La Cantarella
Title: La Cantarella
Author: july_july_july
Recipient chocca2
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Het
Spoilers: 5.10
Warnings: Sex of dubious consent, graphic unpleasantness, non-graphic references to incest (not in the Winchester family), abuse of the Universal Translator, anachronisms, and pernicious misappropriation of history . If you have any concerns, please do PM me .
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. And that’s probably for the best, really. No offense intended to any actual dead person or their surviving relatives. A work of total fiction.
Notes: Thanks to pdragon76 for the beta and cattle-prodding gentle encouragement.
Summary: In heaven all the interesting people are missing . -Nietzsche
La Cantarella
I always wanted a good father.
I suppose that's the reason He approached me. I sat in that room for what felt like weeks, nothing to do but wait until someone broke the salt ring, the seal. I wasn't nervous or bored or even angry that He was keeping me waiting. Anything was better than Hell. I slept. I slept for what felt like years. Deep, black, dreamless sleep. I did the same thing when my first husband ran away with his tail between his legs--I believe that is the expression they use nowadays. He went, tail between his legs, then the divorce, and I drew the curtains and slept.
I didn't expect things to be better. Just different. When I woke up, He was sitting there at the edge of the seal. The body was looking a little worse for wear. Sucks when you have to pick off the rack. I wonder if He knew that I’d met the real deal, that I’d been inside His own tailor made meatsuit.
"Good morning, Lucrezia," He said.
"Don't call me that," I said.
>>>>>
It’s somebody’s birthday-they told me that, right? I think they told me that. It’s somebody’s birthday here, in the dark. It even smells like fucking cheap wax candles and I figure out somebody’s actually lit some, like a real birthday. Like a real birthday in Madison with a cake mix I had to make without eggs so it was all silty but he looked at me like it was a real cake and said you got my favorite color candles.
“Good morning, vessel,” Meg says.
I wish it were Ruby. I wish it were Ruby, because her hard-on was for Sam and not for me and this girl-this whatever used to be a girl, it wants me. And she’s had me every other way but one and it’s somebody’s birthday.
“Don’t call me that,” I say.
Her hands ghost across the button fly of my jeans and-shit-it’s not my fault. It can’t be my fault. It’s been a long time, a really long time since that garden and not-Sam with his faggy white shoes and crunch. There’s no hope, I’m hard. Jesus Christ. She’s had me every other way but one.
“Buon compleanno, Dean.”
>>>>>
"Lucrezia. Come here."
I was not sure if, on that day, he was going to be the Pope or my father. The Pope was a dignified figure, pious and devoted. My father was a cutthroat son of a bitch. Alexander VI and Rodrigo, names he wore like perfectly tailored clothing, faces he could take on and off with ease, equally comfortable.
He called me before him and I stood, unquestioning, beside his chair. There was a sort of raw look about him, one that you rarely saw outside my family: he didn't care what other people thought of him, only what he thought of other people. I lifted my chin a little. My hair was barely past my waist then, but I brushed it to a high sheen each morning. When I held my head, just so, it caught the light from the window. I practiced that every day.
"Very good, Lucrezia. Very well done."
"Thank you, father." I reached up to my hair and pulled a small strand across my flat chest, feigning coyness as I looked towards the marble floors. A technique gleaned from his newest, youngest whore.
"You take after your mother, thank God. Very beautiful. And growing fast. Soon, you will be ready to assist us in our endeavors."
For a moment, I was so proud I thought I would burn up right there, and leave a pile of greasy ash in my silk slippers. All I ever wanted.
"I," he said magnanimously, "I am going to make a bride of you."
That night, I went to Cesare and asked him how much arsenic it would take to kill a grown man.
>>>>>
She’s dragging the jeans off-slow. Now there’s no hiding it, you know, what with everything on full alert.
“Don’t worry.” There’s a fucked up smile in her voice. “You’re supposed to enjoy yourself.”
I buck against the restraints again, just for good measure. I’m tied flat, to a bed, arms spread and pinned, legs free. I want to kick her. But bad things happen when I hurt Sam’s friends. I shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t do it. I kick her.
“Easy, tiger.” She catches me by the ankle and either I’m getting slower or she’s getting faster or both. Head tilted, she feels all around the joint, like it’s her first time seeing a foot or something. When she turns back, her eyes are black. “Your bones are so nice. Solid.”
