Aldo to tell him that it will be alright. Instead, Aldo is quiet for a moment, and then sighs. “It might be good to get used to the idea - John.”

“Don’t,” Thomas says, putting his face in his trembling hands. “Don’t.”

+++

One last night. Thomas stands at the edge of the turtle pond. It is shallow - not more than two feet deep, and not very wide - but if it were the ocean, he could imagine wading in. He would not need to fill his pockets with rocks. His waterlogged cassock would be heavy enough.

“May I join you, Cardinal Lawrence?”

He jolts and turns. “Vincent,” he says, although Vincent is the least startling person who could have appeared here tonight. “Yes, of course.” He shuffles to the side, although it is a needless gesture in the open courtyard. “How are you feeling?”

Vincent cocks his head to the side. Thomas winces. “Very well, Your Eminence.”

“Thomas,” he stresses.

Vincent smiles. “Thomas.” He turns forward and so does Thomas. They both watch the turtles, although at night they are mostly stationary. Some huddle close to one another, in little configurations like rock piles. Their shells mean it cannot be for warmth or softness, so why? Protection? Safety in numbers? It does not stop the occasional one from wandering off and getting struck by a car. “I have had a strange day,” Vincent says.

“I would imagine so, yes.”

“In some ways, it has made my faith stronger than ever. In others, I feel as if everything I thought I knew must be reconsidered.”

“I regret that,” Thomas says. “Vincent, I regret that very much.”

“Do not. It is a joy, at our age, to find new things, I think. To be reminded of how little we know. We were all faced with our mortality today, which makes the reminder all the more prescient. I, more than others.” He shrugs - an easy, weightless gesture. “I imagined that I was back in Kabul. There are explosions in the streets there, every now and then. I have often feared that they might target me or my flock. And then I have to remind myself that I should fear for any victim of such senseless violence, whatever their faith. So reminders are good things, I think.”

He has such a calm way with words. “I was very grateful for your speech,” Thomas says quietly. “It was very moving. I think… I think if today had gone somewhat differently, you might have changed a few minds back there. Maybe enough minds.”

“We are men of the Bible,” Vincent says. “The same thing has been true for two thousand years; we understand the power of words. You and I have moved each other with them.” He pauses and Thomas senses the direction he is turning. “They are their own miracles. You should not feel so alone in this world.”

“I will… I will try to remember that, I suppose.”

Vincent nods. “May I pray with you, Thomas?”

He gestures before them invitingly, at the dark pond and the sleeping turtles.

They stand together in silence, long past curfew, Vincent praying with his hands folded in front of his chest, and Thomas staring at the black water.

+++

“Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontificate?” Aldo asks him. He seems apologetic about it, at least.

Thomas takes only a moment to make sure that his words won’t break and his voice won’t tremble. “Accepto.”

He always feared this day would come.

+++

It is Sunday. He gives Mass in the Sistine Chapel to the members of the conclave. Adeyemi, Tremblay, Tedesco, and Aldo are among them. What must they think of him, truly? They accused him of being ambitious, but surely they know better now. He can see Vincent admiring the ceiling, now visible since the shutters are up. The broken window is not yet fixed.

John gives an order - his first order, as Pope - to the assembly in the disguise of a sermon about the values of secrecy and trust. He cannot make himself voice the words in front of a crowd of people - how his body shook, standing on the loggia, as he blacked out and recited from a place of practice and fear. He is sure the message gets across anyway and afterward, his brother cardinals trickle out of the room. No. Not his brothers, not any longer. This realization is a wound that Thomas didn’t see coming.

His first order of obedience will be a call for silence. Secrecy. Who will listen to him? These men who voted for him? But why? The only vote he truly believes that he has earned is Vincent’s. The others, he frets, cast their ballots out of gratitude or fear.

He must ignore the thought. He beckons Ray toward him and begins speaking, planning, and managing before he can think about anything. “I need a meeting with Cardinal Benítez,” Thomas says. “I do not believe it would be safe for him to return to Kabul - I do not see how it is at all feasible, and I must discuss with him how best we can tend to his flock from afar. A new cardinal might be in order, poor man.”

A strange, sharp expression cuts across the Monsignor’s face and draws Thomas’s attention back to the present moment, away from the half a dozen other malformed plans floating through his head. “Your Holiness,” Ray murmurs, “about - about Cardinal Benítez. There wasn’t time yesterday, and… I wasn’t… I am not sure if I should tell you but I did… I did uncover something about, well, about his medical issues, and now that you are Pope-”

“Ray, stop, please.” He holds a hand between them. “I have no need or desire to hear anyone’s secrets.” He pauses. “He has not committed a crime, has he?” It is like he can’t resist doing this to himself.

“No, Your Eminence - my apologies, Your Holiness. But no. No crime.” Ray looks a little pale. He clutches his papers to his chest.

“Then absolutely not,” Thomas says. It is an easy declaration. “In fact, you should speak about it with Benítez.”

“Sir?” Ray’s eyebrows have risen, but he has no hair to speak of for them to disappear beneath.

“Yes,” Thomas reiterates. It’s a good idea, he thinks. “Your skills are exemplary, Ray, but if you can find the information, then someone else can. I would like for you to talk it over with Benítez, and if he agrees, then see if you can bury it, for all I care. I am tired of scandals. I don’t want to hear about it anymore if no one is being harmed.”

“Certainly, that is not the case.” Ray’s eyes are soft. Slowly, his arms relax. “I think that is a very kind offer you have made, though… I suppose you don’t understand it.” He sketches a quick bow before Thomas can ask him what he means. “I will do as you say, Holy Father.”

He leaves him. There are other concerns.

It is Sunday. Usually, Thomas would spend a Sunday like this recovering from a trip to the local hospitals, finding and quietly healing patients there, the small, mundane miracles that he treated like a nine-to-five employment on the weekends. But he is not suffering from terrible headaches, from phantom muscle pain, from soul-deep exhaustion.

Because, he knows, he will never return to those hospitals.

Again, he turns to face The Last Judgement. What horrible irony. What a waste.

+++

Thomas affords himself no moments of rest. This is a good thing. It is easy enough to snag Aldo for Secretary, and he has faith in many of the Holy Father’s closest assignments (others, he has less faith in, but are not at the ends of their five-year mandates), but some replacements need to be made. The Vatican is short one Dean, and of course, it falls on Thomas to replace himself. There are dignitaries to meet and hands to shake. Arrangements to be made, sometimes for contingencies years in advance. Statements, press releases, fittings. It is endless.

This is a good thing.

Eventually, he reaches the corner of an afternoon that Ray has set aside for his meeting with Vincent. Thomas goes to his office feeling nothing but relief. This, too, will be work, but he is confident that it will be less tiresome than the rest.

Vincent is waiting for him and rises from his chair in front of Thomas’s desk - the same desk he has always had. Later, once he has a moment to breathe, he will consider moving offices to a place more suited to hosting foreign sovereigns, but for the moment, he cannot be bothered (has, in fact, point-blank refused) to uproot himself when there is so much that needs to happen in so short a time.