“Fuck off, lady.”
“No ladies here.”
All her clothes are still on. She slides up my front settling her mouth right around my collarbone. “So nice” she murmurs and starts-not biting or nibbling but holding that bone in her teeth . “Is all of you like this? I never thought you’d be so-you’re very real, Dean.”
“You have lost your damn mind,” I say, hoping it’s true. Sam sometimes euthanizes the crazy ones. “Lost your damn mind.”
“You know what?” She looks up at me. “I think you’re right. Now hold still.”
“We want you to have a good time.”
“We?”
“Dean.” She sounds kind of sad, like I’m not keeping up. “Who do you think sent me?”
>>>>>
I didn’t hesitate. I could warn my husband, or let my father kill him. I didn’t love my Giovanni, but I hated to see my father win . Giovanni ran, tail between his legs. I watched until he disappeared and then I went inside to avoid the afternoon light. Bad for the complexion.
Cesare was waiting for me. He cocked an eyebrow and assumed a relentlessly practiced roguish smile. Like me, my brother was born to perform.
“Very good, Cesare,” I said. “Very well done.”
He crossed his legs. He wasn’t leaving.
“What do you want?”
“Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“You have my thanks, brother.”
“How grateful are you?”
“I’m very grateful,” I said softly.
“How grateful is very grateful?”
“Cesare.”
“You are so beautiful. And we are so alike. Am I not beautiful to you?”
“Yes, Cesare. You are very beautiful. We are very alike. And you are very beautiful.”
“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
And it wasn’t so bad, in the end.
>>>>>
“Oh come on, Dean. I’m your type, right?”
This just fucking blows.
“Or do you have a type? You seem like kind of an equal opportunity lay to me.”
Close eyes, focus on the wax smell, think about the Impala. Chrome. Chrome and well-kept leather. Dashboard, late nights, Credence-
“Dean. Tell me you want it.”
She’s got my briefs off, now. Just staring at me, naked as a jaybird.
“Tell me you want it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Liar.”
>>>>>
I told no one about the baby. In an absurd, almost comical twist, my marriage was in the process of being annulled for non-consummation. And Cesare was a Cardinal. It would have been relatively easy to dispose of, that little not-quite-a baby. I told myself that I kept it because it was a precious little life and I loved it already.
This was a lie. One morning as I lay retching into whatever pot was handy, I realized what a lie it was. Maybe, instead, I wished I would die in childbirth. I tried not to think about it.
When it was over, and I had expelled it, I understood its true purpose. It was bloody and puling and I was going to thrust my son in my father’s face and say, There, you bastard. You take him. I named him Giovanni.
My father swept him under the rug.
>>>>>
I think-my memory’s a little sketchy-but I know I’ve done this before. A lot. I remember a black girl with beautiful hair and a redhead and- But here she is, on top of me, and I can’t keep it away anymore. This is happening and it’s happening now. She reaches down to take a hold of me and that’s weird, no condom. Can you knock up a demon?
“Shhhh…”
It sounds almost gentle or some bizarre shit like that. She takes a hold of me and she’s guiding me just there-just to the outside. I’m hard now, no denying that, and just the feel of her-it’s wrong, it should be wrong. That’s a meatsuit. That’s not a real girl-
“Say it, Dean.”
I forgot. What does she want me to say? Oh. Right. But holy fuck the tip of me is just right there, right inside of her and she’s hot, too, and slick, and ready.
“Yes. I want it.”
>>>>>
My next husband was very handsome and Cesare hated him. Cesare was ugly by then. Too much sex with too many unclean women. He ought to have discriminated more. It was unseemly, a Cardinal with the French disease, as they say. Cesare had my husband strangled as he bathed.
I liked that husband.
>>>>>
I’m making noises now, noises I haven’t heard in years, not since the camp and Risa. I don’t know who this bitch is wearing, but her hips are so good and her legs are so tight and I just have to buck up against her. All the way inside, finally, Jesus. She leans forward and puts her hands on my shoulders and my leg starts to twitch a little.
“Come on,” she says. “Come on.”
>>>>>
In comparison, my third marriage was a resounding success. We had an understanding. As long as there was no question as to the parentage of our children, each of us was free to do as we liked-within the boundaries of prudence. He had his doubts, I believe, as to my ability to determine ‘prudence’. There were all sorts of rumors, you know, about my family and my own proclivities.