“Sit, sit,” Thomas says, rounding the desk to take his chair. “Perhaps I should add a ‘my child,’ to the end of that, but it does make me feel old. Silly, I know.”

“No one in the world would expect you to grow used to all of this overnight,” Vincent says.

“Then the world is more gracious than I thought. How are you, my friend?”

“I am well,” Vincent says. “As well as I have ever been. The Casa de Santa Marta is comfortable, and the Sisters are magnificent cooks. I have not been so taken care of in a long time.”

“Good, that is good. Thank you for making time for me.”

Vincent’s smile is lopsided and pleasant. “You are the Pope, now,” he says, gentle in a way that suggests he thinks Thomas needs a reminder. “I would congratulate you - indeed, I think there was no better outcome - but I know it isn’t something you want to hear.”

“No.” His voice is rough. “No, not so. But… I appreciate the sentiment. Your show of trust - of faith, I should say… is meaningful.”

“Trust,” Vincent murmurs. Thomas wonders if he is reflecting on his first papal Mass, but then Vincent leans forward and lays his hands, palm up, on Thomas’s desk. “I have another reason to thank you, Holy Father. I have spoken with Monsignor O’Malley, and he has told me what you requested he do for me. And he told me you instructed him to keep my secrets.”

“That is not what I called you here for, dear Vincent,” Thomas says. “I wanted to-”

“Nevertheless,” Vincent says, “I must insist. What you have done is kind, and it only increases my very high esteem for you. But I would tell you what Monsignor O’Malley learned. When I was in my late thirties-”

“Vincent,” Thomas cuts him off. “I don’t want to know.”

“Sincerely, I would tell you.”

“Then tell me in a month,” Thomas says. “Half a year. Never. If you do it now, I will always fear that you shared a part of yourself that you didn’t truly want to.” He swallows, his throat raw. Perhaps there is still dust lingering at the back of his tongue. “That you did it out of gratitude. Or reverence.”

“It is not that,” Vincent says, eyes dogged.

“Then wait,” Thomas says quietly. “That’s all I ask. I would like for us to become better friends. Once that has happened, I would be happy to hear anything you have to say.” Vincent stares at him, and Thomas is tired of stares. He takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Tell me, truthfully. Are you, to the best of your knowledge, causing harm to any person, be it physical or spiritual?”

“No, Your Holiness.”

“Have you broken any laws in Italy or the Vatican? I understand I can’t precisely ask the same question about Kabul, but I am sure you understand my meaning and can meet me halfway?”

“Yes, Your Holiness, I can, and no, I have not.”

“Good. Now, and I do speak as your Holy Father, so please, tell me and know that it will not leave this room - have you done anything to harm yourself? Or do you have plans to? Your body or, as it were, your immortal soul?”

“I am glad that you are my Holy Father,” Vincent says, “and no, no I have not and will not.”

“Good. That is good to hear.” He sighs, only half-relief. He brings his fingers up to his temples. “Vincent, would you like me to take your confession?”

“I have nothing to confess, Your Holiness.”

“Excellent. Perhaps we might get on with the meeting then…? I apologize sincerely for my rudeness and brevity - do let me know if there is anything else I can do for you - but… there is just so much to do.”

“There will be time, won’t there?”

“Vincent.” He stands up and walks over the window, waving for Vincent to join him. “There is… I greatly enjoyed getting to know you, during the conclave. I hope that we will soon come to consider ourselves friends. That being said, I cannot be blind to my position of power over you. We have known one another for hardly more than a week - perhaps the longest week that has ever been known by man, but a week nonetheless. If you divulged a close and personal secret to me, one that was not affecting your performance as a cardinal or a servant of God, then I would always fear that you came clean out of respect for my station.” He swallows. “Or gratitude, for… what occurred in the Sistine.”

“For which I am grateful.”

“And yet, I don’t want you to be. I would rather we be friends. You, keep your secret until you want to tell me, if such a time occurs, but do not feel any need to tell me. Otherwise, I don’t want to know.”

They survey the Vatican’s complex. The beautiful gardens. In a moment, Thomas will point out the elusive spot where one can just make out a corner of the turtle pond from his window. Vincent nods. “I can accept that your wisdom in this matter is great and that you make your decisions out of consideration for my person that I am not offering myself. So I am grateful, for the man Thomas Lawrence, and what he has said to me, here, this day. What is it you wanted to discuss?”

He takes a deep breath. “It is about your mission in Kabul.”

+++

Another white, European Pope. It’s a depressing state of affairs but predictable - it always seems to be the case that they elect so-called liberals, but only the ones who look like Thomas. The English Catholics are thrilled - least of all, his sister.

He calls her. “Hello, Katherine.”

There is a pause on the other end of the line, and then a sigh, already breathy with tears. “Oh my god,” she says.

“Well.”

“Shut up.”

(She has always been his older sister.)

“Do you understand that my kids went to school today and had to tell their teachers that they stayed home all week because their uncle is the Pope, the head of the church and the sovereign of Vatican City, and we had security people in and out of our house setting up cameras and outposts?”

“It is necessary-”

“I know it’s necessary, you tosspot,” she swears. “Jesus Christ.”

“Really, Katherine, this profanity-”

“Shut the fuck up, Thomas!”

He covers his smile with a hand and closes his eyes against tears.

They breathe together. “Why ‘John’?”

John I. Died of neglect, imprisoned, after a humanitarian mission defending people of a different Christian sect. “You didn’t even listen to my blessing, did you? Pope John the Twenty-Third. The conclave elected him as an unassuming moderate, and an old one at that. They believed that he would spend only a few years on the Holy Throne and would not do much of anything in that time. Instead, he called together the Second Vatican Council and forced the entire universal church into the modern age - he brought the Mass into the people’s vernacular. Their real languages, so that they could understand the word of God in all its forms and know what they entrusted their belief in. He named the first cardinals from Japan, as well as Africa and the Philippines, some of the strongest and most devout Catholic strongholds in the world. He… he believed in equality under God. He tried to see it through. Far from a perfect man, but… who is?”

“Ah, I see.” His sister is laughing. “You’re trying to tell Tedesco to fuck off, huh?”

And Thomas is laughing, too.

+++

“Do they know?” she asks.

Thomas swallows. “The cardinals do. The bombing….”

“I figured.” Her voice is tight, worried. “Thomas….”

“I know.”

She lets out a gusty sigh. “I’m just always worried for you. I guess at least now, instead of waiting for you to text me back, I could probably just open my news app to see what you’re up to.”

“Probably.”

“Thomas. Mom would understand. I know you think she didn’t want this for you - and she definitely didn’t - but she would have understood. If someone was injured, and you helped them, well. That’s just who you are. Literally.”

He loves her and misses her. “Thank you. Come to the Vatican, in a few months, when things have died down?”

“Winter vacation,” she says firmly. “Wild horses couldn’t keep us away.”

+++

“She sounds like a kind and formidable woman,” Vincents says. They are strolling around the gardens of the Vatican’s complex, having adjourned from a late-running meeting together, during which they accomplished nothing, but they pretend like they are not in the middle of an argument as to whether Vincent will be able to return safely to his mission. It is late at night, and deep within the Vatican, they are just sheltered enough from Rome’s light that a few stars twinkle overhead. Two guards follow Thomas at a distance. Vincent’s shoulders are relaxed and his gait is easy. Thomas left his quarters that morning feeling like he was about to shake out of his skin, but talking with Vincent is as easy as it ever was. Their secrets, some exposed and some still hidden, don’t sit heavily between them.