After a time, my first son, my little bastard Giovanni, came to live with us. Everyone believed he was my half-brother, one of Cesare’s many bastards. My father’s lies were very powerful. Every day, I called my little boy ‘little brother’ and smiled when I did it.
>>>>>
I’m not even doing the work and I’m sweaty and covered in goosebumps. She’s close, too, her breath more and more uneven. And I can’t-I just can’t come yet. Her tongue is between her teeth as her head twists and she groans.
“Now,” she says. “Fucking now.”
My jaw works itself open and shut and then something that’s been trapped in me for as long as I’ve been here finally works itself loose and-
Deep breaths. The deepest breaths I’ve taken since the garden and the white suit and that crunch . I hate myself, but I say it anyway:
“Thank you.”
>>>>>>
And here is the catch. Up until now, I was sure of my place in heaven. Everything I had done was sanctioned by the Holy Father. Spurious morality or not, the Pope was infallible. No fine print about it. I had no reason to fear hell. Even my marital infidelity was offset by substantial contributions to the church. That was how we did it then. People today have their own way of rationalizing things. We just cut a check.
So I had to think about it. I had to consider. I stared out the windows of our villa for hours at a time. I tried to consider, but all I saw was my second husband’s bathwater. And all I heard was my little Giovanni calling me sorella.
In the years that followed, I thought about it often. One night, Cesare and my father had dinner with a Cardinal. I believe they intended to poison the Cardinal, who was very grateful for my assistance. My father died ugly, although it took a week. He looked quite distasteful when displayed to the public. He was so far decomposed, and so little loved, that no one wanted to bury him at St. Peter’s. Cesare survived. He died four years later in a siege in some little nowhere town in Spain.
And when my time came, when it was my turn to face the wall, I had another chance. It was a very ordinary death, considering my family, but many women did die in pursuit of children. His name was Father Cosimo and he didn’t look old enough to shave. He was very earnest, very eager to hear me unburden myself. More than anything, he wanted to offer me the comfort of a clear conscience. And, of course, the pardon from my crimes. To this day, as different and changed as I am, I cannot recall why I did not confess to that priest, that one good man.
But I did not.
>>>>>
“We decide, Dean. We decide.”
What the fuck is she talking about? I’m just trying not to…trying not to anything. Close my eyes and be nothing again, but the bitch won’t stop talking. There’s blood in my mouth and it tastes good.
“Look at me.”
My eyes open and it’s not because she’s got some new juju. I just open them. Her eyes are black and there’s these little black lines-she’s crying. What the fuck does that mean?
“We decide, Dean.”
“Okay.” I swallow the blood. “Decide what?”
“There’s no Hell anymore. He got Heaven, so he did away with Hell. Now sinners just go nowhere.”
“What’s nowhere?”
“I’m not entirely sure. The undiscovered country?”
“Shitty movie.”
Meg laughs, wipes away the wet blackness.
“There’s no Hell,” I repeat. This is supposed to mean something.
“Not for demons, either.”
“So we could just…leave.”
She nods, smiles. “I miss hunting things. There’s nothing left to kill. There’s nothing worth killing.”
“I don’t understand.” I do, though.
“Our fathers are dead. And our brothers are dead. And we killed them ourselves.”
Did we? We must have.
“Some things, we can still decide.”
I nod, very slowly.
>>>>>
This is madness and I know it. But this is a mad age. Even my father would have found it distasteful, the corpses in the street and the lack of order and the final humans driven to ground, insane and squabbling over patches of poisoned dirt. Cesare would certainly miss the whores.
Dean doesn’t speak now-I’ve given him everything he needs. Lucifer has grown complacent, unafraid, just as he did while he reigned in Hell. We are all very predictable I suppose. Really, He should have seen this coming.
His door is not even guarded. I push my way in without so much as an obsequious knock. He looks up. Today He is wearing black trousers and suspenders, some kind of Great Depression chic. He has these sartorial phases. I think it prevents His getting bored. I cannot help but imagine Him in a mitre, and I think it would suit.
I smile and step out of the way, revealing his erstwhile brother.
“There, you bastard. You take him.”
No spoilers, please.