“Kind is a stretch,” Thomas says, “formidable an understatement.”

Vincent chuckles. “I know the feeling. I have four sisters.”

“Four,” Thomas gawps, “four. By God.”

“Indeed,” Vincent says. “But no, it was a blessing to grow up with them. To see their power and fortitude in all the ways we chose to express it. All five of us are of very different temperaments. Our poor parents.”

They walk a few more paces. “Turn here,” Thomas says, struck by inspiration.

They come to a little used walkway. The stucco walls are covered in dense crawling trellises and honeysuckles that shroud them entirely from view and flowers burst from bushes and short, blossoming trees. Their branches are so heavy with petals that they cover their heads like a canopy and almost brush their shoulders.

Vincent gasps in delight.

“You should remember this place,” Thomas says. His chest is warm with the delight on Vincent’s face. “But it is perhaps better to come at night.”

“Why?” Vincent asks, already kneeling on the flagstones to push his face into a bush and breathe deeply, uncaring of the dirt on his knees. Most of the bulbs are closed at the late hour, but the short pathway is still incredibly fragrant. Vincent breathes out a sigh of pure joy. “I would love to see them in the day. The smell alone!”

“Yes, it is wonderful. But, look.” Thomas touches Vincent’s shoulder lightly and points down the path. “Do you see?”

Vincent stays on his knees but leans back, pushing into Thomas’s touch as he peers. The walkway comes to a dead end, and lined against the far wall are rows of vertical wooden boxes, hidden in shadow beneath the foliage. “What are they?”

“Beehives,” Thomas tells him. “The Sisters manage dozens of them. They harvest the honey and, in high-yield years, they make mead. During the day, the entire walkway is covered in bees. It really gives your heart a start.”

Vincent laughs. “You are not dissuading me, friend!” he exclaims. “I love bees!”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Thomas says, the warmth growing and attempting to climb up his throat. “Many of the cardinals and visiting clergymen would disagree with you, however. I have seen more than one bishop running amok through the gardens with their hands above their heads - chasing off invisible demons, it looks like.”

Vincent laughs even louder. “Ah, those poor bishops,” he says. “Don’t they know sometimes it is best just to stand still?”

“Standing still,” Thomas says, unable to help the wistful cadence that enters his words, “is sometimes harder to accomplish than one might think.”

“Yes. Yes, I know that.”

They wander the little garden. “I told you, some time ago, that I was having trouble with prayer.”

“Is that still true?”

“I thought I understood God’s will when the explosion happened,” Thomas says. “I thought He was responding, punishing me for voting for myself: telling me that I had gotten it wrong. I understood that. But then… this. I doubt that this is what He meant.”

“I don’t believe that God leaves when you doubt Him.”

Thomas chuckles tonelessly. “I wish I had your faith, my friend.”

Vincent’s eyes are dark and solemn. “I admit,” he says, “I don’t quite understand how you cannot.” He looks down but Thomas’s hands are folded in the small of his back, out of sight. “I don’t understand how your belief in God can waver. In the church, yes. In our religion, even. But in God?” He shakes his head.

Thomas looks away. “I am not sure my problem ever was with God.” He sighs and shakes his head. “I’m not sure what my problem is at all, really.”

Vincent thinks for a moment. “Perhaps… I wonder if it goes back to your homily. What you said about certainty and doubt. Mystery.”

“I have had plenty of mystery in my life,” Thomas says. “I - I really did intend that speech in a purely theological context. I would hate to know what the cardinals think of it now.”

“You meant it,” Vincent says. “That is your problem, I think. It is, in some ways, easier to hold faith when there aren’t such certainties cast before us. Certainties raise questions. They make us despondent for lack of hope. They raise tempers when someone used to understanding is suddenly confronted with indecision.”

“And what is the solution, do you think?” Thomas asks.

“Doubt,” Vincent says. He reaches into a bush and plucks a single flower, the petals closed for the night. He holds it between them. “To remind you that, even if you know how things are, you do not know how they might turn out.”

+++

The inauguration is the most miserable day of Thomas’s life.

He had spoken with jewelers and artisans about the design of his ring. It is a small gesture, but Thomas will be the first recorded Pope to bear a seal drawn and crafted by women. Fittingly, his piscatory ring will bear a scene that illustrates John 21:15–17, Jesus and Peter eating together. Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

Jesus asks Peter, again and again, if he loves him, and Peter does, and so Jesus bestows upon him primacy over his flock: the church and all those belonging to it.

Thomas wears the ring as a reminder of his newly gained ancestry. Is it really that simple? Was love all that Jesus required of Peter?

Two hundred thousand pilgrims gather in the Vatican to watch his inauguration. Thomas feels numb to it. Public speaking was never one of his fears, despite his general self-consciousness. What does it mean to give Mass to a flock like this? He has always imagined retiring to a monastery or a small parish. Tending to individuals, learning their names, visiting their homes, and eating at their tables.

Thomas’s sermon is not unlike his homily. Aldo stands at his elbow and Thomas does not look back to see if he wears the same impressed but confused expression he did on the first day of the conclave. He is too far from his audience to see their faces, but later he will watch the footage - the joy, the confusion, the disgust. It is not radical to preach love and tolerance. Every Pope loves love. But they leave their love unnamed. Thomas speaks of refugees, of opening Rome to the homeless and the needy, of ecumenism, and beyond that, the dedication and admiration he has for all people of faith, and all people who find faith in the stones and dirt of their towns and the flesh and blood of the people they love. The greatest of these is love. It isn’t radical. It is radical, on the opposite end of the spectrum, that women cannot take Holy Orders at any level of clerical hierarchy: that an entire half of the church is allowed a sum zero participation in building the future that they will give birth to, or shaping the present that they live in. He cannot say this in so many words in St. Peter’s Square without being shot, but he gets his point across. Vincent watches. Aldo watches. Sister Agnes and the members of her Order watch. Perhaps the Late Holy Father watches him, and Thomas hopes he admires his bravery.

There are things he is abandoning. He must leave his miracles behind, now. Thomas does not understand how this could be the will of God, but he will do what he can.

+++

Somehow, he gets through the next month. That feels like a miracle in itself.

Including preparations for the conclave, it has been two months since Thomas attended to the patients of the Vatican’s and Rome’s hospitals. Every night, he prays for guidance and forgiveness for his guilt. Most nights he dreams of the room they kept him in when he first came to the Vatican, when the late Holy Father tested the validity and breadth of Thomas’s abilities. Usually, they are nightmares.

But, otherwise, he sleeps well. Surprisingly well. He feels-

Well, he feels fine. Physically, he feels strong, hale, and apt. His footsteps are lighter. His wrists don’t pain him. He has not had a truly serious headache in months.

It has been two months since he healed Vincent on the floor of the Sistine. What does it mean? Thomas prays. Tell me, please: what does it mean? How am I to know Your will? How am I to enact it if I don’t know what it is?