Author: july_july_july
Recipient chocca2
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Het
Spoilers: 5.10
Warnings: Sex of dubious consent, graphic unpleasantness, non-graphic references to incest (not in the Winchester family), abuse of the Universal Translator, anachronisms, and pernicious misappropriation of history . If you have any concerns, please do PM me .
Disclaimer: I don’t own them. And that’s probably for the best, really. No offense intended to any actual dead person or their surviving relatives. A work of total fiction.
Notes: Thanks to pdragon76 for the beta and cattle-prodding gentle encouragement.
Summary: In heaven all the interesting people are missing . -Nietzsche
La Cantarella
I always wanted a good father.
I suppose that's the reason He approached me. I sat in that room for what felt like weeks, nothing to do but wait until someone broke the salt ring, the seal. I wasn't nervous or bored or even angry that He was keeping me waiting. Anything was better than Hell. I slept. I slept for what felt like years. Deep, black, dreamless sleep. I did the same thing when my first husband ran away with his tail between his legs--I believe that is the expression they use nowadays. He went, tail between his legs, then the divorce, and I drew the curtains and slept.
I didn't expect things to be better. Just different. When I woke up, He was sitting there at the edge of the seal. The body was looking a little worse for wear. Sucks when you have to pick off the rack. I wonder if He knew that I’d met the real deal, that I’d been inside His own tailor made meatsuit.
"Good morning, Lucrezia," He said.
"Don't call me that," I said.
>>>>>
It’s somebody’s birthday-they told me that, right? I think they told me that. It’s somebody’s birthday here, in the dark. It even smells like fucking cheap wax candles and I figure out somebody’s actually lit some, like a real birthday. Like a real birthday in Madison with a cake mix I had to make without eggs so it was all silty but he looked at me like it was a real cake and said you got my favorite color candles.
“Good morning, vessel,” Meg says.
I wish it were Ruby. I wish it were Ruby, because her hard-on was for Sam and not for me and this girl-this whatever used to be a girl, it wants me. And she’s had me every other way but one and it’s somebody’s birthday.
“Don’t call me that,” I say.
Her hands ghost across the button fly of my jeans and-shit-it’s not my fault. It can’t be my fault. It’s been a long time, a really long time since that garden and not-Sam with his faggy white shoes and crunch. There’s no hope, I’m hard. Jesus Christ. She’s had me every other way but one.
“Buon compleanno, Dean.”
>>>>>
"Lucrezia. Come here."
I was not sure if, on that day, he was going to be the Pope or my father. The Pope was a dignified figure, pious and devoted. My father was a cutthroat son of a bitch. Alexander VI and Rodrigo, names he wore like perfectly tailored clothing, faces he could take on and off with ease, equally comfortable.
He called me before him and I stood, unquestioning, beside his chair. There was a sort of raw look about him, one that you rarely saw outside my family: he didn't care what other people thought of him, only what he thought of other people. I lifted my chin a little. My hair was barely past my waist then, but I brushed it to a high sheen each morning. When I held my head, just so, it caught the light from the window. I practiced that every day.
"Very good, Lucrezia. Very well done."
"Thank you, father." I reached up to my hair and pulled a small strand across my flat chest, feigning coyness as I looked towards the marble floors. A technique gleaned from his newest, youngest whore.
"You take after your mother, thank God. Very beautiful. And growing fast. Soon, you will be ready to assist us in our endeavors."
For a moment, I was so proud I thought I would burn up right there, and leave a pile of greasy ash in my silk slippers. All I ever wanted.
"I," he said magnanimously, "I am going to make a bride of you."
That night, I went to Cesare and asked him how much arsenic it would take to kill a grown man.
>>>>>
She’s dragging the jeans off-slow. Now there’s no hiding it, you know, what with everything on full alert.
“Don’t worry.” There’s a fucked up smile in her voice. “You’re supposed to enjoy yourself.”
I buck against the restraints again, just for good measure. I’m tied flat, to a bed, arms spread and pinned, legs free. I want to kick her. But bad things happen when I hurt Sam’s friends. I shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t do it. I kick her.
“Easy, tiger.” She catches me by the ankle and either I’m getting slower or she’s getting faster or both. Head tilted, she feels all around the joint, like it’s her first time seeing a foot or something. When she turns back, her eyes are black. “Your bones are so nice. Solid.”
“Fuck off, lady.”
“No ladies here.”
All her clothes are still on. She slides up my front settling her mouth right around my collarbone. “So nice” she murmurs and starts-not biting or nibbling but holding that bone in her teeth . “Is all of you like this? I never thought you’d be so-you’re very real, Dean.”
“You have lost your damn mind,” I say, hoping it’s true. Sam sometimes euthanizes the crazy ones. “Lost your damn mind.”
“You know what?” She looks up at me. “I think you’re right. Now hold still.”
“We want you to have a good time.”
“We?”
“Dean.” She sounds kind of sad, like I’m not keeping up. “Who do you think sent me?”
>>>>>
I didn’t hesitate. I could warn my husband, or let my father kill him. I didn’t love my Giovanni, but I hated to see my father win . Giovanni ran, tail between his legs. I watched until he disappeared and then I went inside to avoid the afternoon light. Bad for the complexion.
Cesare was waiting for me. He cocked an eyebrow and assumed a relentlessly practiced roguish smile. Like me, my brother was born to perform.
“Very good, Cesare,” I said. “Very well done.”
He crossed his legs. He wasn’t leaving.
“What do you want?”
“Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“You have my thanks, brother.”
“How grateful are you?”
“I’m very grateful,” I said softly.
“How grateful is very grateful?”
“Cesare.”
“You are so beautiful. And we are so alike. Am I not beautiful to you?”
“Yes, Cesare. You are very beautiful. We are very alike. And you are very beautiful.”
“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
And it wasn’t so bad, in the end.
>>>>>
“Oh come on, Dean. I’m your type, right?”
This just fucking blows.
“Or do you have a type? You seem like kind of an equal opportunity lay to me.”
Close eyes, focus on the wax smell, think about the Impala. Chrome. Chrome and well-kept leather. Dashboard, late nights, Credence-
“Dean. Tell me you want it.”
She’s got my briefs off, now. Just staring at me, naked as a jaybird.
“Tell me you want it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Liar.”
>>>>>
I told no one about the baby. In an absurd, almost comical twist, my marriage was in the process of being annulled for non-consummation. And Cesare was a Cardinal. It would have been relatively easy to dispose of, that little not-quite-a baby. I told myself that I kept it because it was a precious little life and I loved it already.
This was a lie. One morning as I lay retching into whatever pot was handy, I realized what a lie it was. Maybe, instead, I wished I would die in childbirth. I tried not to think about it.
When it was over, and I had expelled it, I understood its true purpose. It was bloody and puling and I was going to thrust my son in my father’s face and say, There, you bastard. You take him. I named him Giovanni.
My father swept him under the rug.
>>>>>
I think-my memory’s a little sketchy-but I know I’ve done this before. A lot. I remember a black girl with beautiful hair and a redhead and- But here she is, on top of me, and I can’t keep it away anymore. This is happening and it’s happening now. She reaches down to take a hold of me and that’s weird, no condom. Can you knock up a demon?
“Shhhh…”
It sounds almost gentle or some bizarre shit like that. She takes a hold of me and she’s guiding me just there-just to the outside. I’m hard now, no denying that, and just the feel of her-it’s wrong, it should be wrong. That’s a meatsuit. That’s not a real girl-
“Say it, Dean.”
I forgot. What does she want me to say? Oh. Right. But holy fuck the tip of me is just right there, right inside of her and she’s hot, too, and slick, and ready.
“Yes. I want it.”
>>>>>
My next husband was very handsome and Cesare hated him. Cesare was ugly by then. Too much sex with too many unclean women. He ought to have discriminated more. It was unseemly, a Cardinal with the French disease, as they say. Cesare had my husband strangled as he bathed.
I liked that husband.
>>>>>
I’m making noises now, noises I haven’t heard in years, not since the camp and Risa. I don’t know who this bitch is wearing, but her hips are so good and her legs are so tight and I just have to buck up against her. All the way inside, finally, Jesus. She leans forward and puts her hands on my shoulders and my leg starts to twitch a little.
“Come on,” she says. “Come on.”
>>>>>
In comparison, my third marriage was a resounding success. We had an understanding. As long as there was no question as to the parentage of our children, each of us was free to do as we liked-within the boundaries of prudence. He had his doubts, I believe, as to my ability to determine ‘prudence’. There were all sorts of rumors, you know, about my family and my own proclivities.