Does he feel God? Have his prayers returned to him? Since the bombing, yes. Thomas feels God like the sensation of something building on the horizon. Like hope. But he is mortal yet, and there is no hope of trying to understand God.

+++

Vincent leaves. It comes after the culmination of a long debate in the Vatican. Thomas wants to put his foot down, to order and force obedience, but every time he attempts to do so, Vincent looks at him before he can even open his mouth. And Thomas feels ashamed.

It is unsafe for Vincent to return to Kabul, but he insists. Thomas sees him off with as many precautions as possible. It pains him to see him leave, even though Vincent has promised that he will return.

“I knew what revealing my name to the public by attending the conclave would mean,” he says, calm and serene. “I prayed for guidance. Stay with my flock, or be present to choose their next leader? I made my choice. Staying in Kabul would have meant an early death, next year or in ten years. I was fine with this, but I felt guided by God to come here. Instead, I think I will become an old man with you, Thomas.”

“You have some catching up to do,” Thomas says, wrestling down the monstrous affection in his chest. There isn’t time for it, not now, not yet. He watches Vincent leave the Vatican and it rears itself up again, like something pushing at the back of his throat. Later, he soothes. Later.

Almost as soon as Vincent departs, a vicious rumor starts to circulate (Thomas assumes that its origin point is somewhere in Venice, although you can never track a rumor once it has grown legs and begun to run) that Pope John XXIV was once the subject of an exorcism. “A retired papal doctor, who asked to remain anonymous for his safety, claims that he witnessed part of the three-day event, which involved several of his colleagues and his direct superiors,” the evening news reports. Aldo watches with him, both of them silent and somber. “He admitted he doesn’t know why the right of exorcism was performed on Pope John, at the time only twenty-three, but said that he was sure the late Holy Father, Pope Paul the Seventh, was aware of the process. These claims are currently unsubstantiated, but three other past employees from Vatican City have also corroborated the story, including the former head of the managerial staff for St. Peter’s Basilica, where he and other sources claim the exorcism took place. The Vatican’s Press Office has not issued a statement over the alleged event yet.”

Aldo shakes his head slowly, a finger pressed to the front of his pursed lips, indenting the skin. “Not good,” he says. “But those people should all be under NDAs. We’ll sue and they’ll shut up quickly enough, and there isn’t a paper trail to follow or a way to confirm. But still, not good.”

“Would legal action make us look like we have something to hide?”

“Would you rather confirm it?” He says it sharply and sardonically and then shrinks away. “I’m sorry, Thomas. That was unfair. We must make it look like hearsay and demonstrate how fiercely we respond to broken trust and broken contracts. The doctor in particular. I guess he’s less worried about breaking the Hippocratic Oath now that he’s retired, but he’s an idiot if he thinks we can’t figure out who he is. There’s not that many guys still around from those days.”

“Forty-five years ago, just about,” Thomas murmurs. “I can’t imagine.”

Now, more than ever, in his nightmares, he awakens to find that he never left that room. He has never returned to it but a dull, lurking dread lingers in his chest sometimes when he thinks about it. He knows, like a child knows that a monster waits for them in the closet, that somewhere beneath the Apostolic Palace, it waits for him.

“Thomas?”

He looks at Aldo, blinking quickly. “Yes?”

Aldo sits down across from him. His voice is gentle when he asks, “What would you like to do?”

But Thomas can think of nothing.

+++

A nurse from the Ospedale Cristo Re comes to his defense rather vehemently. She says that Cardinal Lawrence had visited her hospital regularly for years, for decades, and all the nursing staff knew him. That he was kind and gentle, and that when he prayed for the people in the waiting room, they sometimes got up and left. She does not go so far as to call it a miracle. She says that he was able to offer holy guidance so powerful that it bolstered the sick and the injured.

Her intentions are well-meant, as she earnestly refutes all rumors of an exorcism in Thomas’s past, but of course she is wrong, and she only fans the flames higher. Some of the cardinals have progressed from muttering to speaking, not yet shouting, but despite his warning, it might be inevitable.

But what can they do to him? It is a stunning realization and Thomas has it on a random, unimportant Thursday evening. Will they storm the Vatican? No. Will they tear him from his post? Of course not. The world has, by and large, moved away from witch hunts, even though the Catholic church was slower to do so than most. Thomas sits on a throne in a tower on an island in the sea - the Holy See - and no one is eager to rip him from it, despite the rumors.

Not just rumors, of course. They are deadly true. Thomas first revealed his abilities to a bishop when he was a Deacon and felt compelled to heal a woman who had been attacked with a knife. His bishop brought him to the Vatican, where again, Thomas demonstrated his miracles before countless intermediaries and, finally, the Pope himself. He submitted himself to them, agreed to their tests of validity and holiness which, he was told, required utter isolation, submission, and obedience. They kept him in a locked, windowless room beneath the Apostolic Palace, and he did not leave the Vatican for six months. He did not speak with his friends or family. He prayed almost every hour of the day and yes, he was exorcised. But what further tests was he saved from? They did not, after all, starve him, to see if his body could subsist on nothing disguised as manna from Heaven, for Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. They fed him three meals a day, even when he could not eat. The Sisters brought them to him.

Sometimes, Sister Agnes comes to his room in the early evenings, soon after he retires, like she once did with the late Holy Father. Sometimes they play chess but, like playing against Aldo, she is so much more proficient at the game that it is not very entertaining for either of them. They read, also, usually in silence. (A few times before Vincent left, he had come to Thomas’s rooms and read for him, aloud - in Latin from Genesis, from a Spanish translation of the Divine Comedy, and once in English, Vincent’s soft voice turning verses from a volume of poetry over like rocks in a tumbler with the gentlest, tinkling sound, “Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper?”).

Sister Agnes is a very different presence, but she is stolid. Comforting. It is comforting to not be alone, and to not be looked upon with reverence. For years, she has done that for him, and so it isn’t more difficult now.

She closes her book and Thomas looks at her over the top of his glasses, which slide down another centimeter. He doesn’t need to prompt her to speak. “Things might get worse,” she says, “if you do not take action.”

“Would you advise me?” Thomas closes his book and sets it on the side table, and then takes his glasses off and sets them on it as well. He experiences a sudden and painful sense of déjà vu, the image of his rooms (the same apartment he has always had in the Palace of the Holy Office, where he has lived for more than ten years, but how the media loves to lambast him for living in one of the Vatican's palaces instead of the Domus Sanctae Marthae like his predecessor) suddenly overlaid completely with the memory of the Holy Father’s room. His nightstand, his journal, his glasses, covered in dust.

Thomas misses him.

This was never your intention, I know. You hoped for Vincent, didn’t you? Would you have accepted my resignation if you knew this would be the outcome?

“Do you remember,” Agnes says, “a warning I once gave you? When the doctor passed?”