After a time, my first son, my little bastard Giovanni, came to live with us. Everyone believed he was my half-brother, one of Cesare’s many bastards. My father’s lies were very powerful. Every day, I called my little boy ‘little brother’ and smiled when I did it.
>>>>>
I’m not even doing the work and I’m sweaty and covered in goosebumps. She’s close, too, her breath more and more uneven. And I can’t-I just can’t come yet. Her tongue is between her teeth as her head twists and she groans.
“Now,” she says. “Fucking now.”
My jaw works itself open and shut and then something that’s been trapped in me for as long as I’ve been here finally works itself loose and-
Deep breaths. The deepest breaths I’ve taken since the garden and the white suit and that crunch . I hate myself, but I say it anyway:
“Thank you.”
>>>>>>
And here is the catch. Up until now, I was sure of my place in heaven. Everything I had done was sanctioned by the Holy Father. Spurious morality or not, the Pope was infallible. No fine print about it. I had no reason to fear hell. Even my marital infidelity was offset by substantial contributions to the church. That was how we did it then. People today have their own way of rationalizing things. We just cut a check.
So I had to think about it. I had to consider. I stared out the windows of our villa for hours at a time. I tried to consider, but all I saw was my second husband’s bathwater. And all I heard was my little Giovanni calling me sorella.
In the years that followed, I thought about it often. One night, Cesare and my father had dinner with a Cardinal. I believe they intended to poison the Cardinal, who was very grateful for my assistance. My father died ugly, although it took a week. He looked quite distasteful when displayed to the public. He was so far decomposed, and so little loved, that no one wanted to bury him at St. Peter’s. Cesare survived. He died four years later in a siege in some little nowhere town in Spain.
And when my time came, when it was my turn to face the wall, I had another chance. It was a very ordinary death, considering my family, but many women did die in pursuit of children. His name was Father Cosimo and he didn’t look old enough to shave. He was very earnest, very eager to hear me unburden myself. More than anything, he wanted to offer me the comfort of a clear conscience. And, of course, the pardon from my crimes. To this day, as different and changed as I am, I cannot recall why I did not confess to that priest, that one good man.
But I did not.
>>>>>
“We decide, Dean. We decide.”
What the fuck is she talking about? I’m just trying not to…trying not to anything. Close my eyes and be nothing again, but the bitch won’t stop talking. There’s blood in my mouth and it tastes good.
“Look at me.”
My eyes open and it’s not because she’s got some new juju. I just open them. Her eyes are black and there’s these little black lines-she’s crying. What the fuck does that mean?
“We decide, Dean.”
“Okay.” I swallow the blood. “Decide what?”
“There’s no Hell anymore. He got Heaven, so he did away with Hell. Now sinners just go nowhere.”
“What’s nowhere?”
“I’m not entirely sure. The undiscovered country?”
“Shitty movie.”
Meg laughs, wipes away the wet blackness.
“There’s no Hell,” I repeat. This is supposed to mean something.
“Not for demons, either.”
“So we could just…leave.”
She nods, smiles. “I miss hunting things. There’s nothing left to kill. There’s nothing worth killing.”
“I don’t understand.” I do, though.
“Our fathers are dead. And our brothers are dead. And we killed them ourselves.”
Did we? We must have.
“Some things, we can still decide.”
I nod, very slowly.
>>>>>
This is madness and I know it. But this is a mad age. Even my father would have found it distasteful, the corpses in the street and the lack of order and the final humans driven to ground, insane and squabbling over patches of poisoned dirt. Cesare would certainly miss the whores.
Dean doesn’t speak now-I’ve given him everything he needs. Lucifer has grown complacent, unafraid, just as he did while he reigned in Hell. We are all very predictable I suppose. Really, He should have seen this coming.
His door is not even guarded. I push my way in without so much as an obsequious knock. He looks up. Today He is wearing black trousers and suspenders, some kind of Great Depression chic. He has these sartorial phases. I think it prevents His getting bored. I cannot help but imagine Him in a mitre, and I think it would suit.
I smile and step out of the way, revealing his erstwhile brother.
“There, you bastard. You take him.”
No spoilers, please.