Pope Paul VII’s doctor had been one of the men who tested Thomas’s powers when he was first brought to the Vatican (one of the men involved in the attempted exorcism that was meant to determine if Thomas’s powers had an unholy origin). The doctor knew intimately of his miracles. He fell ill and died while Thomas was in another country, traveling with the Pope. Sister Agnes had stood beside Thomas while he prayed over the deceased doctor, for Thomas has never been able to resurrect the dead, and when he had turned to her, she told how the doctor had begged and screamed in his delirium for Thomas to be brought to him, desperate for a miracle to save his life. The only thing that could save his life.

“Why would you tell me this?” Thomas had asked her then, eyes welling with tears of guilt and self-hatred.

“So you remember,” she had said.

“If I recall correctly, the warning was specifically that I should not forget,” Thomas says now, in his own room. He doesn’t like to think of the interaction. Agnes is so thoroughly, brutally herself - it gives her the poise needed to stand up to men like Tremblay and Thomas alike, but in that moment, one of the darkest of his life, he had wanted a friend, not an advisor.

“I have always wondered if you misunderstood me,” Agnes says, as serene and calm as ever. Thomas thinks of the caged bird in her office and wonders what she sees when she looks at it. When she hears it singing.

“How so?”

“I wondered, only after the fact, if you had taken my words as a condemnation. As a reminder that you had a responsibility to those men and had let them down.”

Thomas thinks it over and then nods. “Yes. That is what I believed you meant.”

“I meant,” Agnes says, “to remind you that when they died, they would blame you.”

Thomas meets her dark, steady eyes. “Is that better?”

“It is not your responsibility to save everyone and, forgive me Father, but I don’t think you are capable of such a task. Those men treated you abhorrently, whatever their reasons, but you still aided them whenever you had the chance. Still, what they came to fear more than anything was your absence. The doctor feared your absence more than his own mortality because he saw them as one and the same. But that is not true.”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Hmm.” She leans back in her chair as if to take him in from a different vantage point. “I have witnessed your sacrifices, Father. Your suffering. Only you can know what care you are called upon to give to the people of the world, and I would not deign to dictate it for you.”

“I would take your advice if you did give it,” Thomas says quietly.

Agnes doesn’t smile. “My advice is that of a watcher,” she says. “I have watched you. And I think, since long before you had as much power and safety as you do now, you have always risked yourself. And I don’t understand why you have stopped now.”

+++

Her words stay with him. Thomas takes a turn around St. Peter’s Square, standing in the relative safety of the popemobile (even the guards have succumbed to addressing the vehicle as such; in Italian, they call it the papamobile, which is even worse). The crowd pulsates with eager energy, screaming and crying and praying for him, but Thomas is separate, away from them, cruising in a car that is surrounded by eight suited security guards. He leans over the seat to the driver. “Stop.”

The screams grow louder as he steps down, the crowd pushing against the barriers in a way that makes Thomas fear for the people in the throng. He detests this but he smiles, as graciously and generously as he can, and reminds himself that whatever he believes, these people have a higher faith. Their lives might be positively changed by the sight of him. By the touch of him.

He touches their hands, gently. Shakes them, presses the palm of his hands to the bent foreheads of hysterically weeping women, takes a baby when it is handed to him, and (with a thrill of danger and mixed terror in the heart of a dense crowd, under a hundred cameras and a hundred thousand eyes), soothes the child’s aching gums. The baby, crying from pain and the noise of the crowd, stops once Thomas is holding them. It blinks sweet brown eyes up at him and his heart aches for something that was lost to him a long, long time ago. The mother and father look faint.

He walks along the edges, still behind the barrier, still surrounded by guards, but he looks into these people’s faces. His flock, he realizes. How long has Thomas longed for a flock? How long has he wished to be a shepherd? And yet now he sits inside his palace and resents them?

He touches their hands. He closes his eyes.

A sprained ankle, supported by a brace. A simple flu, past the stage of contagion, but which still makes sleep uncomfortable. The very beginning stages of glaucoma. Little things. His heart beats faster and faster.

Others that Thomas can sense but do nothing for: a badly broken leg, held together with steel pins and already operated on three times. Late-stage melanoma. A severe balance disorder caused by a stroke. At these people, he stops and utters a short prayer, holds their hands, and blesses them in the common way. Many of them cry. All seem grateful and exuberant. These things can make a difference as well, Thomas knows, so he tries to make a difference. 

Things that do not require healing: a teacher with dwarfism and a mobility aid scooter. Thomas laughs heartily and easily capitulates when the man asks him to bless his scooter first. A young woman who has undergone a voluntary hysterectomy - Thomas can sense recovery from surgery but she tells him the details of her own volition, a history of uterine cancer in her family, and he wishes her health, happiness, and long life, and tears tumble down her cheeks. A woman and a man wave frantically for his attention, crying out his name in loud, distinctive tones, uncaring of those around them who frown and glare.

Thomas stops in front of them and the woman seizes his hands.

“Holy Father,” she says, reverent.

The man taps her shoulder and signs to her frantically.

Thomas frees his hands from her grip and turns to the man. “The Lord be with you,” he signs slowly, carefully, in Italian Sign Language. He turns to the woman. “And also with you. Be blessed, and be happy.”

Their mouths hang open. The crowd screams. There is the unfortunate sensation of cameras, but Thomas ignores them.

The man’s signing is too fast and intricate for Thomas’s understanding but the woman explains, “Holy Father. Our - our mother met you once, when you were young, a long time ago. She toured the Museums with you, and you brought her to an audience with the Pope. She remembered your name and told us when you became a cardinal and now - and now!” She is crying. “She said you were very kind to her. She passed last year. Thank you.”

He places his right hand high on her brother’s shoulder and takes her hand in his left. “I remember her,” he says. “She was kind to me. She was happy.”

There is still good. There is still good to be done.

+++

“You have to be careful,” Aldo warns. There is an edge of desperation to his words. “There are already enough rumors. The cardinals - they’re not going to keep it to themselves forever, and certainly not if you’re out there adding fuel to the fire.” The look in his eyes - he is not warning Thomas but begging him.

“I know,” Thomas says. “But I cannot do less than I already am.”

+++

Thomas establishes his cabinet. He travels to the Philippines and holds Mass for a crowd so large it nearly gives him a heart attack. He returns to the Vatican and, in a way, it still feels like coming home. Thomas continues mourning the late Holy Father and tries to make peace with the Holy Fathers who came before him. He calls his sister and her children. He carries on - it would be hypocritical not to.

Then Vincent returns. He returns safe and whole, having led the newly elevated Cardinal Marudo into the guidance of his flock, who are also whole, and who he will continue to ensure the safety of, from far away now, but with the full support and backing of Thomas’s pontificate.

Thomas is so overwhelmed that he folds Vincent into an embrace.

Vincent holds him as well. Thomas does himself the favor of not asking if Vincent missed him and instead decides that he can read the emotion in his friend’s eyes.

He names Vincent the Cardinal Prefect for the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. There is no man better suited for the job, not in the entire world, and he is relieved that the former prefect decided to step down in his old age. The Sister who acts as Secretary of the Dicastery is brilliant and efficient and she will be an excellent teacher for Vincent as he settles into the bureaucratic role. To it, he will bring personal, on-the-ground experience, lived empathy for the people he serves, and knowledge of places and people that surpass almost any other cardinal’s. In this position, Vincent will be responsible for the care of immigrants and refugees, the sick and the dispossessed. He may not want to admit it, but like all of them, Vincent is getting old. He has imagined that he would die in a war zone, a calm martyr for his faith, and more so one for the people he has protected, sheltered, and aided. Those he has tried to make meaning for out of faith.

“But that was not God’s will,” Vincent admits easily. “And perhaps it was vanity all along.”

In the Vatican, Thomas tells him, he can still make a tangible difference. He promises that he and Vincent will learn this lesson together.

They walk through the gardens again. 

Vincent’s unwanted reverence for Thomas has faded into the kindness he bestows on everyone. His time in Kabul has done him well. He seems settled in his skin and ready, almost eager, to begin a new stage of his life - so different from the one he was leading, but not one without purpose, and one that will still benefit the people he loves so sincerely. Thomas wonders what changes Vincent sees in him.

They discuss the rumors. The purported miracles. News is spreading outside of Rome and outside of Italy. Aldo worries, his sister worries, Angelés preens. Vincent asks him, “Why?”

“I have spent all my life in secrecy,” Thomas says. “From the first time my mother was aware of what I could do, she made sure I kept it a secret. My father… we never told him, before he passed. Secrecy breeds fear, my dear Vincent. I think this is always true.” He closes his eyes and listens to the breeze through the branches, the distant lapping of water, the muted hum of bees shuffling within their hives. “When you hold something inside so fiercely that the worst outcome is revelation, then of course fear is the natural consequence. You begin to fear yourself, I think, for you are the secret-bearer. The secret itself, as well as the gates and the locks that bind it. In another life, I might have been content to hold it forever, if I had better ways of expressing it.” He looks away. “But not in this one.”

“You will be sainted when you die.” It is stated matter-of-factly, but it cuts much deeper than Aldo’s worries. Vincent has seen straight through to the center of Thomas. To his deepest fears.

“At least I’ll be dead.” He says it with a light-hearted, easy air to the statement that there would not have been three months ago. Three years ago. Three decades ago. He has been as honest as possible by saying that this choice - not so much a choice, but the path that he is carried on has brought about a lightening of his soul. “I think it would have been enough, my dear Vincent, if only you knew. Enough alleviation. But if the only way that I might continue contributing to the world is to allow myself to be the subject of speculation… then the opposite is not worth it.”

“This is why you healed me in the Sistine Chapel. Because of that innate goodness.”

“No.” Thomas shakes his head. “No - honestly, and I do hope you don’t take offense to this, but I didn’t even truly think it through when I healed you. I wasn’t thinking of the outcome.”

Vincent smiles, small and ephemeral. “That is the same thing, Thomas.”

“I see what you’re getting at, but no. Yes, I had to heal you. But the moment after the explosion, I promise you I was not thinking of the consequences. I was not ready then, without the pressure I am now under, to reveal a secret. I had not even realized how much it was eating away at me - my secrets, and my fears.”

“I know what you mean,” Vincent says. “It was not so long ago when we were discussing my secrets. I should apologize again, when you were so gracious about not asking me to divulge my truth, when you had no option but to act and reveal yourself to so many.”

“Vincent.” He stops, mortified by himself. “My dear man! I had earnestly forgotten all about the conversation - no, I apologize entirely! I did not mean, in any way, to reference your personal life, particularly medical issues - oh, I cannot believe myself! It slipped my mind. I was thinking too much that day of Kabul and, well, and other pressing matters. Please, ignore me, ignore everything.”

Vincent laughs at him - this easy man, who laughs without thought at the Pope, the sovereign of the Vatican, spiritual heir of St. Peter. “Halfway through your speech, I began to suspect that you didn’t recall,” he teases. “I hope you remember, now, everything else you told me that day. That meeting is very dear to me, Thomas, so I want you to remember it.”

They begin walking again, taking the same familiar path between the turtles and the bees. “I told you that if you wished to share your secret, I would have you wait. Wait until we had a greater familiarity with each other, and I knew you were not speaking to me as your Pope, but as your friend.”

“I consider you my friend,” he says. “I consider you more than that. I consider you often, in fact.” He chuckles easily at the admission, although it is shocking for Thomas to hear anyone speak so freely. “In Kabul, I surprised even myself with how often my thoughts drifted to you.”

“Vincent, my dear,” Thomas murmurs.

“The homily you gave before the first ballot,” Vincent says. “You spoke of certainties and doubt. I was very moved by what you said. You were not looking at me, but I felt as if you had peered into my soul and extended a hand to comfort the spaces in me that most needed it.”

Thomas takes a deep breath. “Tell me.”

Vincent does. They continue walking in silence while Thomas turns the information over in his head. He lets it sit in his stomach, and then settle in his heart. “The late Holy Father knew,” he repeats.

“I told him at once. I attempted to resign. My guilt was very powerful at the time, before I came to understand myself better. He counseled me and saw me through to the other side. We considered a laparoscopic hysterectomy - that was the purpose of the medical travel that Ray discovered,” he says, “but I decided against it. I am what God made me.”

“Yes,” Thomas murmurs. “Yes, you are.”

“And so are you, Thomas. I have had much more time than you to consider our states. How we reflect one another, and complement each other. There is a bright beauty in seeing yourself reflected. The best parts of you. I see miracles everywhere I go - in people, in places, in myself, and in you, when you are gentle and kind, and when you are thoughtful and slow and careful with all people. With me. It is easy to see miracles when you seek them out.”

“That is beautiful, Vincent.”

He tilts his head. “If I had gone through with the operation,” he says, “I wonder if you would have been able to restore my body.”

Thomas takes a moment to consider this question. “I am not sure. But I would have tried, if you asked.”

Vincent smiles.

+++

When Thomas was a child in Catholic School, they taught his class about saints and sainthood. Thomas, keeping his eyes down and flicking through an encyclopedia on the subject, had come across a picture of Catherine of Bologna’s five-hundred-year-old incorruptible body on display in the chapel of the Corpus Domini in Italy. The photo, the ostentatious room, her corpse sitting upright on a throne, skin blackened from exposure to wax and smoke, frightened him so greatly that he gasped and slammed the book shut, and could not find the words to explain what had happened to his frustrated teacher. The photo haunted him and gave him nightmares so terrible that he woke up sweating and with vomit on his pillow. He prayed for forgiveness to Catherine of Bologna, that she would not take offense at his illness upon seeing her Earthly body.

He has never been to visit, but sometimes it has tempted him. As a reminder.

Saint Rita of Cascia is also on display in her basilica. She lies in her habit in a glass coffin for visitors to kneel and pray before. In life, she is said to have been such a favorite of God, her prayers so powerful and heard, that she could restore sight to the blind, and cure smallpox and the less romantic diseases of chronic hemorrhoids and infectious diarrhea. When her sons sought vengeance against the murderer who killed their father, she prayed for God to stop them and He did; they died of dysentery before they could endanger their mortal souls. Was she content with this outcome, Thomas wonders? Is she content to lie forever in glass, having outlived her family, where pilgrims kneel before her and swear that they have seen her floating, her eyes opening, shifting her hands into a more comfortable fold over her abdomen? Does her face itch where her collapsing cheekbones have been filled in with wax?

He imagines she is more comfortable than Saint Catherine of Sienna. A Doctor of the Church, a Patron Saint, one of the great theologians and writers of her time, she starved herself to death through fasting - anything can be overindulgent. Her body was buried in Rome but the people of Sienna wanted to inter part of her in her native city, so they stole into her tomb and took off her head to smuggle out of the city. It is on display in the church of San Domenico. Others are less intact than that still: Thomas has personally seen Saint Apollonia’s tooth, on display along with the pliers that ripped it from her mouth when she was tortured and martyred. Poor, young Saint Lucy has traveled across Europe and America in bits and pieces, reassembled and taken apart again and again.

People pray before these saints. They claim they are healed before them.

Thomas wonders if this is the fate that awaits him.

They will claim that his body smelled sweet and they might pose his mummified corpse in a glass sarcophagus or upright in a room behind bars. If he is unlucky, his hands and finger-bones will be cut off and placed in bejeweled boxes and carried on tours around the world. Will they still heal, after he is dead? It has always been the work of a thought to heal another, not just his touch, but once there is no thought, will it emanate from him? How could he refuse such good works, if his soul was in Heaven? Surely then, it would hurt him no longer.

A glass box, not unlike a windowless room, but smaller.

Thomas will not be buried in the same graveyard that his parents and grandparents are. Even if he requests that his remains be interred in England, that cemetery will not be protected enough from grave robbers and desperate people. Will he rest beside his sister? Her children? He might have requested that she be brought to Rome to be entombed with him, but she has not been a practicing Catholic in sixty years and it isn’t what she would want.

The body should not matter, Thomas reminds himself when he prays for guidance. It is an invention of Earth. And wherever it lies, the scripture tells him that it will be brought to Heaven one day, whole and unrotten. It should not matter.

These are the losses that Thomas contends with in the first six months of his papacy. There are little losses and big ones. But, so surprising that it takes him weeks to understand, new freedoms emerge as well. Freedoms that he dreaded too much to understand.

“The Healing Prayers of Pope John.” Every few weeks, it makes headlines in a different major newspaper somewhere in the world. No evidence, but countless testimonials pour in after every appearance he makes. Some he knows are real, some he is certain are fabricated, and others are a grey area, even to him: a woman in the Philippines was in a terrible car accident twelve months ago and has been undergoing strenuous and painful physical therapy again to regain all manner of motor skills, from holding utensils to walking with an aid. In an interview that Thomas watches guiltily, rapt, she says that she had not made any progress for months as severe depression and chronic pain had overtaken her, even reversing previous goals. “I was in the crowd at the Luneta, listening to him give Mass, and for the first time all year, I felt God’s mercy,” she said, surrounded by hopeful friends and family who touched her shoulders and her hair. “Pope John said, ‘God does not want us to suffer and he does not send us suffering needlessly; he does not want us to toil and he does not make us toil needlessly. When we do these things, and when they are difficult, we learn through the doing itself. We learn about ourselves and each other. When we face suffering, not with pride, but with humility, dedication, and empathy, we gain the power to learn the most difficult lessons of all.’ He recited from Corinthians.” 

She tilted her head back and the hands holding her moved as well. “‘We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed… we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’” Her eyes opened again, dark in color but bright and alive. “I knew he was speaking to me. It gave me courage and strength. It dulled my pain. It was what I needed to return to therapy and to make progress again. I am learning to walk again, through the prayers of Pope John.”

Her story and a dozen others make headlines. People watch him as he passes, but they would do that anyway. He, Aldo, Vincent, and Sabbadin ignore any mention of it in meetings: the Vatican Press Office has been instructed to give no comments. No one breaks down his door. No one traps him in a little, windowless room. He is not as free as he might have been in another life, but he knows what it feels like to be imprisoned, and this is not quite that.

Prayers, Thomas thinks, not hands.

+++

There is a commotion outside his office and the doorknob rattles as though someone has collided with it. Thomas looks up, startled by the sound of shouting, and feels a shot of fear that causes him to stand and anxiously back away. The Swiss Guard are always stationed outside of whatever room he occupies, but if they are being attacked - unlikely, but possible, and Thomas can hear indistinct raised voices through the heavy oak door - he could help, although his safety protocols stress noninterference. He takes a step forward. Then someone knocks and the door opens.

“Sir,” the guard says, peering around, looking irritated and confused. “I apologize for the interruption. Cardinal Benítez attempted to enter your room without announcing himself and is quite insistent that he see you. He has-”

“Of course!” Thomas says loudly. “Of course, always! Vincent is always welcome in my rooms, please, in the future, let him pass. Always.”

The guard frowns but says nothing, only allowing the door to swing open, revealing a chagrined Vincent. “I am sorry for the misunderstanding,” he murmurs to the guards. His cassock is terribly rumpled and Thomas sees the second guard let go of his upper arm. Thomas pictures Vincent dashing around the corner in a dead sprint and colliding straight into the door without paying any heed to the armed guards on either side of it. “I was in a rush,” he says. “Thomas, would you please - I found her, and she is gravely injured.”

He holds out his hands. Held between them is one of the Late Holy Father’s turtles. Her shell has been split almost in half, exposing a pink interior shocking against her dark coloring, and she wiggles weakly in Vincent’s grip.

“Yes, yes of course!” Thomas says. He steps forward, glances at the guards. “Come in, come in,” to Vincent, who acquiesces with a look of relief, and, “Thank you,” to the guards before shutting the door. He sees them exchange a glance.

“She was struck by a bicyclist,” Vincent says miserably. He has placed the turtle on Thomas’s desk, on top of the paperwork he was sorting through, an investigation into the eight cardinals who had accepted Tremblay’s bribes. The turtle squats on the papers, smearing dirt and damp mud across them. Vincent doesn’t seem to notice. “I brought her to you at once. You must heal her, Thomas,” he demands, one hand resting high on the slope of her broken shell.

Thomas stares at him, then at the turtle. He steps forward and puts his hand next to Vincent. The pain sings through him like always (stranger coming from an animal, in a way that makes Thomas shiver slightly, because it is certainly odd to know what it feels like for his shell to be cracked) and then soon fades. The turtle stands up at once, moving under their hands as her head swings back and forth in confusion. Or joy, perhaps.

“There.” Thomas’s heart is racing with fondness. He smiles helplessly. “All better. Thank you for bringing her to me.”

Vincent stares at him, looking a little wan, and not just from his sprint across the Vatican. “I should not have demanded you to do that,” he murmurs. “I have no right to ask that of you. Forgive me.”

“Dear Vincent,” Thomas says, “I am glad to do it. You have every right.”

“You are the pope,” he says, as if he had forgotten entirely and just remembered. “I shouldn’t make demands of you.”

“If there is one man I trust unequivocally to order the throne of St. Peter around, Vincent,” Thomas says, raising a finger to stroke the curious turtle’s neck, “it would always be you. I voted for you, in the final tally, after all.”

“Then perhaps,” Vincent says, “the vote did not matter as much as would seem. Maybe it was simply God’s will that we always be available to guide and counsel the other, to work together. To be together.” He slides his hand up the shell until it rests on top of Thomas’s fingers instead, both of them on top of this living, breathing animal, who lives and breathes because they decided to help it.

“I have been meaning to ask you a favor,” Thomas says. “If you would accompany me on… an errand.

Vincent smiles and shakes his head. “There are no favors between friends.” The final word hangs in the air between them, almost teasing. Hopeful. Something to look forward to. “I would go with you anywhere.”

“We should return her to her brethren first,” Thomas says, sliding his hands beneath her to pick her up gently. The paperwork can wait. Or be reprinted.

Vincent takes his wrist. “The guards,” he says apologetically. “I am sorry, I did not think. The guards will notice if you walk past them with her healed.”

Thomas glances at the door and at the turtle and then rests his eyes on Vincent. “You know, I’m not sure that matters as much to me as it once did.”

+++

They send the turtle off swimming as the sun sets and Thomas leads Vincent across the complex to the Apostolic Palace. He asks the guards to stay behind and they agree now that he is within his residence. “To your rooms? The papal apartment?” Vincent asks, brow furrowed.

“No,” Thomas says, his throat dry. “No.”

He leads him through the kitchen, then past the offices of the non-clergy who work within the Palace, then down a small stairwell into the basement level. The hallways are thin and the air is dry and stale. Thomas’s breath quickens and his fingers are cold and trembling. He pauses at the end of a hallway, looking down the corridor. Most of this space is storage now, little of it used, but he feels like a child peering through a closet, looking for but terrified to find a monster within. Vincent takes his hand and through it, Thomas finds the strength to keep walking.

Toward the end of the hallway, Thomas stops in front of a door that looks much like all the others. But he remembers this one. He places his palm against it, breath catching. It is not locked and opens with a push.

The room beyond it is entirely bare. The furniture was all removed at some point in the intervening forty years and no one refurbished it. The dark wooden floors are scuffed. Mustard-colored stucco walls are rough under his palm. No windows, just a single door leading into a spartan bathroom, the plumbing fixtures the only thing left behind in the place. His breaths stutter but Thomas walks inside, Vincent trailing behind. “When I first came to the Vatican,” he begins, and tells the story.

He has only told the story of his stay in this room a handful of times. Mostly to new popes, in a preemptive attempt to prevent them from thinking that any further testing of his abilities was necessary. He thinks of Sister Agnes, when they were both young, trying to comfort him in her stoic, unimpassioned manner. He thinks of Aldo’s face the first time he heard the details, the sneer, and the despair. He remembers the sound of his sister’s voice over a crackling telephone line when he was released, the greatest feeling of relief in the world.

Vincent holds his hand through the retelling. The other hand, hanging limply at his side, curls into a tight ball. Thomas does not need to explain to Vincent the damage that their Church has inflicted on individuals, nor the measures it is willing to take to see its vision of the world made manifest. He knows.

He finishes his tale. The room seems both smaller and larger than he remembers it, although, without the furniture, Thomas cannot tell which delusion is more accurate. He never scratched the days into the walls and he never pried up loose floorboards to hide letters for Aldo or his sister. With the furniture gone, it looks as if no one has ever been here. It is less than a hallway to an inconveniently located bathroom. It is a waste of space.

Vincent’s gentle fingers reach around Thomas’s fists and slowly draw out the tension in them, pulling fingernails from where they were digging into his palms. “It is what it is,” Vincent says, glancing around the room again, and then turning his back on it. “And it is yours to do what you want with.”

“What could be done?” Thomas asks, shaking his head. “I needed to confront it - it has been on my mind for some time now - but it… this is all there is. It is an empty room. The door wasn’t even locked. It cannot harm anyone now.” Nevertheless, he glances toward the door.

Vincent raises his right hand and kisses his knuckles, then his left. “Will you be alright for a moment?” he asks. “Not more than a minute, I promise.”

Thomas agrees and watches him leave but as soon as Vincent turns the corner outside the door he feels his throat swell. His feet carry him forward without a conscious decision until he is in the hallway, not in that terrible room, and he leans against the wall across from the door. Tilts his head back and breathes.

Vincent is back as swiftly as he had promised, carrying a red tool bag. Thomas raises an eyebrow. “I saw it beside the stairs,” Vincent says, setting it down and beginning to fish through it. “I promise I will return it precisely where I found it as soon as we are done,” as if that was Thomas’s concern.

Vincent pulls a dusty flathead screwdriver from the bag. He opens the door all the way so that the hinges are exposed. Thomas stands back and watches as, one by one, Vincent loosens the screws, detaching the hinges from the doorframe. Some are old and rusted and he has to take the flathead and carve out deeper and more precise indentations on the heads before he can turn them. The hinges are old enough that even with the screws removed, they stay affixed to their places in the recessed wood. The door hangs uneasily in the frame as Vincent maneuvers himself inside, grabs either side, and pulls out. With an odd, cracking sound, it comes loose, but he has prepared himself to hold the weight and carefully maneuvers it to the ground. He returns to the tool bag, selects a different screwdriver, and kneels in front of the door. Thomas watches with wet eyes as he unscrews the handle and then slips both knobs out, one at a time, before dismantling the lock entirely. 

Vincent pockets twelve screws: six from the hinges and eight from the lock and door knobs. Was it really twelve screws that kept Thomas in there for six months? But, of course, it was never really the door that kept him trapped. Vincent moves the door out of the way, so it is hidden inside the room. A passerby, which is rare enough in this part of the Palace, might look at it and see only an archway, intentional, if unused. It could take years before anyone has a reason to enter the room and might notice the door leaning against the wall, and then years after that for a report to be filed or a maintenance team to bother reinstalling it.

But Thomas will never return here, so even if it is fixed next week, in his mind’s eye, he will always picture it like this.

A doorway with no door. Vincent standing in the frame, watching him. He takes a step forward and, when Thomas holds out his hand after a silent prompt, gives him one of the cool, brass door knobs.

He shrugs, lightly. “A symbolic gesture,” he says and Thomas cuts him off.

“A beautiful one,” he says. He drops the knob carelessly to the floor and Vincent does the same with the other hardware. Thomas steps forward and takes Vincent’s hand. “Thank you.” He is overcome with the urge to wrap him in an embrace and he decides that he will try to follow these urges from now on, because they must come from somewhere. He presses his nose to Vincent’s hair and breathes in the soft, clean scent. Vincent’s arms around his waist are warm and strong. Over Vincent’s shoulder, he can still see into the room now but its power is lost. It was always about a decision, Thomas realizes. A decision to stay or leave. The door was a psychological deterrent more than anything else, a reminder of who had closed it and the authority they held over Thomas, a respect for that authority and a fear of what he might suffer without its protection, but it is gone now. “Let’s go outside,” he murmurs. The embrace is long and too tight but he holds it for another moment and Vincent doesn’t object. “Let’s go outside. I would like to visit the turtles and see the bees and the stars. Maybe it’s a foolish notion, but I miss them.”

“You will never miss them for long,” Vincent promises.

Another decision. Thomas chooses to believe him.